Sledge Hockey

On Friday I went to the Sledge Hockey match for 5th place
with a group from my work at the hospital.

The Czech Republic was playing

against Korea.

When they met before in the preliminary round, the Czech Republic won 4-2, but this game went rather slow with very little scoring. Korea was controlling the puck most of the time during the first couple periods.

Korea scored the first goal. Here is the puck on its way to the net on the scoring shot. Korea did some pretty fancy passing where one player shot it under their sledge and across to a teammate.

The Czech republic played really hard in the 3rd period and the game was a lot more exciting. They more than made up for having less shots in the first couple periods. They managed to score to tie the game up at 1-1.

Then a couple minutes into overtime they scored again.
The whole team skated around the ice waving to the fans.

There were photos of the teams taken before there was an announcement basically telling us to leave the building as fast as we could since they had to get ready for the Canada vs Norway game for the bronze medal.

Walter was the most enthusiastic one of us but unfortunately he happened to be out when we got on the big screen. He had a ticket to see the Canada game afterward and said he'd be cheering for Norway.

Sledge hockey was fun to watch, if a little slow, but the third period was a lot better with both teams playing harder. It looks pretty dangerous when players basically ram into each other on their sledges and knock each other over. Sometimes it can take them a while to get back up and collect both their sticks. It's quite different than normal hockey but still very entertaining.

Wheelchair Curling

On St Patrick's day I went to a wheelchair curling match in Vancouver.

After the pre-game practice a few bag pipers played

and the teams rolled out with mounties holding signs for each country.

Wheelchair curling is much different than normal curling since they use a stick to slide the rock along the ice and stay in one spot while they do it. To keep them in one spot one or two of their teammates sits behind them and holds their wheels. There is also no sweeping involved so they have to be more skilled at using just the right strength.

The Great Britain team differed from all the others in that most of their players like to release the rocks from way back behind the circle. It seems like that would make it harder, but perhaps that's part of the rules in Britain.

Four games happen at the same time so I got to watch them all. On sheet D, farthest from me was Switzerland vs. Korea.

On sheet C was the USA vs Norway.

The Norwegian curlers wore the same crazy pants that
their country did during the Olympics curling.

One of the American players wore sunglasses, I assume just to look cool.

On sheet B was Sweden vs Great Britain.

On sheet A, closest to me was Germany

versus Canada.

At first none of the games were very close. After Germany got 1 point, Canada got 2 and than 4 putting them way out in front.

The 6th end was the most interesting one of the game with both teams somehow sending rocks all the way through the center of this without hitting anything.

Germany did make this nice shot though to knock out two of Canada's stones. In the last two ends they scored 4 points.

Ultimately though Germany didn't come back fast enough to catch Canada who won 8-6.

The first game to finish was at the other side where Korea dominated Switzerland. Not only did Switzerland concede after the 7th end, but the end was finished before some of the other teams had even started the 7th end.

The other 3 games were all a lot closer with the teams that were down working hard to catch up. On sheet C they had to measure how close the rocks were to the center at the end of the 8th (and final) end. If Norway had the closest rock than they would tie it up but they didn't so the US won 9-8.

The Great Britain vs Sweden game also needed a rock measured in the 8th end. Sweden successfully got 5 points in the last two ends to tie the game and force a 9th end.

The 9th end was intense with a lot of stones sitting in the house (rings). Sweden successfully curled this shot in behind some guards to place it closest to the center.

Great Britain hit a rock into the center in an attempt to get one closer.

Great Britain also had the hammer (last rock) and made one final and close attempt to grab the point but didn't make it. Sweden pulled off the win which helped them get a good enough record to face Italy in a tie-breaker today. They won that and tomorrow they face Canada in the semi-finals at 10am. When the teams met during the round robin Sweden won 8-4 but Canada had a record of 7-2 in the round robin while Sweden's record was 5-4 plus the tie breaker win.

Mt Baker Trip

A week ago I was on a ski trip to Mt Baker with coworkers from my work at the hospital. We went down to our rented vacation home Sunday afternoon and drove back up to Canada Tuesday evening.

Here's one side of the place we were staying...with a hot tub! It was about a 30 minute drive from the ski slope.

Joanne, Erin and I were there hours before anyone else so we just chilled out and had a snack. The others were bringing all the food for dinner after hitting the Costco.

Here's the view down from the loft.

Where there was a futon and a TV that didn't work properly.

Two bedrooms were also on the 2nd floor. I slept in a bunk bed. Oh, and yeah we brought some dogs with us.

The two larger ones are Ella and Finn, Joanne's dogs and the smaller one is Maggie, my boss' family's dog.

They are pretty well behaved but went crazy when we arrived back from the mountain after skiing. They were jumping all over Joanne. Too bad they can't ski...as far as I know.

The weather was pretty great for skiing. It just got snowy for the last hour of the first day.

It had also snowed a bunch the night before so there was lots of fresh powder. Unfortunately it's not a big mountain so we had to keep looking for untouched places to find some. A third of the mountain was closed due to it being weekdays with a cheaper price.

One place we went was in the canyon right up between these two hills.

However if you stopped it could be slow to get going if you're on a snowboard...or ski without poles like me.

We went mostly on black diamond runs which is not what I'm used to but it was a good workout.

We saw a lot of people hiking up passed the end of the top chairlift to ski from the peaks over to the side. The tiny dots at the top on the left are people walking up. (On the right, those are trees).

She said "He's taking a photo!"

Clarisse Leaves

So way back on the 27th the day before the Olympics ended we had an adventurous day to wish Clarisse a farewell as she has moved to Paris to be with her boyfriend Jerome. This post is pretty late due to me being really busy working after the fun of the Olympics and then having some technical difficulties with my computer.

Anyways the day started with some rock climbing in the afternoon. We went to a local place called Vertical Reality which is just down the street from my place.

It was lots of fun although it was really quick to get your arms stretched out and really stiff and tired. Then you had to wait a little bit before you could do anymore climbing. The time limit of 2 hours is more than enough to get too exhausted to really go on. I'm sure some people can last a lot longer, but I hadn't rock climbed in many years.

Gordon showed up after the first hour but still took part in the rock climbing fun.

After rock climbing we were somewhat indecisive about what to do. It was too early to go to a restaurant and watch the bronze medal hockey game while there. We tried to see if we could go curling somewhere but couldn't find an open place. Then we decided we wanted to play some pool so we went into the nearby billiards hall. There was one guy in there behind the bar on the phone. The place was creepy and had no atmosphere so we quickly changed our minds and left.

We went over to Brad's and then decided to go get some food at Montana's because everyone agreed on that restaurant. Unfortunately when we got over to the Montana's in Langley it was really busy so we ended up driving across Langley to East Side Mario's. In our car we had a lot of fun along the drive with Gordon and Clarisse laughing at Q and I arguing over the directions. He drives way more than I do these days but we both had some slightly inaccurate directions and we ended up driving around in a round-about manner. It was fun though.

At East Side Mario's the cool end of the table got smoothies to drink.

This included Clarisse of course. I let Q have my camera and he took lots of photos before I managed to get it back.

This wasn't one of them. I took this and I can't remember what Rob's finger was for.

I also took this one of the tomato and the fro. East Side Mario's was delicious and I took home some of my pasta to eat the next day. As we were leaving we saw the end of the Finland vs Slovakia game which Finland won but it was still the best finish Slovakia has ever had.

Nate had to run off to a gig but the rest of us went back to Brad's to hang out. The four of us in our vehicle stopped at Dairy Queen for some dessert. At Brad's we ended up watching The Neverending Story which Clarisse had brought and playing some associated drinking games that Murray looked up online. At the start of the movie there were very few drinking times but none of us kept it up until the end because according to the rules there was an insane amount of drinking in the middle.

Now Clarisse has been in France since the weekend and hopefully she's having a great time. She's currently working for the same people, just in a new location.