You more like love to start shit. I’m more of the trips to Florida…
Tampa, FL It’s very rare that I make more than one NHL playoff roadie per season, but I’m not saying it’s totally out of the question for me to make another before the Stanley Cup is fondled… I mean… hoisted. After all, playoff tickets in Tampa are way cheaper than Memorial Cup tickets in Mississauga, but that’s another story. Anyway, seeing that I probably won’t travel for anymore NHL games this season, I feel that it wouldn’t be proper if I didn’t reflect on the 2010-11 season as a whole. So, here’s my brief summary.
Last season I had made up my mind to run away, and being the impulsive girl that I am, once the thought had occurred to me, I was pretty much already gone. I was running away from everything that I knew. My life as a deranged hockey fan wandering the NHL was starting to feel like a chore. It seemed hazardous to my health, really. The fans, the players, the pigs, all seemed like a waste of my time and energy. Here I was doing the two things I loved most of all, traveling, and watching hockey, yet at every corner I was assaulted by angry lynch mobs that dared to question the legitimacy of my fandom. Yes, it’s easy to roll my eyes at these people for having no brain cells, and continue on my merry way, but that’s not the point! I mean, really? If I’m not “really” a hockey fan, I’m sure going to ridiculous lengths to try and pretend that I am. It was never a question of whether these people got to me or not. Being a hockey fan just started to seem like a massive headache, and the bottom line was that I needed a season off.
I left on May 12, 2010 knowing that there was a good chance that I could fall in love with the unknown world I was about to discover, and never return. Truthfully, I think part of me was secretly hoping that would happen. I would meet that hunky Irish-Australian I had been going on about, and that would be it. But as you know it wasn’t to be. My time in Korea started to feel like a prison sentence, and on top of it, I was getting physically ill. So I fled from China’s dick on the first of December, and quickly launched myself back into my old ways, even though I still hadn’t forgiven or forgotten all the bitterness that I had felt in recent hockey seasons. I traveled from Toronto to New York to New Jersey, and Long Island. I went to Minnesota, Carolina, and several ports of junior hockey along the way, only to wind up in Florida, the dick of America. It seems fitting, doesn’t it?
My last few days in Tampa were a lot more relaxing than the first one… for the most part. The Caps and Bolts were playing in back-to-back games, so I woke up on Day 2, and it was game day all over again. I had but one thing on the itinerary that morning, and it was to get my hands on the coveted “Get Stanley” t-shirt before wasting the remainder of the day poolside with some frozen yogurt. I actually let them start a buy nine, get one free card for me at the frozen yogurt shop! Clearly, I have aspirations to come back in the near future – and I already have three punches on that card FYI. Madness!
Come game time it was my turn to instruct fellow SCT Champions on where they, too, could purchase the shirt. I found it funny, but maybe that was just because the Lightning website had the start time wrong, so I was baking in the sun, tall boy in hand, a lot longer than planned before the gates opened. I was sitting on the Caps side for the second straight night, so it’s not a surprise that they were swept. Actually it is a surprise, because I was looking especially frizzy and sun-stroked, so this couldn’t have been a Team HOT influence. Anyway, there’s not much I can say about this game. If I had been a good girl, and blogging while actually on the road, I would have had much more to say, but at this point you already know what happened. What I will say is that during the second period the clocks stopped working, so the time keeper had to periodically announce how much time was left in the period at every whistle. I thought that was funny, but again, I was probably a bit tipsy at the time. To be fair, they sorted it out within ten minutes, though.
Oh, and one more thing about the game! Dear Scott Hannan… Mama like! That is all.
Day 3 was my last full day in Florida, and also my most puzzling. With my kiwi yogurt smoothie, I hopped in the Camaro and headed out to Clearwater where I was greeted by a strange guy from Philly that was mercilessly hitting on me in a borderline predatory way. I was mildly frighten, but I’d be lying if I said part of me didn’t weigh the option carefully. I mean it had been a few days since I had last touched Mini Stanley, right?! But I decided to behave myself instead, and do some Mother’s Day shopping, and spend some time on the beach. The real trouble came sometime after midnight.
I had decided to be a bad ass and go for a swim even though the pool closed at 10PM. It was after that night swim when another guy with a Pennsylvania accent followed me to my room in the hopes of ickyness. I would have so gone for the creeper in Clearwater way before taking this guy down. Good night. But he didn’t leave. Until about 4AM he would alternate between phoning my room or banging at the door. Seriously, this happened for at least two hours straight! I sat in bed trying to watch some TV, but I kept thinking about how sad it was that I had somehow become desensitized to potentially dangerous situations over the last few years. I remember nearly shitting my pants the time the guy followed me from the elevator and forced his way into my hotel room in Nashville in ’06. And what about the two guys peeping on me two nights before I fled Korea, who aggressively tried to break in through my bedroom window? I still like to think of the positive on that one. I mean I did use the near break in as an excuse to spend my last night with the uber-hunky Scottish-Australian before leaving Korea for good. So, I was wrong about the Irish part! The Scottish accent was equally hot… kind of like Shrek. But, enough about that, the point is that now a near break in, or sexual assault, or what have you, just seems like no big whoop. Crazy, I know.
Anyway, although these types of situations seem to get easier with time, I’ve always read SOMETHING into them. In Nashville I took it as a sign not to go to there again, and truthfully, I don’t think I religiously followed the Preds again after that very night. I was pretty much done with anything Nashville had to offer, and I didn’t see them play live again until this season, actually. In Korea, I took it as a sign that I had made the right decision in coming home to Canada. So, the question is, what is the universe trying to tell me now that this has happened a third time? Hmm…
Top Photos: Ovi being a baaaaaaaaad boyyyyyyyyy, and me sporting Get Stanley, and looking ever so sun-stroked and icky! Look away!
