Outside, the cool darkness of night shrouds the world. The lights of Minneapolis twinkle in the sky, distant to the north. Ahead, the smooth ribbon of asphalt bends gently up and to the left, bringing us over the Mississippi. I glance down at my watch; the dials indicate 8:35 p.m. It’s December 1^st, and I can feel the cold of winter radiating through the glass window.

Mutak is driving the RX300 toward Golden Valley, and I am the passenger. The destination?
Breck Ice Arena.

At the arena, we unload our equipment from the SUV’s cavernous cargo hold. A short walk in the brisk air leads us to the building’s interior. It is a nice, new arena, perhaps the nicest high school arena I’ve seen. Breck, a private school, is known for having good ice hockey teams, and their facility reflects their hockey pride.

I settle into one of the dressing rooms and change into my hockey gear. It’s not an instant process — numerous straps, laces, and buckles must be tightened, tied, and locked, all in a certain, meticulous order. My 45 pounds of goalie gear feels quite heavy when packed in its bag. However, once I don it, the weight seems far less.

All of the padding brings with it a feeling of invincibility. Pucks? Falls? Out-of-control skaters? Ha! I laugh at such feeble impacts. I’m biased, but I think I look and feel badass. Similar to my golf strategy, I figure that I should at least look the part if I lack the skill.

I pick up my stick, check to make sure I have everything, and walk out of the dressing room and over to the ice.

It is bright white. No spectators are in the stands, but that’s not really surprising; after all, this session is nothing more than a practice.

I step onto the rink. As I start skating around the perimeter, I’m surprised by the ease with which I move. I guess I was expecting skating to be considerably harder with all of the padding, particularly the leg pads, than without. I notice two primary differences: I can’t do crossovers, and the pads and low cowling prevent me from making extreme blade angles relative to the ice. It’s certainly different than when I was playing pick-up roller hockey in 2003 as a normal player.

The skill level of my classmates is better than I expected yet exhibits a wide range of variance. Some have obviously played ice hockey, while others are struggling to skate forward. The other goalie in the class seems to be a novice, perhaps at the same skill level as myself.

We goalies skate through some warm-up drills with the rest of the players before breaking off into our own small group. Our goalie coach starts us off with the basics of goaltending. We cover goaltender skating (how often do forwards need to shuffle side-to-side?), the stance (keep your arms ahead of your body!), and basic positioning (it’s all about the angles!). Of course, the primary purpose of a goalie is to make saves, so we delve into the essentials of glove saves and stick saves. Yes, there are many more types, most notably involving the blocker and leg pads, but there’s only so much that can be covered in a limited amount of time.

With time running short, the instructors decide to let the players shoot some pucks and the goalies save some pucks. The group splits into its two subgroups; green is on one end of the arena, and red (me among them) is on the other. The drill is similar to the one you see prior to many high school and college games: the players line up in two lines on either side of the goal. A player from one line skates out to the blue line, receives a puck passed from the player in the other line, and then shoots the puck at the goal.

I make some saves and let some in, but fortunately the saves are in the majority. Much as should be expected, none of the saves hurt. A puck flies at my head and strikes my mask. I notice the impact only because of the noise. Mutak’s turn comes up in the line. He shoots… and I stop it. Huzzah!

Time expires, and we all skate off the ice and return to the dressing rooms.

I’m exhausted, happy, and thankfully not too sweaty (yay for high-tech fabrics!). This goaltending thing is harder than it looks!

I meticulously solve the packing puzzle that is my gear bag. I toss the bag in the SUV, and we drive off.

Playing goalie is hard work, but I truly enjoy it. I look forward to my first game and first official save.

It finally snowed in the Twin Cities. Not much, mind you; just a few inches accumulated on the ground. I hate to admit it, but I was too scared to drive while it was snowing. No, no, no; Indiana has not gotten to me. I blame my fear on the Bimmer’s tires.

According to Tire Rack, my Bridgestone Potenza S-03 Pole Position tires are “Max Performance Summer” tires, tested to 186 mph. They rank a 9.3/10 (“Superior”) on a dry traction survey, but their snow traction is so poor that it’s not even ranked. Reviews corroborate their dismal grip on ice. Hence, I didn’t want to be out on the roads with a lot of (well, any) snow or ice.

I had been looking around for snow tires and winter wheels for a while, but I wasn’t very motivated to spend lots of money on some rubber and alloy. The snowfall pressed the issue, and by the next day, I had a set of snow tires on 17″ replica rims headed my way. They should be here by the end of the week; I hope Mother Nature holds off until then.

—–

Some administrative stuff: This afternoon, I noticed that my blogroll updater was AWOL for the past few days thanks to a problem with my error handler (namely, it didn’t exist). Errors are handled much more gracefully now, and everything is back to normal. I also decided to implement an inactivity sensor. If a blog goes without updates for more than one month, it is automatically de-blogrolled. If the dormant blog should spring back to life, it will automatically be re-listed.

This evening, for the first time in a very long time, I went ice skating.

Despite growing up in Minnesota, I can recall going ice skating on just two previous occasions. For the first(?) episode, I vaguely recall going ice skating at an arena in Brooklyn Park (or was it Brooklyn Center?) when I was very young. To be precise, I remember being in the arena, but I don’t recall the actual event of skating; the memory is merely a faint whisper.

The second time was on the frozen lake at my dad’s house. Ancillary events date this milestone to no earlier than 1992. I remember my dad snow-blowing the snow off of the ice. I remember trying to skate but not meeting with much success, and I remember that my sister was there too. After that one attempt, I don’t think I ever tried skating on the lake again. I regret not taking advantage of that opportunity, not the least reason being that I would be a much better skater now.

It is said that you are never more than 500 meters from a station on the Paris metro. I think the same is true for ice arenas in the Twin Cities, if one includes outdoor arenas. Indoor arenas are slightly more rare; they exist at a 1000-meter interval. Being that the Twin Cities has been abnormally warm this autumn, I chose to patronize the latter.

At $2.50 per session, public skating at the indoor arena was an affordable diversion. The demographics were skewed strongly towards youth; the median age was perhaps 16, but the mean age was maybe 10. I paid my admission, put on my skates, and, leaving caution to the wind, stepped on the ice.

Now, just because I haven’t ice skated much doesn’t mean that don’t know how to skate. A few years ago, I decided that I should learn how to rollerblade, so I got a pair of inline skates and, through trial and error, figured it out. I even played roller hockey in the summer of 2003. Granted, I’m not good at skating, but I’m at least skilled enough to not make a complete fool of myself. Or so I thought.

Just kidding! I didn’t make a fool of myself. Nonetheless, skating on ice was rather more difficult than skating on pavement. All of the little kids were skating circles around me; in some fairly annoying cases, they did so quite literally. My inexperience on ice and limited skating practice did little to help the situation. However, this being America, I needed a scapegoat. I found one in my skates.

I knew going into this adventure that my skates might cause me some problems. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I am going to start playing ice hockey. In fact, I start one week from today. Since I didn’t have any ice skates, I went out and bought new ones. But these are no ordinary skates. No, these are goal skates.

The important thing to note is that a goal skate is quite different from a normal hockey skate. The boot is lower on the ankle. The blade is closer to the bottom of the foot. The blade itself is longer, flatter (larger “radius”), and generally duller (larger “hollow”). Oh yeah, and it has that big white plastic cowling. All of these things combine to provide a different skating experience than one would find with a normal player hockey skate; namely, turning is harder, and it’s more difficult to go fast; these truths are what somewhat hindered me tonight. The advantages are that it is much more stable and much better suited to preventing pucks from going into the goal; these truths are why I bought the skates.

So, why goalie? Simple: it looks like fun, and I’ve wanted to do it for a while. I’m not getting any younger, so now is the time!

Yet to be seen is how my skating will be affected when the leg pads are added to the equation. If the added difficulty in walking is any indication, there will be some a significant challenge come ice time.

But, as I’m finding, life gets boring without challenges!

——-

On a completely unrelated (though perhaps more important) note, BonnevilleClub got press! Current Bonneville owners found this article in their latest edition of Pontiac Performance, the GM magazine for Pontiac owners. Awesome! Hat’s off to my tireless administrators and staff whose dedication and hard work continue to make the site as useful, friendly, and popular as it is. The numbers back up the claim: the forum has over 3000 users and a post count of over 280,000. Over the past 12 months, the server has transferred 270GB for BonnevilleClub. In the same time period, these users visited the site a total of 1.8 million times, creating a total hit (server access) count of 45.1 million. Wow!

A couple of days ago, I read a neat article about the fingerprint all color laser printers and copiers leave when printing. Invisible to the unaided eye under normal light, these markings uniquely identify the printer that manifested the printout. If one combines that data with customer records from the printer manufacturer, one may trace a printout to a particular person or company. Privacy concerns aside, I think it’s a neat technology.

The secret lies not in special inks or complicated obfuscation; rather, it depends on the human eye’s inability to resolve very small yellow dots on a field of white. These dots are spread across the entire page, from edge to edge. They form a pattern that resembles Braille, albeit significantly smaller. I don’t have instruments that can accurately measure the dots, but I estimate that they are 100 microns in diameter with an average pitch of several millimeters. But wait… how can I see them at all?

To see the dots, all one needs is a blue light source, such as found in any of a multitude of modern LED keychains. Print something from a color laser printer then shine the blue light on the page. Thousands of little dots will spring from the page as if by magic!

Similar techniques protect against counterfeiting. Modern money has patterns embedded so that newer copiers, printers, and photo software will not copy/print/manipulate images of currency. Check out an example of the so-called “Eurion Constellation,” then try to find it on one of the new US 20s.



Very clever!

Traffic was great this morning, mainly due to its absence. Except for a slight slow-down near the exasperating 694/Snelling quagmire (Minnesotans know what I’m talking about), the river of cars flowed at about 75mph. I was at work in 18 minutes.

The 5‘s thermometer indicated 38 degrees, the rising sun was bright, and the world was bursting with the crisp optimism of a new day. Beautiful. Unfortunately, I was able to see the sunrise and feel the brisk morning air and note the light traffic because I was going to work, where I work in a climate-controlled, artificially lit building. It is very much the antithesis of the natural world. Ah well. C’est la vie.

I wish that I could convince myself to get up earlier to enjoy all of it, perhaps by going for a run. At night, I set my alarm clock slightly early so that I’ll have time in the morning to do exercise, but when morning comes, it never works out according to plan. Damn you, snooze button! I should make it a goal to get back into a routine of morning exercise.

Every so often, I write about my goals for the coming season. After writing them here, I usually go on to complete a majority of them. I like that system, particularly because it allows me to track everything quite easily (as does this blog in general). In addition to the exercise goal, here’s what I plan to accomplish this winter:

• Snowboard at least a half-dozen times in Minnesota and take a trip out West once. It sounds like the trip to British Columbia’s Whistler-Blackcomb might be happening in February. It would be a bit more expensive than going to Colorado, but I think the benefits outweigh the costs.
• Learn to juggle three balls. This has been on my list for a while, but for the first time, I might be getting close to realizing its completion. I’m really close to being able to juggle consistently. Unfortunately, I’m still losing control after a cycle or two. I know what I’m doing wrong; I just need to make myself do the correct thing.
• Learn to play ice hockey. This, too, has been on my to-do list for quite some time. In the summer of 2003, I learned to play roller hockey, but I never expanded on it nor went back to it in 2004. However, that’s going to change this winter. I’m lucky enough to live in Minnesota, which fashions itself “The State of Hockey.” As such, there is an organization in the Twin Cities that caters to adult recreational hockey players. Part of that organization is a program to teach novice hockey players how to play. It starts in two and a half weeks and runs through March. I’m excited about it!
• Set up an LLC or Type-S corporation. I’ve begun to delve into the world of business. I’ve done some consulting and own some web sites that could potentially expose me to legal liability were something to go wrong. I’d like to avoid that, and incorporation seems to be the answer. An added incentive to incorporation is that it would give me more clout when conducting business; people seem more willing to take a corporation seriously than a sole proprietorship.
• Learn to read and write French. I like France, and when I go back, I want to be able to understand what’s going on around me. Note that I didn’t say that I want to speak French; for that, I think the only viable option would be have significant interaction with a good French speaker. Since I don’t live in Quebec, that probably means taking some courses at the University — an expensive endeavor. Instead, I plan to learn from books. I imagine that comprehending the written word would be sufficient for my purposes: almost everybody in France will (begrudgingly) speak English, but most of the signs, menus, and papers are written exclusively in French. My goal is to be able to understand the language well enough to get my news from Le Monde.

Will I see these causes through to fruition? Only time will tell, but I’ll strive to make the answer “yes.”