DaytonDailyNews.com

When people hear Jeff Hucke

has access to a pair of Zamboni ice resurfacers, he is hit with the usual question.

"It's always, 'When can you take me on a ride?' " said Hucke, who is assistant director of building operations at Miami's Goggin Ice Center. "They all want to ride the Zamboni."

For more than 20 years, Hucke has nurtured ice rinks at Miami University. This past year, he and his crew drove the two ice resurfacers at a

10 mph pace to their new home at the Goggin Ice Center.

The five minutes the two Zamboni resurfacers spend cutting and building ice during RedHawk hockey games contains the pageantry of a small parade. Select students ride the machines and wave to the crowd with music blasting. By cutting the ice with two resurfacers, Hucke said there is more time for promotions and fan involvement.

He explained his crew usually does the driving during hockey games, but on occasion he gets a request to chauffeur someone around the rink.

"I have a full-time staff of four that do the driving," Hucke said. "But when the (Miami) president's wife wanted a ride, Vice President Steve Cady said, 'We want you to drive.' "

While Hucke said anyone can operate a Zamboni, he noted shaving and building ice with the machine takes skill. At the Zamboni's tail end, a coil of blades skims a thin layer off the ice. Hucke explained varying amounts of ice are shaved for different sports.

As the ice is shaved, it is shot into a storage bin at the hood of the machine. The ice is then cleaned and a fresh layer of warm water is spread to create new ice. When the Zamboni rolls off the ice, it dumps the shavings into a basin to drain.

Three floors above, inside Hucke's Goggin office, there is a picture of a prehistoric relative to the present-day Zamboni. A sign in the photograph notes it was built in 1949, and it also says, "The World's First Ice Resurfacer." According to the Zamboni company, its creator Frank Zamboni purchased a tractor and began experimenting.

Hucke's relationship with the Zamboni started in a similar fashion. Raised on a horse farm, his family owned a tractor with a bush-hog, a lawn mower-type device.

"We used that machine to cut grass," Hucke said. "(A Zamboni) has that same kind of feeling, but you have to take the turns sharper."

Hucke has heard tales of Zambonis plowing through rink boards across the country, but said nothing like that has ever happened at Miami.

As for why people of all ages ask Hucke for Zamboni rides, he said he has no definitive answer, but suspects it has to do with the novelty of it.

"I think it's just the uniqueness of the machine," he said. "Not many people in their lifetime have a chance to ride on a machine like that."

Contact this reporter at (513) 523-4139 or jgiordano@coxohio.com.