Cutting through right field

Well, Nic’s team is done for the season. The last game knocked them out of the play-offs. Ty’s team still has one more game, and then we have a break until summer. I drove down to Marlboro Massachusetts and walked into the home of the Minuteman Flames at the five rink New England Sports Center a few days ago. There were players on every rink and players walking in and out all day. It seems to be a very busy place. The teams compete in the Eastern Hockey Federation and there are also quite a few teams from local town programs. It’s a very nice setup and nothing like we have back home. It’s hard enough to find a rink up here with two sheets of ice open all year. They have a nice little pro shop on the left when you first walk in, and there is a very nice Residence Inn right across the street. The drive down from Syracuse is about five hours, and takes you about twelve miles past Holy Cross in Worcester. The way I look at it Boston is a lot closer than St Paul and as much, if not more loaded with hockey - almost, but not quite as thick as the 401 is between Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. But hey, any hockey town is my kind of place to be. We have the Buffalo to Albany corridor going east to west, and then we have The St Lawrence to Binghamton route up and down Interstate 81. This is all perfect for any hockey fan except for the one little annoyance during the winter – snow. Travel in the summer is a piece of cake, but things tend to get closed in a little more as the snow starts coming down. Just getting across town can be tough in the winter. I had to get home Friday in time to see Tyler’s lacrosse game, and then head over to watch Nic’s last game. The weather was perfect for Lacrosse; not too hot and not the usual cold and wet we’ve had to endure this spring. Saturday we headed over to the local rink for public skating. I told myself and my wife I’d take a break from Hockey this summer, but I seem to be having trouble doing that. Tyler skated with Cam our team’s captain and my wife and I got to talk to his dad for a while. I was good for about 15 minutes of skating in a circle before my knee started burning. I should probably do something about that, but I still think it gets better the more I skate. Right now it’s a work in progress. We went to pick up Nic who was playing pickup lacrosse with his friends, but we were told we needed to come back later. We drove around and wound up at the Maio’s – another hockey family – and visited for a while. Hockey is tied to everything, and everyone I know. That’s a good thing. I got up and mowed the lawn this morning. While I was doing that I started thinking that I wouldn’t have to mow the lawn if I built a permanent rink in the back yard. Hmmmmm…. I wonder how I can sell this idea to the wife? Well, I’ve got to go and take some measurements. Maybe I’d better not bring this idea up just yet. Oh, ya. I almost forgot, as I was wandering through right field in the middle of a baseball game – It was a short cut to the lacrosse game, I did get to see Rocket bat and steal a few bases for his team. He’s not a bad baseball player. In fact he’s pretty good. Of course I probably need to find a better route to the lacrosse field during baseball games.