Come on out - the ice is nice!

I know that the Guidant John Rose Oval is the largest outdoor refrigerated skating facility in North America with 110,000 square feet of perfectly flat concrete. And they do mean perfectly flat. When the Roseville Visitors Assn booked the Gus Macker 3 on 3 Basketball tournaments in 2007 it rained Saturday night and all day Sunday we were sweeping pooled water off of the courts. Teams were not pleased.

The OVAL also has a state of the art cooling system with over 800 tons of refrigeration and 84 miles of underground piping that helps maintain world-class ice, even when temperatures climb into the 50s! It technically could have ice all year round though the cost to do so would be immense. I asked Kevin Elm, Programs and Banquet Manager, at the Oval how many gallons of water it takes to flood the rink. Kevin told me that flooding happens over a three day time period and they flood to 1.5 inch thickness. He did not know off the top of his head how many gallons and since I am not a mathematical genius I cannot tell you either.

What I do know it’s that it is a heck of a lot of fun to skate on. My two darling nieces Abby, 8 and Katie 5 flew in from Arizona over the Christmas holidays and Auntie Julie promised them plenty of adventures during their stay. We skated on a Thursday morning. I was thinking we would not last more than 30 minutes but the girls had a blast and we were there for about an hour and a half…until our ankles gave out.  Abby skated all by herself while Katie hugged her Mom or the boards until we secured one of the handy walkers for her to use. While there were a boatload of kids, parents and single adult skaters it was never ever crowded on the rink. You do not really grasp how huge the Oval is until you are skating on it and it takes a while to go around and you pass four almost regulation size hockey rinks in the very center of it.

I can highly recommend it, along with their new best friends, the MN Wild who have held an outdoor skate at the Oval the past two years. If you’d like to rub elbows with the MN Wild you have the opportunity to do so this Saturday, February 4, 2012. The MN Wild play at Dallas that evening and the game will be broadcast on the video board. Public skating is available at $5.50 and skate rental is available for $4.00. The MN Wild are having a private, invitation only event in a banquet room but the Fox Sports North, FSN Girls, Nordy and Wes Walz will be out and about interacting with the crowds.

For more info the link to the Wild website is: http://wild.nhl.com/club/page.htm?id=77007

Guidant John Rose Oval: http://www.skatetheoval.com/

Lace ‘em up and get out there to skate!