Riding a Zamboni has probably been the most difficult single thing that I've tried to make happen. There is clearly some top-secret Zamboni union I needed to break into. I've met several people who've said, "My cousin cleans the ice during Winter Wonder Fest at Navy Pier." or at Maggie Daley Park, or somewhere else, however, it never materialized. I finally reconnected with someone I'd worked with years ago and remembered his sons played hockey. He tried to arrange something from August 2022 and it took until June 2023 before it could happen.
The experience, itself, was so much better than I thought it would be. I asked Patrick, my driver, about 75 questions. The machines cost about $140-$180k. The one we were on was about 40 years old. There are two augers on it, one is parallel to the ice and scrapes it, and the other is perpendicular and lifts the scraped ice into the front "dump truck" part. Then, hot and cold water is spread in a thin layer.
I loved every second of it.
