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Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Time to hit the ice


Yesterday was a fun filled day starting when I rolled off the air mattress at Glens place in the morning . As I wiped the sleep out of my eyes overlooking the ridiculous view from his place .... so beautiful looking at the ocean in the morning , there was a serenity about it . I had offered to help set up and a couple guys wanted to meet so we all met up at the rink after loading up Glen and his son Ryan’s cars to start setting up the tournament . Today is the big day ! 


It’s amazing filtering through all this stuff Glen has ... so much crazy memorabilia it’s almost like having a history lesson ! We had to do two runs to the rink to get everything set up . We took a break and went for lunch at this place called Cafe de Vili’s Mile End where I had a pork schnitzel burger 😋 that was filling enough to hold me off all friggin day ! It came with an order of fries but you have to eat that burger up all at once because she’s of the sloppy sorts and I made the mistake of putting her down and all that lettuce and barbecue sauce ooozed out and then became dressing for my fries which I also like , they were beefy chips with just enough salt. Another fine establishment I would visit again for a meal here in Adelaide . 


The hardest part of yesterday was staying sober for my 10:15 pm game . Best way to avoid that is to chill out in my room until I have to head to the rink so when Glen checked into the room after I decided to hang back and do some writing and lay around for a bit until game time . When the time came I contacted Nonny and we caught the tram over which is free . Yeah I know how awesome is this place with good restaurants , free transit and great hockey buddies ! I was gonna crash in Glens room for the night until my homeboy Cam Green gets in from Auckland .... I can’t wait to see him ! I know all these explanation marks makes my punctuation a little lop sided but there is really an excitement here bumping into old friends and meeting new ones constantly . 


When I got to the rink I headed to the bar 🤪and no I didn’t drink . I just pulled up a stool to watch my buddy Robert Devecka play with his Tatra Eagles team ... they seemed a bit off and lost their game to the Adelaide Blackhawks .... for those of you that don’t know , Tatra is a Slovakian team and Robert stayed in same homestay with me in India when we set the world record for highest altitude hockey game . Hopefully we find the time for some beers together today . Remember I’m writing about yesterday and I will try to keep up with the days but we all know I tend to fall behind on my writing on these trips . At the bar I bumped into my team mate from last year who I am playing against (Jason Nordin) and we had a few laughs and then headed to our respective rooms. My one and only team this year is the North Pole Strip Polers and our first game was against local club Adelaide Tigers and we are both competing in the C1 level .

Got to meet my old team mates from last years Okinawa Sniperz team and just like last year it is a team that is mostly made up of local players with a splash of Brisbane and Sydney ... nobody is from the North Pole since all our American travellers ditched us for different reasons 😒 I’m sure we will get on without them and it seemed as though we were when we jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first period but then the second period didn’t go our way as I let in two goals I would personally like to have back and after two periods we were all even at 2 with the Tigers jumping to a lead early in the third but my team mates didn’t give up . They all put their heads down and motored back to tie it up at 3 all and we had the momentum until we got a penalty for too many men on the ice then we had to defend the zone to keep the well deserved point . 




After the game you could tell that we felt like it was a loss and they took it as a win ... we are here to compete and I’m sure we will ! This is gonna be a good week , but now it’s time to have some beer so I head over to the rink bar and begin enjoying a few beers before we had to leave and head back to the hotel where I had a shower and the party showed up at out room and so did the hotel manager a few times before the party moved to another room and again we were re acquainted with the hotel manager before moving to one more room where we called it a night after a few glasses of wine found their way on the floor ... it wasn’t me 😇 but I did find a way to drink a few bottles along with a bunch of beers . It was a good night . Today is gonna be nuts as my game is mid day and I don’t have to play after that hahaha ! Anyways I should get ready now ... Cam should be here any minute now .
✌️ 







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