The things I'll do for my new-found passion....I didn't realize the transition from casual hockey fan to passionate Sharks fan would put so many miles on my car! I left Sacramento @ 5:47 a.m. on a Sunday morning to head to Sharks Ice in San Jose for day 2 of the Sharks training camp. I should have been snuggly in my bed. But, les presents d'occasion as they say.
It was a semi-eventful drive - hit some rain in Dixon...saw some crazy looking mountain sheep on the side of the freeway near Sunol...saw a dude dressed in Raiders gear come out of a perfectly barren field to walk up to a CHP car that was monitoring the road construction. Asking directions to Oakland perhaps?
I pulled into Sharks Ice at 8:05 and immediately walked over to the nice old gentlemen who were handing out wristbands. Mr. Wristband asked what my tattoo meant....I answered "Peace & Harmony, Hope, and Honor" to which he replied "Well, I like the honor part".
hahahaha
Even though some people were lining up outside of the entrance to South Rink (for autographs presumably?), I headed over to the North Rink to grab a seat. Settled in at center ice in the second row at about 8:16. The Zamboni came around at 8:18 and kept me awake for the moment.
I woke up in full a few minutes later when I heard a booming voice entering the rink. No, it was not Joe Thornton... It was a fan whom I shall call Mr. Friendly. In a demonstration of my usual luck, Mr. Friendly chose to sit right behind me, although there were many open benches on the bleachers.
"Hi! Hello!" said Mr. Friendly to just about everyone... "How long have you been a Sharks fan??" was a question put to most. "ZOMG! I love the Zamboni!!" Mr. Friendly put a strange (although possibly accurate) emphasis on the syllables. Zam-bone-EE! He proceeded to give a history of the Zamboni and then go on about how much he wants to ride one. A couple people agreed that it would be really fun, at which point he sounded disgusted that they had fallen into his trap. "It's just an ice scraper. No big deal." Did you know that the ice at the Tank is only 2" deep?
BTW, it was too fucking cold in the North Rink. I wonder how deep the ice is? :-p And that Winnipeg is colder than Edmonton (
or vice versa)?
I confess (as if you can't tell it from my prose thus far) that I was reading Solipsist and therefore feeling somewhat cynical and superior. There are some good points in that book but I digress. Mr. Friendly is glad when football is here because it means hockey is right around the corner. He goes on to enumerate why all other sports suck...
...but suddenly I'm distracted because it's 8:39 and Antti Niemi enters the ice. Thomas Greiss follows exactly one minute later. Mr. Friendly is quite an asshole - yelling at Greiss (very LOUDLY) 'go away! put him back in the cooler! he sucks!' What a dick. Now I don't feel bad about mocking him.
Group B practice was scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m., but as mentioned, the goalies and their coaches were on ice at 9:40.
