My friend Lance organized a 3-on-3 pond hockey game at his farm near Orangeville on Saturday. Originally it had been planned for two weeks earlier, but the temperatures that week were too warm. Even though the pond is only 5-feet deep, it wasn't worth taking the chance of falling through.
After driving an hour and a half, I arrived at Lance's place ten or fifteen minutes after the scheduled meeting time of noon. Two guys, Ian and Andrew, were already there.
The pond, still partially covered with snow, needed to be cleared so we grabbed shovels went out back. Lance had a snowblower which he used to clear the deeper stuff. By 2:30 p.m. we had a large portion of the 100'x150' pond ready to go. Now, where was everyone else?
According to the Facebook event page, 12 people had confirmed they were coming. Though two or three of them were only coming for dinner afterwards. It seemed the 3-on-3 game wasn't going to materialize.
Ian, Andrew and I passed pucks around for an hour or so while waiting for Lance to don his goalie equipment and, as we learned later, put the turkey in the oven. Lance's dog, Marshall, would chase the pucks as we played "keep away". Occasionally he would corral one after which he would take off to chew on it.
When Lance finally came out we took shots on him for awhile before retiring to get ready for the evening.
One thing we had to do was get some firewood ready for a bonfire. Lance already had a bunch of wood cut and ready to go. But he still wanted to cut down a few dead trees around the property to burn.
He had borrowed three gas-powered chainsaws from some of his neighbours. We couldn't get any of them to work though. Ian got one to start, but the chain was too lose and it flew off while it was running. We got another one to start, but it only ran for 10-15 seconds before conking out.
We ended up cutting down one small tree with a dull axe. After struggling with that for around 15-20 minutes we had had enough. One tree was all the extra wood we were getting.
By early evening another one of Lance's friends, a fellow farmer, Jerry, had shown up. Later on a couple others, Ariel and Gavi, came by.
In anticipation of Lance's cornucopia of food, we prepared our palates with beer and chips. He had prepared Caesar salad, turkey, steak, lamb, sausage, broccoli with cheese and mashed potatoes for everyone. All made from scratch.
Dinner was great. It was nice meeting all his friends. They're quite a varied group. Except for Jerry (who was 62) the rest of the guys were in their 20's. A bit younger than people I normally hang out with, but that was fine.
It was good getting together to enjoy Lance's hospitality. If we do it again hopefully we'll get a few more skaters.
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