On the Road Again

The open road, the long and winding road, that ribbon of highway; call it whatever you want, but there's something about a roadtrip that speaks to the soul of a wanderer. Maybe its the unknown, the blank canvas waiting for the first bold strokes, the story waiting to be written. Maybe its the hope for something better than what you're leaving behind, a clean break from the past as you drive toward undiscovered memories and experiences. Whatever it is, its calling to us.

We're on the road this weekend, we being the St Vital Minor Bantam Victorias hockey team and family members, heading from our home confines of Winnipeg, going south and eastward through North Dakota and Minnesota en route to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where we'll put down roots for a few days while the boys play 4 games in the Altoona, WI Bantam Hockey Tournament, a round-robin series against Wisconsin teams. Its a 10 hour bus ride, depending on border wait times and stops for food and adult beverages, and we got underway well before sunrise, leaving home at 5:30 am, the bus pulling away just after 6.

Iphones, ipads, headphones and pillows line the aisleway, various forms of distractions for a captive audience, video displays await chosen movies to occupy and inspire the kids (and adults) anything to pass the hours.

Our boys have just finished their regular season, a disappointing year of 3-21-0-2. The losses may have become commonplace, but the growth and effort can't be overlooked, and as we pause this weekend before beginning playoffs next week, we know that the boys are better than their record suggests, and that anything can happen in the 'second season.'

It's one of the reasons we're loaded on this chartered bus rolling across the northern prairie today, the tournament has been scheduled since back in early November, a fun-filled weekend for team bonding and friendship strengthening around the pool, in the bumper cars and batting cages of the hotel's waterpark and amusement centre, the games at the rink an afterthought or excuse for the more important life-long memories that will be forged and cemented.

Theres an honesty about this land we're passing through, a reality that is rooted in a slower pace with a deep integrity, in the faces not afraid of hard work and sometimes difficult challenges to survive and thrive. You can see it out the window as we speed past. It's in the solemn church steeples and grain silos that dot the fields and forests and farmland out here, where winter can be a bitter mistress that will test your resolve and your courage but promises a sweet reward come spring and summertime; the contrast striking to the casual observer. Nature tests us and yet we continue to push forward, like the sapling growing wild on the shoulder of the interstate, bucking the winds and heavy snows, setting our roots deeper, determined to take hold and grow. A true survivor.

At 3-23-0-2 the boys understand that resolve, they've already faced a long winter of being pushed and pulled by their opposing 'winds' sometimes coming out on top, most times not, but they haven't cowered and withered away in the face of adversity. We'll see how well this group of saplings compares to their southern brethren in the next few days, whether they have the right combination of experience and talent to compete or not.

We're on the road today and maybe theres something better down this highway for the boys than what they left behind, but even if they don't win a single game, they will all be richer for the experiences and memories in ways that count for so much more than wins and losses. And that, is what builds true character and real growth, which is what we've been helping them find all along.

Frozen in Time

No, I haven't been found frozen solid in a snow bank downtown. I also haven't been laying on a beach in the sunny south, whiling away the hours in a rum-induced nirvana.

The reality, like always, is somewhere between the two extremes.

It's February, the groundhogs have or have not seen their shadows, St Valentine's is right around the corner, and January is in the rear view mirror, quickly fading from sight. Winter is still here in a way, it's been warmer than usual, but currently cold enough that the brass monkey is scared. Time continues to roll forward, no matter how involved in our own daily lives we get, we can't escape that reality that the clock is ticking.

Ticking towards what depends entirely on your fate, destiny or risk taking behaviors - you know who you are - but tick away it does; an orderly, steady, beat of moments and memories; the heartbeat of your time here. How you use those ticks and tocks may define success or failure for you; or you may have found a way to suspend time like when you're 'in the zone' creating something; or you've found you've 'run out of time' that dreaded sense of impending doom with the project deadline or last gasp attempt with a Hail Mary pass.

That damn clock will echo forever in your ear if you let it.

I've built a rink in the back yard for the boy to practice shooting the puck and perfect the art of the wrist shot and slapshot and that ever-challenging snap shot - he's spent hours out there in the faded light working on his skills, lost in the mechanical repetition and the fantasy of the sport - and I've spent even more to give him the flat frozen canvas on which to craft his game. Time stands still when you're standing outside in the dark, spraying water from the garden hose evenly over the back yard, losing feeling in your fingers and toes, your nose dripping and your ears tinged with red and bits of white.

This year I used a large white tarp as my base for the rink - the yard slopes towards the fence line at the back, 30' or so behind the house, and with the boy's help erected boards on both sides - to protect the windows in the storage shed and to give us something to run that tarp up on the sides to hold the water while it froze. The alternative is the old stand-by: wait until you have enough snow on the ground to pack it firm then spray water over that and allow it to freeze then repeat, over and over again.

The tarp idea allowed us to make a decent surface in about 5 days - as opposed to a couple weeks.

Of course the little red squirrels who live up in the forrest of trees along the back fence line and who use the fence top as a convenient highway from one large maple to another 2 houses away found my being back there with them on crisp winter's nights and mornings rather curious. They'd stop mid way and watch me - giving me that little squirrel eye, the one with the cocked head and bitchy chirp normally reserved for the cat, now too old to jump that far and chase them.

Ask any ice maker and he'll tell you the biggest pain in the backside is from leaves and debris falling into your setting ice - requiring a scrape or gouge here and there to correct, and then a repair of sorts, lest you want to have hills and valleys in the high slot - not the best thing for a developing wrist or slap shot. An errant shot will quickly find that bump or hump and send that frozen rubber disk sailing over the 6' fence and into the neighbors back yard - just hope they don't have a dog that does his business back there as you sift through the snow to find your prize.

Leaves and debris. Like the crap that still falls from that forrest of trees behind our yard well into winter - screw 'Fall' - those trees are always dropping something back there - seed pods that flutter down like helicopters in the spring, dried dead leaves in September, spent flowered buds in summer and rotting old fruit whenever. Yeah, theres an apple tree in that mix back there too, and we always have enough small, rust coloured rotting apples swelling in the carpet of leaves in the fall to make the ground squish as you mow - the sun never getting to dry out that area hidden in the constant shadows of the fence.

The hardiest apples stay on the ends of the gnarled branches until the new fruit push them off in the late spring. Or until the little red squirrels pick them off with their little clawed furry fingers, mouths stuffed full of fruit larger than their heads, an unstable ballet of aerial proportions as they navigate their way back to stockpile the nest for those cold winter days.

Unless they drop them on my rink.

I really believe that one little squirrel knows exactly what he's doing back there - he's been watching me create a perfectly flat frozen sheet of ice these last couple of months and he waits until I've finished flooding and then fighting with the frozen hose to get it rolled back up and drained without freezing solid, and once the work light goes out I know he's out there working too, finding just the right sized, mushy little apple and he fights his way down to the top of the fence, apple in his mouth throwing him off balance, then he sits and eats and chews a bit, refuelling as he rests, and he waits until he sees the ice is just about right for his purpose and he hurls that little apple right into the spot where the rusting red hockey net will sit, ruining my smooth sheet of ice.

I'm sure he gives a good little furry arm-pump as that apple splats into place, bits of twig and leaf strewn around the area for good measure, and he smirks a wee bit as he scurries back along the limbs and branches and back to his little squirrel business in the dark.

Maybe I shouldn't have sprayed him with the hose that day I caught him by surprise as he zoomed out on the fence top from behind the shed, startled to see me mid morning flooding the rink, his beady eyes suddenly large and his bottom jaw dropping open, the startled scream unable to form in time as the freezing water splattered and splashed along the fence boards sending him scurrying hell-bent for home.

Maybe, but it sure felt like the right thing to do at the time.

That's the deal with time - use it or lose it - and act when it feels right.

Speaking of which - I'm sure theres some scraping and repairing of the ice I need to do. It's that time.