Going to an Admirals game tonight!

I can’t wait, we haven’t been to a Milwaukee Admirals hockey game in a couple of years. My wife loves going to hockey games. She gets all worked up and crazy-like when a fight breaks out. It’s so much fun! And I hear the Admirals have new logo this season. Plus a friends kid is playing a scrimage with his team between periods. And to make it even better, they are playing the Chicago Wolves which brings along a lot of their fans to the game. Hopefully those flatlanders will be sent home with their tails between their legs!

What’s on the agenda for the weekend

Well, if the week never ends(which is how it’s feeling right now), I’ll be fighting MX records problems all weekend while trying to get one of two parties to admit blame. What a load of crap this can be sometimes!

If I do get this issue off of my plate, we have an opportunity to have a good holiday weekend. My wife usually works weekends and holidays, but this weekend she is only working Saturday so we have the potential to have two whole days together. Tomorrow is Brandons third skating lesson. I’ll be able to skate with him this week now that I have skates again. Sunday we some kind of a party to go, I think it’s a baptism party, but I don’t remember. Then Sunday evening is filled with 600 miles of racing action. Too bad that crappy Ryan Newman is on the pole again. Yawn!

As of right now Monday is still wide open to idea’s. I do think I’m going out for some hockey Monday evening though. See how the new pro tacks handle!

Weather will play a big factor in some of our decisions, but right now weather for the weekend looks fairly promising other than some light rain at night. Temperatures looks awesome hoovering between 65 – 70 which is where I like it!

Long week

This week is taking forever to end. It doesn’t help that I’ve been a day off all week long, and it continues today as I thought it was Friday when I woke up. :(

The good new is that my new skates should be here today. I also ordered a new equipment bag. The new one is a wheel bag. Carrying around all that gear on my shoulder got old very quick.

New skates sooner than expected

With the expense of getting into hockey a few months ago, I was happy that I already had a decent, albeit older, set of hockey skates. I wanted new skates but I didn’t need new skates. I figured I’d wait to make sure I was still playing for about a year and then pick up some new skates.

Well, that all changed last night. While out on the ice last night for some practice, I took a slap shot to my blade holder part of my skates. I really didn’t think much of it. It did hit my skates really hard but I just kept on going. Slowly as the night went on, I noticed that I was having a hard time keeping my left ankle nice and straight. Still not thinking much about it, I just attributed it to the fact that I was getting tired and my skating was getting sloppy.

Then later in the locker room while wiping down my skates I noticed that the blade holder was severely cracked. Then it all started coming together. I realized that it had to happen when the puck hit it, and that had to be the reason my ankle kept wanting to folder under.

Point of the story, I’m getting new skates!

Broken skates

Last hockey class tonight

Well, that was a fast seven weeks. It was well worth it and I learned a lot. What I do think is weird though is we never really learned anything about game play(such as rules, positions, and stratagies). The focus was strictly on skills. I guess what is needed would be like a level 2 learn to play class where we start applying skills learned in level 1 to actual game-play.

So what’s next? I really don’t know yet. Adult novice leagues are starting in May, but a lot depends on whether or not I can participate. Hopefully I can find out more tonight on days and times of the leagues. Otherwise, I’ll just start joining in on some pick-up games here and there.

A little sore today

Hockey class is winding down with only one more session to go next week. Everyone has gotten a lot better and in demonstrating their new found skills our scrimmages are becoming much more physical. I fell more last night than I have the whole session combined, not because I’m a lousy skater, but from being a lot more aggressive in my skating. It was a lot of fun but takes a lot of energy to get back up on the skates when you’re an old man like me! ;) Hence the reason for being a little sore today.

Just finished week 3 of hockey

I’m surprised I haven’t written about it yet, but 3 weeks of my 7 week hockey course is complete. I’ve only been home for a little while, but this last session was the best so far. The pace was better and the style of teaching was a little better geared to us old guys. Every week so far, we’ve had a different instructor.

This week we did some skating backwards drills which were fun. I like skating backwards but was never really good at turning or doing crossovers while going backwards. After these drills tonight I noticed huge improvements in my abilities. I’m really looking forward to next week.

My first crack at sports photography

This weekend, the Iceplex was hosting youth hockey tournaments. And since I was going to go out to meet Chad Streck, whose in town from Appleton for the tournaments, I decided I should probably bring the camera. I was out there for Chads sons whole game and filled up my 1gig flash card. I shoot in RAW format so that’s only 133 pictures, but I think it’s the first time I’ve ever filled up the card while doing a shoot.

Also, my first 30 or so shots were taken before the game even started while I worked with settings to get the exposure right. It’s also the first time I had the ISO cranked up to 800. With action photography, it’s important to have high shutter speeds to freeze the action and prevent too much blur. In order to get 1/500th second shutter speeds at f2.8 required the ISO800. The higher ISO results in grainier pictures as you will see in the gallery. Since I’ve never dealt with grainy pictures before, I have no software for cleaning them up, such as Noise Ninja.

I quickly realized, that I don’t have the proper glass for this type of photography(at least not yet). The only lens I could really use was my 50/1.8. This is not a great lens. Certainly not a fast focusing lens.

Ok, so of the 130 pictures I took, I only processed 21 of them. None are remarkable, but some are ok.

The experience was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the game. BTW, Chads sons team won. I hope to invest in some more glass this year as I really want to expand in youth sports photography.

View the photos here.

Ice time

Last night me and a friend went to the Iceplex for the first ever offering of ‘Over 30’ pick-up hockey. And wouldn’t you know it, we were the only ones who show up. Since 2 players don’t make for the funnest games, we opted just to use the 1 1/2 hours for stick time and practice.

There’s so much I need to work on. And for that, fortunately my hockey classes start tonight. Last I was told there should be 7 people signed up for it. I will report on how it went sometime this weekend.