The Road to Sheffield

Alright i know this happened over a week ago , truth be told i was pretty wiped out in the UK at the end of my 5 weeks of travelling . Things got more hectic and i had a lot of obligations to uphold and at the same time i had to figure out my travel pretty much as i moved along due to Rainer not making it over to the UK ...we had a car rented that i left behind in hopes that he would catch up to me with it ... anyways this kinda all explains why we were late the morning i had to leave Cardiff to meet Nick (YYOOOUUTTTHHH) Onslow  in Gloucester . He convinced me to get to Gloucester and join him for the rest of the drive to Sheffield with him , Anton was gracious enough to offer me a ride with one of his brothers ... I'll get into that later . First things first , i woke up quite late this day and threw everything off , i couldn't help it that the bed i got to sleep in at Anton's place was so darn comfortable :) We had to meet Andrew Medway at Costa Coffee ... sorry Andrew ! We arrived a half hour late , and my timing didn't get any better . After our coffee i needed to get my UK Sim card so i wouldn't break the bank again and then we headed to the castle which is near a bunch of tourist shops where i grabbed my flag and magnets :P also got Kathleen a Welsh Love Spoon ! yeah i know its a bit cheesy but they are really nice , if you don't know what they are then look it up .

So after having lunch we went to the job site were Anton's brothers were working and found out that Andrej was gonna drive me , he had this huge bruise on his thigh from the open ice body check he took from one of the other skaters . As i said there seems to be a segregation at their pickup games ... native English speakers vs. the rest . Guys were hammering each other and there were a couple heated moments . They should mix it up in the future to see how it goes ? So i am supposed to meet Nick at like 1 pm and we are leaving the job site at 12:30 LOL ... kept messaging Nick with my new UK number saying sorry mate ! At first i told him i owed him a beer and by the time we arrived an hour late i had promised him dinner :( Before i go on with the story i want to thank Anton & his family for taking me in and i want to thank the Cardiff Titans & the rest of the Cardiff hockey community for allowing me to skate with you guys ! When i met up with Nick i introduced him to Andrej and we went off on our merry way , well i was merry ... Nick wasn't too excited about waiting around the car park for an hour . Sorry mate ! 

On the way to Sheffield Nick reminded me about the game we are going to on Saturday with Daz's team . Everyone will be wearing Christmas jumpers , yes Christmas jumpers ... now i want you to think for a second if you don't live in Europe ... what is a jumper ???? Ok i thought these jumpers were like onesies ??? so in my mind this picture of me at a hockey game in a onesie .... So i turned to Nick with this thought in my mind and said "it's gonna be cold ! will we wear jackets over them ? " he said no they should keep us warm .... ???? yes i didn't want to mention what i thought a jumper was LOL . Nick tells me we are gonna go get one and he knows where to find them :( ... :) ... :P .... yeah i had mixed reactions . In my mind i am thinking how i am gonna look wearing a onesie to a pro hockey game .... We get to the mall and we are both hungry so we ate at an American style diner which was amazing ,wish i remembered the name and yes i paid for Nick's dinner . We continue to go shopping for a jumper and Nick heads over to some sweaters .... ??? he looks at me and asks if i like those and i ask " those are Christmas jumpers ?" he replies what did you think a jumper was , i blush and tell him .... then he tells me i can wear a onesie if i want ... with a breathe of relief i tell him the sweater is a much better idea LOL ! After shopping in a few stores i found the perfect one . Nick but the same one so we could look like proper twats HAHAHA! 

We went to drop Nick's skates for a sharpening at Ice Sheffield Arena which is really nice with 2 pads a ,pro shop , a bar ...perfect place for a tournament ! After that we head over to meet Daz and Sarah and their ginormous dog , who ends up being just a big puppy after almost knocking me over ... Sarah scared the heck out of me when i heard the loud barking and she explained we should keep our hands down for some reason or other ... do they own Cujo or something ? wtf ??? LOL ! Ice time is really late in Sheffield due to the limited amount since there aren't so many rinks and our ice time was at 11 pm or something gross like that . We skated with some friends of Daz which were not so bad but the level was much weaker then the skate i had in Cardiff , to be fair i was happy not to have an intense skate and i took it easy ... i even let Nick score a couple goals :) highlight was his handball style goal ??? He picked up the pick skated into my crease and threw it in the net , even getting some cheers from his bench ???? yeah i guess they are not sure what to do on the ice here LOL ! I'm joking , relax ! 

After the skate we headed to get some booze and went back to Daz's to watch the Devils/Leafs game , Daz is a Devil's fan and yeah I'm a Leafs fan ... the game was on until almost 4 AM so you can imagine that we drank quite a bit . Crazy thing for me is that i have had at least 1 beer every day for almost 5 weeks straight ... 4 beers doesn't even have an effect on me anymore , scary ! I need a break but there is no chance of that with the next few festive days ahead .... tomorrow we are going to Leeds for a day trip ... 

I got a lot of pics from that day ... will write about it later if not tomorrow :)