Lisa Heyamoto: The salmon lovers return to Old Sac

If you've been hanging around Old Sac these days, that barking you hear isn't the coyotes fighting for a piece of the nearby downtown railyard.

Nope, it's a pack of vocal sea lions – a rookery, if you will, because apparently I'm obsessed with collective animal nouns.

About this time each year, the marine mammals travel to our bend in the river in pursuit of the savory salmon run, conveniently congregating near the Delta King.

Manager Mike Coyne says it makes for a pretty spectacular spectacle for paddleboat passengers.

"What's kind of fun is when they're right off the boat and they're fishing," he said.

In case you didn't know, the difference between sea lions and seals is all in the ears – as in, sea lions have them and seals don't.

As for what they end up deciding about that railyard, we're all, all ears.

* * *

Only in Sacramento can you trade flip flops for ice skates.

Megan Blackwell, however, wears neither, her preferred footwear being Uggs for a long day at the rink.

Blackwell, you see, is a Zamboni driver, the Shackleton of the Downtown Plaza Ice Rink. Every hour, she climbs aboard Frank J. Zamboni's namesake invention, backs it onto the ice and proceeds to shave and re-smooth what feels like the tiniest rink in all the land.

And it's not as easy as it looks.

Aside from the fact that she's, you know, driving on ice, there are the turns to manipulate (she's mastered the art of the drift) and the walls to avoid (she hasn't hit one yet). People stare and often cheer, because for about 10 minutes, she is the unwitting star of The Zamboni Show.

It might not be the most applicable skill she'll learn as an intern with the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, but it's pretty cool, nonetheless.

"Who doesn't want to be able to drive a Zamboni in their lifetime?" she asked.

No one, that's who.

* * *

Speaking of the Downtown Plaza Ice Rink, how do they keep that thing frozen? When it opened to the public the first week in November, it wasn't exactly scarf weather.

Turns out they do it the same way most makeshift rinks are created. First, they lay down a few layers of insulation, then they add an infrastructure of pipes pumping chilled water, then they pour water over the whole thing, freezing it in layers until it's sufficiently skateable.

So what if Sacramento is hit by a freak midwinter heat wave?

No problem, says Lisa Martinez, director of marketing for the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, which runs the rink. They just squeegee off the puddles and commence refreezing until it's once again as cold as ice. But it'll have a long way to go 'til it's as cool as a Foreigner song.

* * *

Generally speaking, more beer is better than less beer, especially when knocking a few back while knocking over a few pins. Beer, after all, goes with bowling as well as it does with poker. Or pool. Or a lot of things.

Naturally, patron Greg Brown was particularly offended to see the beer pitchers at Land Park Lanes have built-in mechanisms ostensibly designed to keep beer cold via built-in compartments for ice. In actuality, however, they decrease the amount of beer one gets for one's buck – a trade-off he is not willing to make.

"That's a full beer we miss out on," he said. "Homer Simpson would not approve."

And though it involves the manipulation of ice, I'm betting Frank J. Zamboni wouldn't either.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Lisa Heyamoto, (916) 321-1261.