Mindless Personal Drivel

All smiles from the bench.

The moto season is almost over.  The small windows of time when I can get out for a little cruise or an all-day dirtbike ride get shorter and shorter with every day.  My friend Lincoln put it best: “Well, its long under-ware from now until March I guess”. Truer words cannot be spoken about the great Montana winter.  A day without it is a day you find yourself shivering off thousands of calories.

Nine months of winter.  Thats a lot of time to wrench on motorcycles, and while I always have some mechanical task I’m always feel like I should be doing, I know I don’t have enough to span such a great time frame (even with parts shipments and taking my time).  So it begs the question, what is there to do?  Skiing is something I recently got back into, and there is some absolutely amazing skiing in the Rockies.  However, even with plenty of that on the docket, winter still seems long, lonely and frightfully cold.

Goalie save!

Hockey. I’ve always loved the game, and while I’m not a huge fan of watching it on TV, I’ve gone to, and watched more AHL games in the past two years than any other organized sport I’ve had an interest in.  When I learned that Bozeman has a pretty fun, low-key adult hockey league, my eyebrows went up.  I watched my first series of games last weekend, and realized that “I could do this!”.  No, I’m not a particularly good skater, and as a kid, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had a hockey stick in my hands.  But watching the smiles on the faces of almost every player as the puck zoomed around the ice in a blur, I had a hard time finding reasons not to give it a go.

I’ve missed the opportunity to play in this years winter league, and my impending trip out East for the winter months leaves no opportunity for a late sign up.  But with plenty of public skating available daily, and pickup games on lunch hours and weekends, I should be able to get plenty of practice time in, and learn from those already on the ice.