Saturday Morning

Saturday morning started early for us on the Buddhas, with most of us up at 5am to be able to leave at 6. Our game started at 7am, but we wanted to get over, get parked, and survey the rinks before playing. Most everyone got rolling pretty well this morning, though a few were a little bleary eyed from their late night game of poker. At least we'll assume it was the late night and not the anything untoward.

The rink looked good as we arrived, with smoother ice than I think we've ever had in a game. The big question was, how long would it hold? Our opponent for the morning was the New Mexico Ice Topes. As we got our gear on, I think the altitude was fully appreciated by some of our crew. It's a bad sign when you're out of breath just leaning over to tie your skates on. We started the game on fire. We had the advantage in everything - puck posession, positioning, skating. The only problem was, we couldn't hit the damn hole in the goal. We scored first, but the other team tied it up every time we got one goal ahead, and we just couldn't put any distance in between us. In the second half of the game, fatigue and the altitude started to catch up with us, and the other team was able to put a run of successive goals in the "net" to take the lead. We lost 8-5 in the end, but felt pretty good about the way we played, and our opponents were a good bunch of guys, which makes a big difference.

Here's some pics from game 1:

We had time after our game to head back to the house before the Holes' game at 9:48am. My team got cleaned up as Kent's team readied themselves for their first game. Their opponent was Altitude Sickness, which you might recognize as a team we played last year. They were tough last year, so we new the Holes would have their work cut out for them.

Altitude Sickness came out of the gate with speed, and very quickly had a significant lead over our Holes. Then Kent decided to take the team on his shoulders and show them how to do it (actually, I think the turning point was Scotty suddenly going on a hot scoring streak). In any case, the Holes were able to close the distance, and at half time, they were only down 9-7. Unfortunately, the other team quit toying around in the second half, and left no doubt what the outcome would be. The final, painful score was 19-9.

Pics from the game:

As the Holes' game was drawing to a conclusion, we were able to take in the sights and check out some of the other imaginative uniforms this year. We saw some of the same ones as last year, but there were some new additions, as well. Here are some of this year's get-ups: