Who? Why?

Born in southern California, raised along California’s Central Coast, having spent several years in the California high desert, a year on the east coast of Florida and the past six years happily in the Sacramento Valley… at 45 years of age, I suppose most people wouldn’t expect me to take up the sport of ice hockey.  Exceeding expectations.  I like that idea.

Growing up hundreds of miles from the nearest ice skating rink meant that my first time on skates was in high school.  Rented skates, loosely tied, while on a ski trip.   Didn’t think that was much fun, which helps explain why my next time on ice skates was after age 40.   Two trips with my significant other after age 40, on rental skates, loosely tied, didn’t convince me that skating was something to do more than once every couple years or so.

I grew up in a household where sports were on tv pretty much every time sports were on tv if Dad was home.  Baseball, football, basketball, racing, golf, bowling… the only sport Dad didn’t watch was hockey.   Which anybody who watched television in the 1970’s can almost understand; the screens were small and the definition was far from high, making it difficult to follow the action (ie the puck) if you didn’t know the game.

Hockey came into my life shortly after moving to northern California in 2005.  My new beau was a long time Sharks fan, and he asked if I’d be interested in going to a game.  Even though I knew nothing about hockey I was hooked after that game, and have since become a rabid Sharks fan myself.

I’ve been skydiving since 1990, but hung up my rig for a couple years.   We needed a new thing to do together.  A bit of luck got me a pair of free used hockey skates and him a pair of bargain new hockey skates.  There’s a rink in Vacaville and a rink in Roseville, but we tried our skates out first back in December 2010 at a public skate on the rink used by the minor league team, the Stockton Thunder.

On one trip we discovered that the rink in Roseville, Skatetown, had an adult intro to hockey course coming up, with a free clinic in early March.  We ended up doing the class, until I broke my leg at a stick time in mid-May.  He kept skating and had only a couple classes left when he broke his hip at a public skate in late July.

His injury healed faster than mine, but by February, 2012, we were both back on the ice.   As of June, 2012, we are having a great time in the adult learn to play class and I’ve been lucky enough to hook up with Pandora Women’s Ice Hockey.

Hockey, yay!!

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Oh, yeah, btw.  All words and images on this blog are copyright Lisa Briggs Wyatt 2011-2012.  Don’t go breakin’ my heart by using them without asking first, ‘kay?