sutherland

So how, exactly, do we get from the boy-child’s skating lessons to me being on the ice in full hockey gear? The progression of logic is as simple as it is horrifying: Boy-child needs ice time; Skate and shoot is…

Now I haven’t skated much over the years … maybe twice a year since 1995 or thereabouts, so I’m okay, but not great. I can make it around the ice reasonably quickly, snowplow stop and if you watch long enough…

Proper shin and elbow pads, plus a jersey one of the coaches gave him last week and T is starting to look like he means business. At the public skate after class he keeps his shin pads on and starts…

We arrive at the ice and I have him wearing his bicycle elbow and knee pads … I haven’t had time to find some for him and Play It Again Sports doesn’t have any used. Well, he heads for the…

In a new pair of gloves and used helmet and skates from Play It Again Sports, the boy-child takes the ice for his first learn-to-skate lesson. To my eyes, he seems to be doing okay.  Not falling down a lot…

Forty-two years old … Largely sedentary for the last decade … Never played organized sports in my life … Raised in sunny Florida … Obviously I’m the perfect candidate to start playing ice hockey. No? Not obvious? So how did…

There’s an old Styx song I’ve been humming a lot this week: Nothing ever goes as planned …It’s a hell of a notion … I’m on vacation this week and had “plans” — the plans were to paddle every morning,…