- 1 - Arthur Petron Essay 3, 2nd Revision Faery 21W.735.02 April 1, 2007 No more adventure stories A not so long time ago it was below freezing for more than a week here in Boston. At the time, this meant little more to me than dressing warmly and hoping that someday soon it would snow. I would spend my mornings checking the weather report and satellite images for any hint that there might be snow that day. After days of anxious waiting, snow finally came at the end of the frigid week, and it was an exciting day, but then, as the evening approached, to my horror, I watched out the window as the snow turned to sleet, and the sleet turned to freezing rain. Wonderful. The rain coated and stuck to everything and then froze completely solid. The snow turned to useless concrete where it wasn’t already shiny with ice. Even as a fairly stable person, walking to class became a chore, and at that point in time I just wanted the muck to melt. But then I remembered something. I own ice skates. Now that the outdoor world was coated in ice, it became a giant ice rink. One could skate anywhere he pleased, and many did. I caught a glimpse of students taking a break from classes and skating on Killian. Hockey players hopped onto Brigg’s Field for a jaunt, and beginners hung out on the tennis courts. Instead of being dreary and annoying, the ice turned out to be a great bit of fun. I, however, had other plans for my ice skates. Enter the barbeque. An alum got in touch with us in an attempt to get a group together to barbeque on the ice – the Charles river ice. Since I had already wandered around the very edge of the ice a few days before, I thought this wouldn’t be a bad idea.- 2 - Around midnight fourteen college students could be seen pushing, pulling, picking up, and pushing some more, a barbeque out to the Charles while wobbling under the weight of hockey sticks, ice skates and food. We found a great spot hidden by a tall stone wall by one of the boat-houses and set up shop. It took a while to get the grill lit, but we had soaked the coals in lighter fluid beforehand. The grill was soon hot, and the cooking of delicious meats began. Meanwhile, the group skated around within a hundred feet or so of shore. The hockey pucks were lost almost instantly, since at night the ice looks very much the color of pucks, so we used white ice chunks from shore. There were mini games with one person pretending to be the goalie between two larger ice chunks and two others trying to score. Others just seemed to be chasing each other around on the ice, one much better than the other, keeping his ice chunk while skating backwards, in circles, and avoiding his pursuer. I sped back and forth as fast as I could, switching effortlessly between going forward and backward while poking with my stick at pucks and ice chunks that came near me as I passed idly thinking about other things. As the area grew whiter and whiter with skate marks, the meat was consumed at an alarming rate, and while it was tasty, something else interested me a bit more out there on the ice. “Hey, crazy kid.” I called to the guy with the light, pointing, “Let’s go over there before ‘something’ keeps us from doing so.” “Where? To the other bank? Okay. Let’s see who else wants to come.” There was a huge beckoning open space out away from shore. It is more than a quarter mile (364.4 Smoots and one ear to be exact) to the other bank of the river. It was- 3 - just too far and yet so close to be left completely untouched by the sharp blades adorning my feet. The few who wanted to make the trek to the neighboring county huddled together on the outside of the group. There were six of us in all, and we decided that it was best to stay single file for the first crossing. And that was it. We skated off into the darkness of the empty river’s surface. It was slow going the first time across, but once a path was established that we knew was safe return trips were easy. There were lots of trips, repeat trips, backwards trips, and even shirtless trips. A few BU girls were walking around the BU-Harvard bridge loop (I have no idea why) and decided to take a short-cut across the river along our path and skip out on the bridge. One of them had never seen snow before, much less walked across a frozen river. We soon tired from the several miles of ice skating that was accomplished that night, packed up the grill, and headed for home. I would describe myself as slightly euphoric for a few minutes after getting back inside. Over the next few days I would tell friends that I had barbequed and skated across the river because skating on the ice seemed like a cool thing to do – mostly because very few people do it, but to me it was not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. In fact, I believe that very few such opportunities exist. The skating was simply a fun break from work late at night, like taking a drive through the cool night air or a walk in the woods. It’s important to remember that during the excursion nothing happened. I was happy for it too, though I didn’t expect anything to happen. Along with the two EMTs that we had with us out on the ice, a few of us had experience with ice fishing. When ice forms, especially on such a large body of water, it doesn’t all form at once. Because of this, there are cracks that join the different pieces of ice – and while the ice- 4 - itself is clear (crystal clear actually), the cracks have air bubbles in them. Result: shining a flashlight on the cracks lets you see how thick the ice is. Fresh water ice needs to be at least four inches thick in order to have a high enough safety factor to skate on in small groups. That night the ice was not thinner than seven inches everywhere we checked. You could have driven a passenger car across the ice without worry of falling in. Ice is really strong, so strong that twelve inches of it can support an eighteen-wheeler. Yet people still have a fear of ice, and some would call me crazy for having skated across the river ice. The fact is, people who fall into ponds that are frozen over and drown do it because they don’t make sure that the ice they’re walking on is safe. Sure, there’s still a risk involved, but there are also risks involved with driving, meeting someone you don’t know, eating vegetables, and taking walks through the woods at night. Giving one action a higher weight than other