Saturday, December 15, 2007

Ice Hockey

A few weeks ago we went to our first ever Bakersfield Condors ice hockey game. Bakersfield is a fairly large city, 300000+ and has a big huge arena where basketball, ice hockey and arena football games can be seen. There is also a huge theatre next door where some really big names come to entertain. We got free tickets from Keith's work for 'Teddy Bear Toss' night. This is an annual event where everyone brings a stuffed animal and you 'toss' them onto the ice after the Condor's first goal.
Of course I forgot to bring the camera to take pictures of this once a year phenomenon.
Our seats were almost at the very top of the stands, about 3 rows from the top. The stairs were so steep that I had feelings not unlike when you stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and have that sense of a neverending chasm. I told Keith that I would need to hold his hand on the way back down for fear of falling.
I noticed all these people in the stands had little white cheerleader pom pom things that they were waving, and when the lights went out before the game, all of these white pom pom things lit up in red. That was something to see, all of these red lights all over the stands. The lights came back up and the game began. Sitting up way so high gives you a good overall view of the game, and having never been to one live before, I was enjoying watching the players. Our home team started out strong, scored their first goal, and then for about 10 minutes, all kinds of stuffed animals rained down onto the ice. I did manage to take a picture of the picture from the newspaper, but really wished I had remembered to bring that camera!
Okay, now see waaaay over on the top left hand corner of the picture, waaay up high, that's where we were sitting.
It took about 15 minutes for all the toys to be loaded up into huge trash bags and dumpsters and hauled off the ice. These toys are kind of like toys for tots, but I think these ones go to kids year round who are traumatized in accidents or house fires, that kind of thing.
So, after the ice was cleared, on with the game. The home team got 5 goals but ended up losing the game by a couple of goals, I'm not sure exactly how many since we left about 10 minutes before the game ended.
One of the best parts was after the first quarter or third or whatever they call it, all of these ice hockey kids came out onto the ice and played hockey. It was so cute to watch, all of these small kids skating around trying to score a goal, there must have been about 50 of them out there.
They even have a blimp at this arena, it's an inflatable remote controlled blimp about 6 or 8 feet across that flies over the crowd. It doesn't have the flashing lights in the sides like the Goodyear blimp, though.
Our first ice hockey game was fun, we were glad we went. We have been so busy with the house remodel and Keith is always so tired from work that we hardly ever go anywhere except out to eat-remember we both hate to shop for food and even worse have to take it home and cook it!

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