For the past few years, some (also crazy) friends and I have headed to Huntsville, Ontario to play in the National Pond Hockey Championships. For those of you who are in to such things, it’s amazing. For those of you who aren’t in to such things, it still has the potential to be amazing. I suppose it all depends on how attached one can get to twenty five rinks glistening out on the bay, lovingly tended to by warm-hearted volunteers using all manner of vehicles to keep the ice in decent skating shape.
I’m not sure how the organizers manage to arrange it, but every weekend we’ve been there it has been c-c-c-cold. The first year it was minus 27 (before factoring in the wind chill). This year it got colder – minus 32. That’s pretty damn cold to have your feet in skates. But you know what’s worse than having to put skates on in minus 32 degree weather? Having to pee in minus 32 degree weather.
We’ve named our team “Pass The Advil” (no, we’re not sponsored by Advil, we just find we need it after a few games of pond hockey). This year we had some jerseys made. We loved them when we got them, and we love them even more now -- after looking at some photos we realized that when we play, they look like they say “Ass The Advil”. Gives it a whole new meaning. Personally, I prefer to take my anti-inflammatories orally.
I don’t know how we do it, but every year we manage to make it to the playoff round. This year we went 5-0 in the round robin. Unreal. Our undefeated run ended in the quarterfinals when we lost 12-11 in a really fun game against another Toronto team.
No matter what the score is, though, everyone wins.
