David Christopher Bell
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Great works of genius require nothing more than creativity and having absolutely nothing better to do with your time. So what do creative people do when several feet of snow has made all other hobbies impossible? They create awesome things like ...
Every neighborhood has the one parent who's way too into hurling padded children off homemade jumps like it's the carnie Winter Olympics. Kids know this person as the "awesome parent" -- because as we're all aware, sledding is only as fun as the level of death taunting it invokes. So, it was only a matter of time until one such man spent hours making his very own Olympic-style ice luge track:
abcnews.go.com
Actually, this is probably way beyond Sochi's capabilities.
That's the work of an industrious father in Minnesota, and we don't know what's spitting in God's face more: that it was constructed so that a misfire would fling the child into the street, or that they've managed to create the threat of a high-velocity injury in such a small amount of space. Just imagine what they could do with a larger yard.
Actually, you don't have to imagine it. Here's what another Minnesota family did:
Somebody fly us up there, damn it!
We assumed that all pubescent snow-sculpting skills could be classified on a scale from "snow dick" to "snowman with snow dick," so we're not sure what to think about this:
kare11.com
"Snow goes on the lawn, we go on the lawn. Shark's on the lawn. Our shark."
That's not any kind of visual bullshitting -- that's a 10-foot-tall snow shark built in 95 hours by three teenage brothers who apparently haven't discovered porn just yet.
It's impressive, but only the recent in a long line of one-ups, considering that they made a slightly smaller walrus the year before, and an even smaller puffer fish before that:
WCCO, WCCO
Because nothing says winter like exotic sea creatures.
The average snow fort in America is made by building two perpendicular 3-foot walls, getting cold, and going inside to play Xbox. Up in the drafty attic of Canada, however, people spin lazy water into palaces like it's in their maple-soaked DNA:
cbc.ca
"All firstborn Canadian males are birthed in these."
It's called a quinzee -- and while normally created out of necessity for survival, one Alberta man has made a literal man cave.
cbc.ca
With a cooler. Cause fuck it, why not?
But if that looks like way too much work for getting drunk in the cold, two Winnipeg brothers were able to combine the ingenuity of a frost wall with the comfort of not having to leave the front yard:
theglobeandmail.com
This is what happens when you mix Games of Thrones DVDs and cases of Molson.
Leave it to Canada to do this with snow and ice:
cbc.ca
That's a hockey rink. Of course it's a hockey rink.
This 111 by 44 foot perfectly flat spectacle seats more than 1,000 people and required 6,000 gallons of water and 3,000 blocks of snow to construct, with a crew of ...
... this one old guy, in his backyard, with a little help from his neighbors here and there.
That is Bill Martens, a 69-year-old cancer survivor and apparently the Canadian equivalent of Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams. Martens not only owns the land, but also has contributed about 70 percent of the old-man power to get his rink up and running in time to celebrate Hockey Day -- where he hopes to raise some money for charity.
cbc.ca
"Zambonis are for pussies."
Good luck, Bill. We sure hope you get the money you want, because lord help us all if you ever choose to harness the power of snow and ice for evil (see snow shark, above).
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