Flies in your pocket...

bugs in your teeth!*

Now I first heard the latter, at an outdoor concert in Somerset, Wisc., one fine summer evening not too many years ago. The lead singer, an aging rocker from one of those bands that enjoys touring at outdoor venues long after their careers have peaked -- was voicing what he was experiencing on stage, and said it like it was a common refrain. Have you heard that one before?

But flies in your pocket...

Mal has been making ice these past weeks, first at the Rice Lake ice rink down the street, and then for a few days this week on the Alliant grounds in Madison, a practice rink for the Badgers and local ice for several youth hockey teams.

I always assumed -- you flood the ice like you'd fill a swimming pool: a hose, turned on, plus time. Nope. He was following the guy holding the wand, carrying the hose around the rink, and around and around. A slow spray mist -- the way I'd been imagining, a garden hose flooding, he tells me, would produce too much air in the ice, so like ski hill snowmakers, this is more a tall wand with a mist.

Mal's favorite part -- what he tells me he's good at -- is the painting of the lines, taking care not to use too much, and from what I gather, it sounds freehand but not with brushes but a sprayer stick, some newly out machine he was reading the instructions for this year...

As it freezes up inside, and he'd walk the ice, he was pulling out flies trapped and marring a perfectionist's view of his work. Dead and numerous, victims of lowering temperatures and killer resting places I suppose, Mal was pulling them out and sticking them in his pockets.

And up onto the counter they appeared, he related, when he was pulling out a dollar for a coffee after work later that afternoon. Flies in your pocket; bugs in your teeth. Make it a great weekend, however you're working it these days, people...

p.s. I love my readers, have we said that lately? That, plus an endcap bottle of red wine on a crisp October evening... it does a heart good, I tell ya.

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* Thanks to all our readers who called or wrote to say, "It's a biking term." Duh, I think I knew that once.