John Collier, Aet I: Getting All the Snow Off

John Collier '72, Th '77 holds Thayer's Myron Tribus Chair in Innovation and is director of the Dartmouth Biomedical Enginecring Center. Widely Known as the "rtificial hip guy," he has patented three orhopedicimplants. Today hesurvers his 40 or so acres in Etna. There is a woodpile nearby with an axe, but he declines to throw it.

(Laughing) I haven't thrown an axe since my undergraduate days in Richardson Hall. Even then, I wasn't much of a genuine woodsman. I just chopped the wood for the dorm, so I had an aex and chopping block outside my room on the third floor. Throwing an axe at my door was just a natural by-product of haveing the axe handy. We had a busy time of it rebuilding that door each time the building inspector came around. But the real excitement on the floor came from the Canadian hockey boys down the hall who liked to shoot their pucks through the mail slots. At Dartmouth I fell in love with skiing and pond hockey. I met my wife when We were both playing hockey on Pond. ic Suprenent at Thayer School taught me the game. He helped me pick out this property in 1979 because it had room for THAT. (He indicates the large man-made pond, a stone's throw from the house.)

I've already cleared off the snow this morning, and swept the ice with the tractor. As it turns out, if is incredibly difficult to maintain decent ice. (Jetting all of the snow off. getting the necessary traction it's tricky. I've tried a lot of different methods over the years, a couple of different tractors with snow blowers. I rigged up a home-made Zamboni by strapping a used Zamboni blade and a 50-gallon drum of pond water to my tractor, but I didn't quite have the traction. I added weights to the back and that helped a bit. Made it a heavy piece of equipment though.

One warmish day about three year? back I was-ready to clear the ice so I drilled my auger holes in several places, and every; reading I took.said the ice was eight inches. Then I got out there on my tractor and found a spot that was just four inches that to support this tractor.

It's amazing how many seconds it takes the brain to process what is actually happening. First, the snow-blower is spraying water. That's funny, I think. Then I say to myself, hey, „ this tractor is driving at an angle. Then there's water in the cab and I'm wondering where that could be coming from. Obviously I figured it out. Of course I then had a tractor 12 feet, under. Using a chain saw on ice is wet work. I went "wing for the tractor with a big hook and chain and then some friends helped me pull it out. Took me a year to get it running again. .

It was about that rime that the gays at Thompson Arena started telling me the College had this beauty to sell. (He climbs up on his Zamboni.) It's a 1953 Zamboni that clearly didn't meet OSHA standards"any longer. I was thrilled to buy it. It takes about three hours to properly prepare the ice alter a snowfall. (He smites.) Of course some days we just play hockey in the You fife use a tennis ball instead of a

(He turns on the Zamboni and gets to work.)

Engineering prof Collier made an old Zamboni work slick.