Saturday Wrap-Up

So here's a summary of the rest of Saturday:

Following our morning games (Holes tied, Clusterpuck lost) the Holes had another game around 3pm. They did quite well, dispatching their opponent 16-5. We had two more games in rapid succession, so there was no going back to the cabin for some R&R. Clusterpuck played their third game of the tournament around 5pm, with the help of Jared. What, I haven't mentioned Jared? Well, let me elaborate.

When we checked in on Friday and explained that three of our guys were not on the trip, the gal in charge of the check-in mentioned that she had a guy that was looking to play on a team. His wife was playing, and he wanted to find someone to play with. I told her that, considering we only had 9 players and would have a difficult time fielding two teams, we would be happy to have another set of legs. Jared got up with us Saturday morning, and our intention was for him to mainly play with Buddha's team (Ice Holes). It turns out, Jared can play. Even with Jared playing we only had five players per team, and only having one sub on pond hockey (especially at 9000 feet) is really tough, so we "supplemented" each team to make a full roster of six players. After helping the Holes play Saturday morning and afternoon, Jared helped Clusterpuck in our afternoon game.

Bad Ice

The ice in this game was horrible. No, that's not a strong enough word. The ice was freaking HORRENDOUS! We literally (not figuratively) could not skate on it. We basically shuffled around on the ice, falling whenever we hit ruts or holes. The game was basically a matter of whacking the puck up the ice and trying to put it on "net". It turns out, we were better at whacking than the other team, and we won our first game of the tournament.

There was one particularly exciting moment early in the game when OS was parked out in front of our net. As one of the other teams' players came cruising by, he shoved (OS says he punched) OS in the chest, who went down like a sack of potatoes. We believe the other player was upset with what he considered to be goaltending, which is not allowed in this tournament. Of course, OS would never do something that was not allowed, so this attack was utterly unprovoked.

The Holes had their last game (on a different rink, thank goodness) at 6:30pm, under the lights. Unfortunately, they were matched up against a team that certainly is above the "Brown Bottle Division" pay scale. It wasn't pretty. They did make a late push that narrowed the goal differential, but lost 13-9 in the end. They finished the day with a respectable 1-1-1 record, setting them up for possibly advancing to the next round if they are able to tack on another win tomorrow morning.

Following the last game, we cleaned up and headed out to eat at the Dillon Dam Pub & Brewery. The food was good, but as tired as most of us were, we could have probably eaten a tire and thought it was a fine gourmet dinner. We're all back at the cabin now, watching some replays of the Winter Olympics and slowly heading to bed, one by one.

For your enjoyment, some snapshots from the day:

Namaste, my b*tches