Winter Activities

Another summary of my weekend:

Friday: Went out skating on the canal (finally!) at around 9:00pm, but it was horrible. I have never skated on such crappy ice ever. From Lisgar to a little bit before Pretoria Bridge, the ice was okay. There was the occassional rut but that's common on natural ice. From Pretoria Bridge to a little bit before Lansdowne Park, it was horrible. Absolutely horrible. There were cracks everywhere and ruts left right and centre. Danielle fell about three times, pretty hard. We wanted to continue skating, but the cracks and the lack of sight (due to poor lighting) prevented us from going any further. We were basically taking little baby glides in order not to fall. Well, I was. Danielle had to go slower because she doesn't skate too well. So we headed back to Lisgar. Before heading inside, we found a nice patch of ice to skate around for a bit so we just skated back and forth there for a bit. Danielle wanted to learn how to stop again and do hockey stops. I love doing hockey stops. I also showed her how to crossovers, but she was too afraid to do them. Then my hands started to freeze up so we went home.

Saturday: In the morning, I watched Jennifer Heil win Canada's first Olympic Gold Medal in women's moguls then proceeded to head out to Dow's Lake to watch Alexis and her Sous-Soul choir perform "Victorian" songs. My knees and thighs were killing me in the morning so I decided to take the bus to Dow's Lake. After discovering that I took the long route and eventually finding the way to the canal, I strapped on the skates and skated to find the Sun Life Ice Cafe. I arrived just in time to see them perform a couple of songs. Then I bumped into her boyfriend and his roommate. Chatted for a bit and saw the choir perform the next set of songs. And we laughed at her costume. She said we could laugh at them, so we did! The songs they were performing made them seem very bored and disinterested. I know Sous-Soul is a jazz-pop-r&b choir, so it didn't really make sense for them to sing Victorian songs, but they were paid to, so I guess they had to. Oh well, it was nice.

After watching them perform, I decided to skate home. Again, ice conditions were a little poor even though they flooded and zamboni-ed the canal overnight. I guess the poor conditions were due to the ample amount of people skating on it and the warm sunshine. I skated all the way to Lansdowne Park to check out the DND Ice Hut. It wasn't what I had expected. Maybe because there were too many 'ordinary' people lining up to get a taste of Moose Soup and Corn on the Cob other native delicacies, since the Canadian Rangers were there to do some demonstrations. Oh well, maybe I'll check it out another time and flash my ID card. LOL (Pearkes = perks!)

Sunday: Went to church and SS in the morning. I'm enjoying SS a lot this semester. I'm in the Early Church History and being the history geek that I am, I'm learning a lot about the different people that really influenced the Early Church during the Roman era, not just the famous Bible characters that we hear about day in and day out, but the different Popes and Apostalic Fathers too.

And as usual, hockey was in the afternoon. I arrived at Heron and Clover at 3pm and to my astonishment, the rink was packed. I was told that this rink usually has no one or it only has a couple of people playing. But today, there was about 20 people! And combined with almost 15 of us, there would be almost 40 people and the game wouldn't work out. Harry, Calvin, Wendy, Christina, and Maks arrived soon after and they quickly called Leon to tell him so we decided to go to the alternative rink at Preston and Beech. When we arrived, there was no one! Wooot! The game had a pretty good flow, except for the numerous times when we had to stop because people got injured. Good thing we have Steph and Mil -- our resident first aid and nurse reps, respectively! There were numerous spills and puck flying into Karl's mouth, but no serious injuries, unless you count Leon's random fall on the ice and hurting his wrist and arm. The ice wasn't shoveled so it was kind of hard to see the puck. While playing, you think you have the puck and then, all of a sudden, it's off your stick and you're just pushing snow along. That was the most frustrating part.

I scored a nice goal (I think) -- picked the puck up from the boards and deked my way around a couple of people and scored five hole. I had some good scoring opportunities, but they were stopped. I also assisted on a pretty back-door play to Leon. But I also killed Ben's shin. I think I have a target on my shin now for his revenge.

Well, I won't be playing next week because I'll be back home in the T dot. It'll be good to see some friends of mine and attend SCBC! I miss those peeps -- SS should be rockin' again, but I'll miss hockey and OCAC SS. Poo.

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On a side note to Mil - Because I don't have your MSN or a Xanga account, I can't comment on the retreat site. So I hope you get this...I think it's Trenton.