Somehow I managed to end up on the University of Calgary physics hockey team! They were short on players so I signed up and dragged along Janay with me. We had the stunningly geeky name of “Team Group Velocity”. The team was a hotch potch of various levels. We competed in the University of Calgary Intramural B-grade hockey league.
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For Christmas, my friend Mike Boyle took me ice skating in the Rocky Mountains 🙂 The weather was great, well as great as minus 20 degrees can be, and there was HEAPS of ice. Unfortunately there was a tad too much snow to make skating viable.
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Well what do you do when you’re stuck in a strange foreign land on Christmas day? You have a Christmas orphans dinner that’s what! Gregor and I bought a turkey, got a bunch of other foreigners (Gregor’s from Oz) and then we deep fried the little bugger – the turkey, not the foreigners!
The locals seemed to think it was some sort of weird Aussie/Kiwi tradition to deep fry a turkey, but of course it’s not. It was just a crazy idea of Gregor’s which turned out to be lots of fun. We also deep fried brocoli, carrots, cauliflower, Moro bars and other assorted goodies 🙂
The photo below is of me standing on our rink with my Possum Bourne beanie and Speights T-shirt that my mum sent me. Of course the deep fryer was right in front of me so I couldn’t play hockey that day, but it made for a nice photo 🙂
My roommate (flatmate in Kiwi speak) and I went tobogganing. Of course those crazy Canadian kids decided it would be a good idea to build a nice ramp exactly where the natural flow of the hill goes so you end up going backwards at full speed over a ridiculously steep jump! We had a scary fast purple flying saucer style sled and a suicidal magic carpet to risk our lives and limbs on. We had lots of fun though, albeit we were the oldest kids on the hill 😛
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30 degrees celcius, blazing sun and a ridiculously cold winter approaching … so what better reason than to have a pool party 🙂 We found a scungy inflatable pool in our shed, got someone to bring along a slip n slide and setup a web cam in our window to catch all the action.
Unfortunately the web cam also caught me bobbing round in the pool before everyone arrived. My attempts to hover in the middle of the pool without stabilising myself failed. The motion detector in the camera triggered just as I hit the water 😛
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The slip n slide was very popular, I can be seen bobbing in the pool on the left, this time with my feet firmly planted on the bottom of the pool 🙂 Thanks to Yeye for the video.
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The Dunedin Vixens (aka Dunedin Aces women) in action in Nelson, New Zealand.
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And the result … um, yeah, they got caned. Seems to be a recurring theme for the Dunedin Aces 😛
Here’s some videos of the Dunedin Aces senior team playing in Nelson (South Island of New Zealand) in 2003. We got totally thrashed, but it was a good trip. I’m number 27 in white with black pants with bright blue stripes.
And last of all … here’s a video interview with the team by Daniel Jang. I managed to avoid Dan while he was doing the interview 🙂
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Check out the video footage from the mighty home of both the Dunedin Aces and Otago University Falcons inline hockey teams. Note the high quality gravel smooth flesh tearing surface 😛
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An interview with John Thomsen who is world famous (within Dunedin Aces members) for scoring us a goal against the mighty Nelson Whalers.
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