Icey Hockey

Chas and I have been itching to play hockey basically all semester. I had checked out the rink once or twice to see if the snow and ice had melted off of it yet, but was disappointed to find about two inches of slush each time. Yesterday Chas called me at about 3:30 when I was in the computer lab and said he checked the rink and it looked mostly clear, and asked if I wanted to go play. I said sure, and I got there a little bit after four.

We shot around for a little bit. He was working on his backhand and slapshot. On one of the first shots he took, I kept thinking, "the pucks are going to break. We really should try not to hit the post" and I was literally just about to say "Do everything you can to NOT hit the post" when he shot it, hit the post, and the puck flew over the fence and about a hundred feet away onto some ice in the middle of the field near the rink. We must have shot about six pucks out.

At one point we were playing one-on-one with an empty net. We would just start in the middle of the court, one on offense and one on defense, try to get a shot off. I played offense first and I don't think I did very well, so he took the puck out to go. He was coming down the board on his right side, and then turned around to try to guard the puck from me. Without either of us realizing, he was skating backward right into a huge left-over puddle of freezing water and some ice. I have no idea why it seemed so fast, but it felt sort of like I was in the middle of a super intense chase scene in a movie and then everything went wrong, the camera angle changed, and you realized, "Um, crap" and all the music stopped.

Anyhow, he was okay, he didn't hurt himself, but he didn't totally eat it. He landed on his elbow and scratched it just a tiny bit, but the worst injury was that he was very very wet, and the water was very very cold. It actually splashed as he hit it. I felt bad - there really was like a 50% chance that either of us would hit it, and it sucked that it turned out to be him. I also sort of felt bad that I didn't stop him, but I also had no idea it was coming.

Peace out.