The Trailer Bearing Project
May 27, 2011
One evening last week I spent 2 ½ hours on a simple bearing replacement on my trailer. Blame it on middle-aged ineptitude or bad lighting, for it wasn’t for a lack of tools, parts, or place to work. I just couldn’t get the thing to fit back together.
To my credit I must protest that I did spot the bad wheel and attempt to repair it before heading out onto the highway and endangering others. I have learned something in the aftermath of last summer’s loose-bolt debacle.
The clinical definition of insanity is repeatedly to try the same thing in the expectation of different results. Friday I must have gone a little crazy, because I kept thinking that if I could just get that big nut to catch on those threads, I could force the thing into place with the ¾” ratchet.
The fog of war has nothing on the confusion surrounding a dark trailer hub full of black grease, miscellaneous metal parts, and bits of gray limestone from each time I dropped it on the driveway.
Number one rule: don’t take a trailer bearing apart on a fresh gravel driveway, especially when there’s a nice clean garage floor twenty feet away. Grease is a gravel-magnet, and when things get sticky, my mind seems to seize up.
A question emerged when I looked up the broken bearing in the Princess Auto Catalog. It listed 1 inch and 1 1/16” splines for 2000 lb trailer axles. Mine measured 1 1/32”. Uh? Maybe they under-or over-estimate sizes, like the nominal measurements at lumber yards.
When I arrived at the store the following afternoon, bearings for 1 1/16” splines were not in evidence at all, but the 1.03125” size was available. That worked out to 1 1/32, so I bought a set of bearings, washers, nuts and seals for this size, but hedged my bets with the 1” size, as well. There are lots of other trailers at the farm which will need a set of bearings, I’m sure.
The new parts matched the old ones, so I was away to the races once the rain stopped. Removing the remains of the broken inside bearing the previous night had required the sacrifice of a small screwdriver, the services of a larger one and a 3 lb sledge, and finally a bearing puller once I had come to my senses. Add another hour to the time for the project, come to think of it.
On went the vinyl gloves. I tentatively wiped the black goo out of the hub, somewhat taken aback by all of the chunks of rock in there until I realized they were roller bearings which had been chewed up after their holder had disintegrated.
First I needed to seat the back bearing. I carefully checked the spline. It would fit fine. So I tapped the tapered holder into place on the back of the hub. It wouldn’t go far enough. Tap harder, with a piece of oak cut to fit on the amazingly dull band saw. I guess that alternator body Charlie was cutting up was made of something other than aluminum.
No luck. I measured the diameter of the race, then headed for the other garage and my ¾” sockets. Surely enough, a 1 7/16” socket fits the space nicely. Taps didn’t work. Harder taps started to crack the hub, so I decided that was far enough.
I emptied the grease gun into the cavity, then slipped it onto the spline. In went the front bearing, almost far enough. The bolt, even without a washer, just wouldn’t reach. Much insane wiggling, tapping with the sledge, imprecations to the twin deities of grease and gravel, came to naught.
When in doubt, remove the wheel and look. Off it came, with insolent ease, on the garage floor. The now-lighter hub still wouldn’t fit. Tried to measure. My expensive electronic measuring thing wasn’t going into that greasy hub. A piece of oak went in. Should work.
After an amazingly long time I realized that while I had put a tapered bearing sleeve into the hub part, I hadn’t previously removed the one that was in it. Inspection revealed that the poor fit was caused by two of the tapered sleeves jammed together in the back of the hub. A tap with a screwdriver and the extra race dropped out and rang triumphantly on the concrete floor.
From there it went together without difficulty.
What have I learned? In a bad wheel, even when some parts have disintegrated, the round, flat ones likely haven’t, and if you try to put an extra round flat thing into a hub without taking the other one out, the bearings won’t fit, no matter how much you tap them with a sledge hammer or ask them nicely.
If I hadn’t written this down I would have forgotten about my stupidity already. Amazing how the human mind heals the ego.
Eureka moment! Emergency reading glasses!
May 11, 2011
This missive is for those over forty with bifocals. Younger eyes need not read further.
You know how you want to check your mail but all sets of glasses are too far away and you decide to gut it out bare-eyed? Ever try to do it while drinking from a large coffee mug?
No kidding: the interference lines around a coffee mug can be made to work as an emergency eyeglass lens. Maybe it only works because of the self-illuminated screen, but it’s very easy to move the cup to where the interference lines produce a lens effect around the rim of the cup, and if you can’t make out letters and words with that, you’re not much of an improviser.
A Real Garage Door
January 7, 2011
That’s the one we’ll use to visit the garage and to fix the fire, not the one reserved for whatever mechanical pet is currently occupying the service bay.
The new door’s made of white oak grown locally by Ed Rowswell and sawn on his mill. The planer had no trouble with the wide planks, but my old tenon cutter had its work cut out for it, and I had to stand on the foot pedal of the mortiser for each of the many cuts into the dense, stringy wood. It was good to get my woodworking tools back into operation. They’ve been in storage ever since we moved into my shop of 30 years, a stone house on the property.
Now my beloved Poitras shaper and 8″ General jointer are snuggled neatly around the box stove. No more damp barns for them. The band saw’s just to one side and the tenon cutter’s back in operation for the joinery projects involved in the final touchups on the house — primarily armoires in the bedrooms. The other tools can stay out in the cold.
A 1.75″ oak door is incredibly heavy to lift around. Once it’s mounted on hinges, of course, it swings just like any other, though perhaps with more authority.
Suburban homeowners discover they can take their entry doors apart and replace the muntined thermal panes with opaque glass for privacy. Then the rejects sit around their garages until they put them on Kijiji for a few dollars. I bought two last summer in Ottawa. The current glass in the door cracked when I drove a screw into a mortise in the door frame to tighten it. Then the sledge hammer did it no good when I whacked the prehung door into position. I’ll drop the second one in a little later in the process.
Normally I fit a sheet of 1/4″ plate into doors like this, but I decided a replaceable panel would be better for a door likely to be used as an entrance from a woodshed. Surely enough, as soon as I make a replaceable window, I end up replacing it.
A visit from Joe and Christian
November 27, 2010
My grandfather loved his axe, and throughout his long life he wielded it with skill and pride. He heated his home with wood he split himself until it made sense to put in an oil furnace. Then he retired his axe and adjusted the thermostat.
My father never thought much of oil heat because it relied upon too many outside factors and might someday let his family down in a crisis. From the time I was big enough to lift a chainsaw I worked with my dad cutting firewood for heat. Much of the time we spent together over the year was devoted to this vital task. By the seventies it made sense to switch to oil heat, but he still insisted upon having a wood stove in his living room.
But during the ice storm it wasn’t the stove that allowed Mom and Dad to stay in their home, it was the generator that electrician Les Parrott bestowed upon them on the first day of the storm. From that time on my dad cherished his 5 kw Honda and the stove sat unused.
It turns out in the last year my sister and I have separately looked into the feasibility of buying solar equipment. As peak oil approaches it just makes sense to have an alternative energy source lined up.
Then realtor Allan Earle sent me an email this week asking me to meet with his clients who would be in the area for a day, so we set up an interview. I wanted to hear what they had to say and possibly get a column out of it.
I had done some reading about Northland Energy, a solar company developing three projects in the Newboro area, and I just assumed these guys would be representatives of this company. No. Joe’s from Tenedos Energy, of Toronto and London. Christian represents JCM Capital of Toronto, which provides funding for Tenedos.
They haven’t bought any farms in the area. That’s another company again. By now I had figured out that they have nothing to do with Renewable Energy, the developer of several projects just outside Smiths Falls.
So my first question was, “Why are you interested in this area, and this property specifically?”
Joe Lasko responded, “Tenedos Energy goes out and locks down sites. JCM provides the money to do that. We identify areas which are the most suitable. This location is of interest because it offers Class 4 land, and a spot close to a transmission station with capacity available.”
Rightly or wrongly, eligibility for Feed In Tarrif funding under the Green Energy Act is contingent upon locating the solar fields on land which is not classified as Class 1, 2, or 3.
The first thing I had done after Alan Earle visited the farm a couple of weeks ago was locate a soil map. Surely enough, on the Canada Land Inventory Agricultural Capability Map (31C9) the area around Young’s Hill is coloured white, indicating Class 1, 2, or 3 land, but Young’s Hill itself is brown on the map, and thus is eligible for FIT funding, regardless of the soil’s fertility. You can find this map quite easily on the Internet.
The Green Energy Act has produced a gold rush in Ontario. The Feed In Tarrif Program has succeeded in attracting world attention and companies such as Tenedos have sprung up to take advantage of the development opportunity. Tenedos personnel branched off from Greta Energy where they had specialized in wind power installations over the last five years in Bosnia, Estonia, Russia, Germany and Vietnam.
The rush is to secure access to class 4 land and a dwindling supply of unused capacity on transmission lines.
I asked Christian Wray what his firm brings to the table. “JCM Capital helps to fill a funding gap in Canada. European capital is cheaper for us because solar has a track record in Europe and there’s just more money available. Germany and Spain have had FIT programs for a decade now. They’re familiar with solar energy and not afraid to invest in it. There are solar farms in Germany that have been operating since the sixties.
“At JCM we have deep finance experience and are able to raise financing in the international markets through a deep network of relationships in this region. We understand what makes renewable projects bankable and can help smaller developers get to this quality threshold.
“Tenedos uses polycrystalline panels, not the new thin-film panels that use less silicon. These have various environmental issues. They’re not as green as the polycrystalline panels which are a proven technology, around since the 1960’s.
“Each developer has its own philosophy: we are focused on using green, proven, financeable products in our projects.”
I fired off a much less theoretical question: “A home generator usually produces about five kilowatts of power per hour. Assuming an hour at mid-day on a sunny day in July, how many sections of solar panel would it take to match that output? How many of these would be mounted on a single pole? Per acre?”
Christian responded, “Canadian Solar on the Internet will give the specs. We use a 230 watt panel, so that would be 21 panels. Various combinations of them get put together, depending upon the engineering of the site. We work with the engineer to determine the best solution for the site.”
Joe and I branched off into an animated discussion of Hunter Thompson’s writing. He did his master’s thesis at Brock on the guy. Allan grew quite restless at this, pointing out that they had other meetings scheduled, and they’d better get under way.
So away they went. Joe and Christian, two bright young guys. Smooth salesmen or business leaders of the future? We’ll have to see.
Gearing up for the wood stove
November 14, 2010
I’d been cruising kijiji.ca for a block splitter, and on a whim I changed the language of my search, typing in “wood” instead of the more American “log.” Fifteen minutes earlier someone had posted a short ad for a 3 pt hitch wood splitter, so I was off on another wild goose chase to Harrowsmith, an hour and a quarter to the west.
Unlike the wreck the day before in Oxford Mills, this one turned out to be a solid, Mennonite-built unit which Gerald Emmons, a former Forfar resident, had bought at an auction only to discover it ran too slowly on his Kubota. Seems the dealer wanted $2000 to install a set of remotes on the new tractor, so he hooked it to the loader. Small hoses impeded the splitter’s performance, so Gerald decided to go with a gas-powered model.
I didn’t know if my TAFE’s rear remotes would do any better, but I decided to try. It has a three-way diverter valve for hydraulics which has quite a learning curve, but Peter’s testing gauge said the pressure was fine once we found the correct settings. To produce a continuous flow to the splitter he locked the “tipping lever” open with a chunk of scrap metal and I tore into a pile of elm rounds with my new toy.
Peter has the same model of splitter and he thinks it runs pretty slowly on the TAFE but it works for me, and without breaking a sweat I split my way through a significant pile of firewood in an hour.
The next day the thing wouldn’t work. I racked my brain in an effort to puzzle out the hydraulic settings, but I couldn’t get pressure to the back of the tractor. Peter came back with his gauge and solved it in an instant. Turns out the three-way diverter valve is really a two-way with an OFF setting. The same setting provides pressure to both the loader and the splitter, and I’d been trying to use OFF to run the splitter. Sometimes the manual isn’t right. Oh. Feeling stupid but relieved, I got back to work on the pile of soggy elm blocks.
As the wood made its way to the stove in the garage, I came to realize that wet elm doesn’t burn very well. In fact it was all I could do to incinerate the first two trailer-loads, so I turned my attention to a pile of maple chunks left over from the removal of the huge tree which overhung the parking lot in front of the house until last winter. It had taken me three days with the loader to haul the stuff away.
Much of the wood was too large for Dad’s little Husquvarna 51 to cut, but it chewed away at anything up to about two feet in diameter. The splitter got a workout on the gnarlier blocks, and one hose sprung a leak, but in general it worked very well. The visit to Princess Auto for a replacement was a revelation in how hydraulic hoses are assembled, as well.
In the meantime Alahan Kandasamy had arrived to inspect the chimney installation. He took one look at Mom’s little box stove sitting on a stand above the garage floor, and uttered, “What the….? Who installed this?”
Alahan seemed a bit worried about the steel structure underneath the patio stone on which I had set the stove prior to hooking up the pipes and chimney. “What if I gave this a good kick?” Apparently he thought that the 16” wheel I had bought at the junk yard was unstable. It wasn’t, just a bit narrow-waisted. The wide wheel provided the lift needed to get the firebox above potential fumes on the garage floor and I drove in little wedges to keep it stable. The stove looked top-heavy, though, so I promised to mortar something in place to enclose the steel “foundation.” I had left room for brick around the perimeter of the slab.
An hour’s work with mortar and a pile of bricks from Grandpa Charlie’s furnace and the stove looks a lot more stable with its red skirt. The wheel still does its work supporting the slab, but there’s no further risk of kicks from passers-by.
Running out of maple small enough to cut, I hooked the timber winch to the little Bolens on a whim. It could in fact lift the thing, and though skidding logs with the unit would be impossible, it could certainly pull the cable with the power take off and the winch has the weight and geometry to anchor itself. Apart from a clean-burning engine and exhaust which vents forward, the short tractor can get into places the old Massey Ferguson can’t. For example I have repeatedly parked it across the logging road to pull out previously inaccessible timber left over from the improvement cut in the woodlot in 2006.
Most of the ironwood is still sound enough to burn, so I have spent mornings this week tidying the woodlot, dragging cordwood out to the edge of the road with the winch, cutting it into blocks and splitting it into firewood with my new toy. It’s heavy work, but a wonderful time of year to be out in the woods.
The Second Annual Tired Iron Tour
October 31, 2010
I’ll never trust the Weather Network again. Oh, they were correct, all right. For Portland. Not for Westport. But of course I didn’t think to ask if there would be a difference.
So on the Second Annual Tired Iron Tour, Peter Myers, Burt Mattice, Chris Myers and I drove our tractors into a sleet-and-snow squall just outside Westport, and it stayed with us through lunch and well down the North Shore Road on our way back to Forfar.
The morning had started out pretty well, though a few tractors had owners with better weather information than we four had, and they stayed in their barns. Tony Izatt was along in a chase car to take photos. He stayed with us until Newboro and then rushed back to Ottawa to set up for Hallowe’en.
The cattle and horses in the fields were frisky in the frosty air, and they all seemed delighted to use the noise of our little convoy as an excuse to boot it around a bit and get their blood warmed up.
Things went pretty well through Newboro and up to about the golf course. Then we came over the hill and saw a dense white cloud where Westport should have been. Into the maelstrom we drove.
Sleet mixed with snow is not the thing for a pleasant country drive on an antique tractor. Peter later quipped to my wife: “Some of those snowflakes were so big they were like to knock you off your tractor.”
At Steve’s a dark angel seated us by the fireplace and brought us coffee, then lunch. What else could we call her on Hallowe’en? She wore a dark, feathered mask and black wings and she brought warm food. We all ordered dishes with fries and gravy. It was that kind of day.
A few years ago I wrote a column about riding a bike to the top of Foley Mountain without dying. Things didn’t go so well on the return leg of our tractor jaunt. The Mountain claimed two of the four machines.
The guys had razzed me all morning about the slow pace I set for my Massey Harris 30. The trouble is that the gears on a 30 are set for the 38 inch wheel option. Mine has the 28 inch size. This gives great torque, but not much speed in road gear.
As we approached the bottom, I didn’t know how the old Massey would behave. The McCormick W30 and the two John Deeres took a run at the hill and away they went, though the W30 started to die back half-way up. I saw my chance. The Massey was holding its own just fine on the steep slope. Burt hesitated. I yanked the throttle through the gate and gave my 30 full power. Out into the passing lane and around the W30 we went. My suddenly-eager steed blazed up the steepest part of the hill without a hint of lag. Chris gaped as I blew by his “B.” On I flew over the first hill, and then…. everything shut down. No more ignition. Nothing.
Peter had stopped to keep an eye on Burt on the hill. He sized up my situation and backed up to the front of the Massey, uncoiled the tow chain, and after we’d established that it wouldn’t be firing any more today, hooked me up for a tow home.
Away we went. Getting towed by a John Deere A is not an unpleasant experience. Instead of the rattle-rasp of a straining Massey engine, there’s the remote putt-putt-putt of a huge, two-cylinder gas engine with those mesmerizing fly-wheel-like brake drums turning backwards right below the driver’s feet. It’s a serene sound and rhythm, and as long as the route was uphill, nothing remained to do but steer and enjoy the view. The interesting thing about the massive torque of the slow-turning engine is that when an “A” labours down almost to a stall, the front wheels bounce up and down an amazing amount with each piston stroke.
Of course on downhill stretches the Massey wanted to catch up to the chain. My readers at this point naturally divide into two groups: those who have been towed, and those who must imagine what happens if your front wheel runs over a chain dragging on the road, pulled by several tons of hurtling green iron. Had time to think about that? Now you’ll both know why I put so much careful effort into feathering the twin brake pedals of the Massey on the many descents of the North Shore Road.
But it worked. Then Burt’s tractor grew impossible to drive. The exhaust manifold had grenaded during a fit of backfires on the climb up Foley Mountain. My Massey was already hogging the only tow chain, so Burt abandoned his wounded mount and climbed on with Peter for the ride home.
As we crossed at the Narrows Locks we looked up the lake and there was the snow cloud still hanging over Westport. Peter dragged the poor old Massey to a stop in front of my garage. Charlie and Martin happened to be standing there. Martin’s jaw dropped. Charlie just shook his head. We retreated to the kitchen for coffee and warmth. It had been a cold expedition, though not without its adventures, this the Second Annual Tired Iron Tour.
New Toy Gloat: wood splitter
October 30, 2010
I’d been cruising Kijiji on a quest for a block splitter, and on a whim I changed the language of my search, typing in “wood” instead of the more American “log”. Fifteen minutes earlier someone had posted a short ad for a 3 pt hitch wood splitter, so I was off on another wild goose chase with trailer and navigation system to a community an hour and a quarter to the west.
This one turned out to be a solid, Mennonite-built unit which the current owner had bought at an auction only to discover it ran too slowly on his new Kubota 35 hp. Seems the dealer wanted $2000 to install a set of remotes on the tractor, so he hooked it to the loader. This particular loader has very small hoses, which impeded the splitter’s performance. He decided to replace it with a gas-powered model.
I didn’t know if my TAFE 35DI’s “tipping lever” would do any better, but I decided to try. It has a three-way splitter for hydraulics which has quite a learning curve, but my neighbour Peter Myers has a testing hose and the pressure was fine once we found the correct settings. To produce a continuous flow to the splitter he locked the tipping lever open with a chunk of scrap metal and I tore into a pile of elm rounds with my new toy.
Peter has the same model and he thinks it runs pretty slowly on the TAFE (he’s a John Deere man) but it works for me and without breaking a sweat I split my way through a significant pile of firewood in an hour.
The piston moves slowly, but there is no hesitation and it does a great job.
The Potato Digger
October 13, 2010
We were keen to plant things this spring and I had two garden plots all worked up, so in one we put lots of corn and then finished it out with last year’s Russet potatoes cut up as seed.
All went well until we began to worry about a raccoon attack upon the corn. There was nothing for it but to put up the electric fence. It clicked away and we relaxed. No raccoons attacked, even though I noticed some weeks later that the end of the wire attached to the fencer was hanging down behind the generator, grounding against it. So there never was a shock in the line, but the raccoons stayed away anyway.
The unintended consequence of this was that the potato patch was protected not only from raccoons, but also from the roto-tiller. The weeds joined in with the rampant growth of potato plants to make a thick, green mass.
It all came to a head last weekend when my wife announced that it was time to plant the garlic. “Uh, there are still four rows of potatoes in that space.” Bet waited until I was away and had at it with a garden fork. She made good headway, filling a wheelbarrow with a frenetic morning of digging. Then she could barely move for the rest of the week.
I decided to grab a fork and dig the things and be done with it, but I didn’t last as long as Bet before my back showed signs of giving out.
There’s nothing like a lame back to make a man think.
When I was little, my dad used a walking plough behind Old Jess to furrow the potatoes in and then dig them up again. He and Old Jess would roll them out neatly, and Glenda, Mom and I would scramble to pick them up before the next pass.
First I tried and discarded the furrower attachment for the tiller because it didn’t dig deeply enough to root out the potatoes without making gritty French fries out of them. Removing the tiller’s tines would be a lot of work, and the purpose of this procedure was to save labour, not increase it.
Internet research suggested that garden tractors don’t do well on ploughs. For example the leading maker of garden ploughs uses a 33 hp, 4WD tractor to pull the little single-bottom 12″ unit in demonstrations. Turning the soil requires weight and traction.
But I have two 35 hp tractors. Why fool with a toy when I can use the real thing? Out I went to the pile of weeds by the barn. My first plough, a 3 pt. hitch 3 X 16″, lay mouldering there, easily the worst implement I have ever bought. It was so poorly balanced, bent and awkward that I put a hole in the floor of my trailer just loading the thing. Later I tried removing one of the moldboards to see if that would help. It didn’t, but my friend Tom ended up with a brutally effective anchor for a floating dock from the left third of the plough.
I resolved to build an adult-sized, single-bottom plough from the remaining scrap iron and use it as a potato digger. An hour of fruitless grinding at the bolts at least allowed enough time for the penetrating oil to work, and after a few satisfying smashes with an eight-pound sledge the nuts turned right off. I dropped the right third of the assembly and put it back together with just the centre section remaining.
The only way to keep the thing upright while I hitched it to the TAFE was to hold it off the ground with the Massey.
Away I went to experiment on the potatoes. Down went the plough point. Ahead surged the tractor. A magnificent furrow appeared behind. Perfect, except that I didn’t see a single potato.
Maybe I missed the row. Tried again. Now I had two, almost parallel furrows, and no potatoes. Now what? Keep trying? A third pass between the others and a few fractions of potatoes appeared.
I walked along the row. An occasional potato fell out at my kicks. Before long I was digging through the debris by hand, looking for survivors. Most showed grievous injury, though a few small tubers had escaped.
More passes with the plough and the garden took on the appearance of a compost heap after a good turning. But the potatoes weren’t coming out of the ground the way they did for my dad and Old Jess.
So I gathered up the pitiful survivors in a large plastic pail and set it in the loader for the ride to the house. Started off. Heard a “crunch.” Somehow the pail had fallen out of the loader and I had crushed it under the tractor. Once again I rounded up the dwindling supply of potatoes and trundled them up the hill, ruing yet another session with this last remnant of the sorriest of all possible ploughs.
Blasted tractor’s wrecking my body!
August 7, 2010
This latest tractor keeps finding new ways to wreck my back. Take Friday’s misadventure for example: Bet and I had to run up to Kingston to pick up some new pulleys for the mower which runs on the back of the little Bolens tractor. Trouble is, the thing eats belts. Inside a month I have gone through four. They are scarce and expensive, though I have found a Belarus Tractor dealer in Wisconsin with a sideline in v-belts who sends them to me from an outlet near Stratford.
A talk with Peter Myers narrowed the problem down to the sheaves (what I would call pulleys) which were severely pitted from corrosion. V-belts are tough, but they must have a smooth surface on which to run. He suggested the sheaves are a stock item and that I should simply replace them.
And so I did. Then I dropped Bet at a supermarket and had an hour to kill. The other trouble with the Bolens is that its seat doesn’t have any springs, so I have to pad my spine with two pillows if I want to stay on the tractor for any length of time. The big Canadian Tire next door to the food store should have parts for lawn tractor seats. I’d find a way to adapt them.
CTC didn’t have any compression springs for the purpose, but I ran into something else which made me forget all about the tractor project. It also let loose the latent Walter Mitty in me: next to the sports department they have set up what looks like a narrow plexiglass squash court, but at the end is a hockey net. Monitors across the ceiling display information about the moving pucks. A rack with several dozen carbon fibre hockey sticks stands outside.
I wanted to try it. It matters not a bit that I am no hockey player – nor that I haven’t had skates on since a field trip to the Rideau Canal Skating Rink during my rookie year as a teacher. Nor that my two elderly colleagues, Ralph Greenhorn and Ernie Hogan, had to tow me against a stiff headwind the 4.8 miles back to Dow’s Lake from the Chateau Laurier. The muscles in my back had seized up and I simply couldn’t move. So much for skating.
Nonetheless, I wanted to try to fire a slapshot through a radar gun, just to see.
I paid my money and a bemused hockey jock from the sports department set me up with the softest, shortest, right-handed stick he could find. He joined me in the shooting court to control the flow of pucks from the pitching machine and offer advice.
He warned me to shoot, not to hesitate, or I would “get buried under pucks.” The first white disk squirted along the “ice” from the machine at a steady 22 mph. I stopped it and took aim at the net, noticing a little light had illuminated the lower right hand corner of the net. I shot at it and hit the net, along the ice, dead centre. It must have been that blinking light throwing me off, because I discovered my chances of hitting the target at a range of twenty feet were about as good as those of hitting the areas to either side or above the net, or even the face of the pitching machine. This was the most inaccurate hockey stick I have ever handled.
What’s more, it was one of the slowest. Like anyone else’s, my memory is full of cannonading blasts past goaltenders on the ponds and rinks of youth, even though most of the time I played goal because I had a good glove hand and couldn’t skate.
But in the cruel glare of the radar gun, my best slapshot — the one that caught the upper left corner of the net at the same time the light blinked in the lower right — clocked in at 35.1 miles per hour. Thirty-five? But Zdeno Chara fires a slapshot over a hundred!
The attendant told me my shots were about average for a fourteen year-old hockey player. “Lots of junior-level players fire wrist shots over 80 mph.” The store doesn’t let them try slapshots in the confined area, but my coach didn’t seem too worried about my flailing attempts. In fact he loaded the machine up again, twice more. The pucks off my rented stick didn’t get any faster, though once I stopped staring at the flashing lights in the corners of the net my response time became much better. I even hit the correct corner of the net the odd time.
Eventually my spine had taken on an interesting new shape, my arms felt like lead, my head pounded, and I decided to call it a day. I thanked my coach and reeled out of the store thinking, “That hockey booth is a really cool thing to try. Now whom could I lure into it for a puck-blasting session?”
By the following morning I could hardly get out of bed. I moaned around the house for the rest of the weekend, all the while blaming that blasted tractor for wrecking my body yet again.
the Walnut Diary 