Dear Kid,
Hope you are enjoying Spring(ish) Break so far. In honor of the icy weather we went to see the Cincinnati Cyclones play last Saturday night.
It was pink in the rink night for the Pink Ribbon Girls (fabulous women). We had pink glow sticks, the players had pink and black jerseys (j’adore!), and the Cyclones pulled out a win in a shoot out (Pi and I love shoot outs so we were all happy).
Which ever group was working the concessions must have had a good night too, because I paid $4 for a bottle of water, because of course a bottle of water should cost $4. Yeesh.
More importantly, the ice was pink and excuse me but how entirely cool was that? Extremely cool and kudos to the Ice Crew (yes, there really is such a group).
Pink ice of course led to the question “how do they do that?” and while I love you dearly I decided to go to a higher source for information. I even went higher than My Friend The Internet. I went to Sean Lynn of the Cyclones who exceeded All Expectations by answering me on a Sunday when he should have been hoarding $4 bottles of water for Winter Storm Titanic and the impending Ice Doom.
According to Sean:
The ice is painted with a giant wand sprayer with pink ice paint. It starts with one coat and once that coat dries an additional coat will be added. It usually takes a few coats. Once the pink appears even and our ice crew is happy with the color, the remainder of the evening is spent locking in the pink color by building layers of clear water/ice on top of it. By creating these additional clear layers, the pink is able to show through and last the entire game. To remove the pink, we will use the zamboni to do a series of dry cuts. This will slowly remove the clear layers and eventually the pink layers revealing the ice surface that we are accustom to for all other games.
Which was a great (and speedy) answer (and proved how smart you are) and I thanked him muchly and–wait, Ice Paint? Makes sense, but what is ice paint?
Unsurprisingly, you can’t use regular paint on an ice rink. I have asked the JetIce people (they make ice paint) for some more information, but unlike Sean they weren’t sitting around waiting to answer my questions. So I’ll get back to you when I know more.
Sean also suggested we watch this video about how they make hockey rink ice.
Have a wonderfully, colorful day, sweetie.
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