Blizzard Warning!

With winter fast approaching and hockey season underway I’ve been waxing nostalgic for the backyard ice rink my brothers and I constructed every winter.

Mind you, this was no ordinary backyard rink. Where I grew up, in the Keewenaw Peninsula of Michigan, a total snowfall for a single winter could top 400″.

Just clearing the snow off the ice was a full time job. But our efforts didn’t end there. We erected light poles, built our own nets from 2×4’s and chicken wire and remodeled an out-of-commission outhouse for a penalty box. We added side and end boards (just to reduce the number of lost pucks in the 5′ deep drifts) and maintained an ice path from our back door to the rink for easy access.

This was our winter version of the sandlot baseball fields our urban counterparts labored over on the spring.

In addition to growing up as a hockey player, I also took advantage of all that snow and a six month season to become a pretty darn good snowboarder.

Well, a funny thing happened to me while doing keyword research on power generation for a client of ours.

I was searching on the keyword phrase “snowmaking compressors” expecting to see listings for huge industrial strength power generation systems. Yes, those listings were on the SERP, but in the paid listings was an ad for something called the Backyard Blizzard.

I couldn’t resist clicking on the ad and what I found warmed my heart. Here was the 21st century winter version of the “sandlot” for all those 8 year old snowboarders aspiring to be an X-Games champion someday.

With an ordinary garden hose and home power supply, the Backyard Blizzard can transform your backyard into a snowboard paradise. It’s one of those inventions that’s been right in front of our noses – a power washer with a nozzle to create a mist fine enough to make man-made snow. Pure genius!

Just imagine – a snowboard terrain garden in every backyard and how that would make the Olympic snowboarding gold medal a lock for the USA for generations to come. Now we may have to sacrifice a peaceful night’s sleep while all those backyard snowguns whine away. Not to mention the precipitous drop in water pressure.

But all that’s a small price to pay to get our kids off the couch and doing rail rides off the swing set and tail grabs off the lip of the swimming pool in January. Gnarly!