Slow Starts

After a summer of distraction, parenting, casual weekday drinking, parenting and physical activities not carried out on frozen surfaces - it is once again time to get back on the horse for another season of Gamecock hockey. And by "horse" I mean "ice", and also "a pair of rapidly aging skates, a foggy old iTech, and a chipped and fraying composite stick that I'm going to continue to use until it explodes into a million splinters"... yeah, I acknowledge it was a shitty analogy.

Anyway, last night was game one, and one game I'd like to forget (ho ho!). The first time out each year is always rough - clumsy is normal, but this is the first first time I've felt old and heavy and sluggish. I'd like to blame the ice (we play at the notorious Devonshire Arena, which is ~70% the size of a regular ice surface, and probably the oldest still-active rink in the HRM... it is both the Nassau Coliseum and Mellon Arena of Halifax rinks), but I won't. After all, it is not the ice's fault that I am no longer able to make or receive a pass, or make a sharp turn without losing my balance, or any of the other typical hockey-type things I wasn't able to do last night. No, I blame my failing eyesight (age, pointy objects), and my turf-knee (Ultimate Frisbee), and a shift in my centre of gravity resulting from an increase in back fat and decrease in arm muscle mass (age, casual weekday drinking, Doritos, minions). Next week I'll be installing counter weights on my helmet and should perform much better.

Needless to say, my team lost, and I was thereby eliminated from the Gamecock Captain's Bracket, of which you neither know of nor care about. But such is the blog.