On thin ice

The grandkids and mom. Note the pink cheeks.

The guy has my sympathy.
Chris Schultz has been trying to get an ice skating rink up and going since early December. He assumed that by Dec. 13th it would be good and cold in Utah and water would freeze.
He happened to pick the only year I've ever seen that featured 60-degree weather well into the holidays.
It's been warm and then it rained.
Chris had made a deal with American Fork City to lease land in the corner of the Art Dye Sports Complex.
He offered to front all the costs if the city would let him put in an outdoor ice skating rink.
He would pay for the labor involved in putting up a fence, laying in chiller coils, providing a stock of skates and lighting the rink at night.
He would carry the liability insurance.
All the city had to do was stand back and watch (or come and skate).
It sounded like such a good idea.
When I was a child in Idaho, it was a given that you could skate on the neighborhood rink any day of the winter.
I remember going down to the corner and skating to my heart's content.
I didn't know then that it was unusual to have a skating rink on every corner.
It's been years since then so when I heard of Chris' plans, I was interested.
I interviewed him and did a story for The Deseret News.
Unfortunately the story was one centered on the grand opening dates he'd missed waiting for the temperature to drop enough to allow him to make ice.
He needed enough cold to make the first layer over the coils and allow him to "paint" the ice with a material that would resist melting in the afternoon sun.
The chiller would take it from there.
Poor Chris. He missed all of December and half of January.
The good news is that the Timpanogos Ice Skating Rink is now open.
My granddaughters and their parents and Marc skated there today while I tended the baby.
They loved it and nobody broke a leg or anything.
And it wasn't crowded.
I don't think most folks realize it's finally open. They're thinking it's not going to happen.
But it has.
I'm going to check it out. How about you?

Adell, Hannah and Kari. Somebody falling in the background.