Two miles in eight degrees

In an effort to keep my metabolism from slowing to a complete crawl and in anticipation of the need in late spring for some walking fitness I have recently embarked on a REGULAR walking routine. Today at the warmest time of the day just after 1:30pm I walked two miles in eight degrees.

Cold.

But it reminded me of this.

Jorma is really good and Grace is, as always, Grace. And look at all the hippies!

I have always liked the live version of that song more than the Surrealistic Pillow original. But by far the best live version is the one on Bless Its Pointed Little Head.

Plus on Pointed Little Head you get the end of the original King Kong.

The airplanes have done it.
Ah no, it wasn't the airplanes.
It was beauty killed the beast.

Anyway, it reminded me that 3/5 of a mile in 10 seconds is 216 miles per hour and that at that rate I could have covered my two mile walk in about 33 seconds. Instead the walk took a bit longer than that and it was COLD.

Olympic women's hockey preview

One of my favorite bits is when the interviewer asks about having your feet up on the "chesterfield".

Idle morning moments spent on YouTube

Just idling some time away, waiting for spring.

And on the subject of hockey, I suppose a lot of people have already seen this one.

Closing a circle

Today my brother and I were at the County Road U bridge over the Yellow River as we participated in the closing of a circle. It was a beautiful day in northwestern Wisconsin and I remarked to my brother that I was sorry I had not brought a camera. But I realized that I had brought my cell phone and it does have a sort of camera. After all of the ceremonies were completed we went back to the bridge and I got a couple of photos. Here is the view downstream towards Danbury, north in this case, Anderson family farm on the right bank.Here is a picture my brother recently posted of our Mother photographed at the same spot in, by his estimate, 1929.Here is a photo of the same spot looking upstream towards Yellow Lake, Anderson family farm on the left bank.We were both very pleased to be able to be there today. It meant a lot to us and to all of our cousins to be together again at least this one more time.

Hockey update

Friday night in girls' high school hockey Warroad ousted Woog-Kaposia tournament host South Saint Paul by a convincing 6-1 margin.

Here is the final report from the Warroad High School girls' chorus holiday tour as reported today in the Pioneer Press:

Warroad wins Woog-Kaposia Classic
Minnetonka falls 5-0 in tough tourney
By Tim Leighton

Seven hours and 376 miles is a long way for a field trip. Drudgery and a lousy way to spend your holiday break?

It certainly wasn't for the Warroad girls hockey team.

The Warriors' trip to South St. Paul for the Doug Woog-Kaposia Classic was equal parts business, fun and team chemistry and, perhaps most importantly, a dry run of a routine they hope to repeat next month at the state tournament at the Xcel Energy Center.

Warroad ended its four-day journey with a 5-0 victory over Minnetonka in the championship game Saturday night at Wakota Arena. Lisa Marvin had two goals and an assist, and Karley Sylvester added a goal and an assist to give the Warriors the title in what traditionally has been one of the toughest regular-season girls hockey tournaments.

Happy New Year

As usual, right click and open in a new tab.

Happy New Year to all.

In our incarnations as slightly batty women's hockey wonks, TOPWLH and I attended the December 30 exhibition hockey game at Xcel between the national women's teams of the USA and Canada. These are the two best teams in the world, they have played a series of exhibition games which are leading up to the Olympic games in February in Vancouver. The two teams are expected to meet again in Vancouver for the gold medal. Hockey people in Minnesota were pretty proud of ourselves for the crowd of approximately 6,200, a huge crowd for women's hockey in the USA.

Tonight in Ottawa the same two teams are playing before an all time record crowd for women's hockey in Canada, something in excess of 16,000. Just goes to show, hockey matters in Canada, not so much in the so called state of hockey.

By the way Canada won 2-1 in Saint Paul. Tonight in Ottawa the two teams tied 2-2 with Canada winning the shootout conducted after overtime.

I post all this to lead up to the story of our favorite moment from the game at the Xcel. You may end up being surprised that our favorite moment was only tangentially related to the hockey.

TOPWLH and I had abandoned our mid-ice reserved $27 seats because of persistent interference with our attempts to actually watch the hockey from far too many of the other ticket holders in our vicinity. Most were completely unaware of hockey spectator etiquette, acting for all the world as if it was the first game of ice hockey they had ever attended. Many of our fellow ticket holders walked up and down the aisles DURING PLAY completely oblivious to the fact that they were obstructing the view for large portions of the crowd of the main event of the evening being conducted on the ice below.

We sought seats in the corner of the arena. The seats are cheaper there but very often end up being a better vantage point for actually watching hockey. We ended up sitting in a row behind the Warroad High School girls' hockey team. Those girls produced a moment which forever makes them one of our favorite teams.

The Journey song (Don't Stop Believin') which we are listening to came on the public address during a stoppage of play. The usual practice at hockey arenas is to play a snippet of music during stoppages. This is done because people who have paid to see a hockey game are more interested in arena rock than in hockey and will certainly become bored and leave the arena if you don't provide them with alternative entertainment. The rules require that the music not be played during game play so the sound is usually cut off just split seconds after the puck is dropped to resume play. Because only that tiny snippet gets played all that got played this time of the Journey song was the opening line.

I'll wait if you want to stop the music and go back and restart. To do this you should click on the other tab and restart the YouTube video. Then come back over here.

The first line is:

"Just a small town girl".

Play resumed and the music stopped, and god love them, the 15 or so small town girls comprising the Warroad High School girls' hockey team, completely unrehearsed, completely unchoreographed, completely together, continued to sing:

"Livin' in a lonely world,
She took the midnight train going anywhere."

Maybe you had to be there, it was a great moment.

Here's a link to a live performance of the song by Journey for those so inclined.

In further hockey news, in yesterday's second game of the annual Doug Woog Kaposia High School Girls' Hockey Tournament in South Saint Paul the small town girls from Warroad absolutely thumped the girls from the big city suburban school Eastview by a score of 10-1. The rules of high school hockey in Minnesota dictate that when one team gets ahead by 6 goals that the game goes to running time, the game clock no longer stops for goals or rules infractions or any of the other normal stoppages. Warroad put Eastview on running time in the SECOND period, leading 9-0 after two. The final shots on goal were 65-16 for Warroad, including 52 shots by Warroad in the first two periods. High schools play 17 minute periods which means Warroad averaged about one shot on goal every 40 seconds or so.