9 July 2000
Stick Time stayed stick time this morning, thank God. Ellarae was there again, and we worked on passing together. (I've been wanting a passing drill partner.) I probably spent more time without the puck than with it today, though. I really wanted to get the hang of stopping; running into the boards and chickening out whenever someone skated at me on Friday night was a little embarrassing.

I must've skated back and forth about 40 times today, attempting to stop on each blueline. I'm now getting the feeling of shaving the ice with my skate, and I can stop on my right skate. I'm still a little shaky on my left, but I'm gaining confidence. I found it easier to stop on one foot rather than two, as it forced me to put my weight on the correct skate and angle the blade.

I also spent a lot of time skating backwards—and a lot of time falling. I really got aggressive going backwards, which explains the falls. I figure skating backwards slowly but surely as I do during public skates and at the clinics isn't doing me much good if I don't feel confident enough to go backwards during a game. I was trying to get comfortable with switching from forwards to backwards and vice versa without thinking about it (too much). I'm definitely getting faster and smoother, but as with the stops, it'll take a lot more practice for it to become routine.

Tonight I'm going to go watch my friend J play roller hockey at 6pm, and then I'm going to head down to Ice Oasis to see about playing in the beginner pickup game at 9:50pm. Hope I don't smell too bad—since I'm going to play again tonight, I decided not to shower in between.

Me with helmet hair again, getting undressed next to the Olympic rink at Oakland Ice.

J in ready position during a
roller hockey game at the
Bladium in San Francisco

10 July 2000
Man, yesterday was a big day for hockey. First there was stick time in Oakland in the morning, followed by my friend J's 6pm and 8pm roller hockey games at the Bladium (I saw all of the first game and the first few minutes of the second one—she's really getting good!), and finally the Night Owl pickup game at Ice Oasis in Redwood City.

For the pickup game there were only 8 of us (a mix of beginners & intermediates), so we played 4-on-4 for almost an hour without subs. It was my first "real" game in the sense that these guys cared about positioning and the rules and stuff like that. I learned about the off-sides rule (I knew what "off-sides" meant when watching NHL games, but I didn't know how that related to me as a player) and realized I'd spent practically the entire first half of the game off-sides. After that I became hyperaware of the blue line and got lots of practice stopping on it.

Gary, one of the guys on my team, was particularly helpful about explaining plays and where I should position myself in different situations. When the puck was along the boards or in a corner, for example, I was supposed to park myself in front of the net and wait for a pass. I actually managed to score a goal this way at the very end of the game, through the legs of a particularly tough defender, no less. Yay!

This was my third goal of the game; all of them came in the last 15 minutes or so. The rest of the time I felt pretty ineffectual with my passing and shooting. One goal was on a breakaway, which was fun. I was so alone that at first I thought I'd done something wrong, like in football when I guy picks up what he thinks is a fumble and runs for the end zone only to find that the play was ruled an incomplete pass.

This game seemed to be all about firsts: first time playing without subs, first time scoring, first time playing with actual rules, first time skating backwards in a game, first head injury... I think that last was because I didn't have an opportunity to stop and tighten my skate laces, and because I was getting tired from all that non-stop skating. I fell a few times during the game, and once I lost both my stick and my right glove in a scuffle near the boards, but this fall caught me completely by surprise. I'm pretty sure it happened when I tried to turn sharply; I just remember my skates slipping out from under me, and losing track of which end was up until my right temple slammed hard against the ice (guess that's down!).

I saw stars for a second, and I got the snot knocked out of me (literally, though that's typical for any fall on the ice), but I managed to get up after a couple seconds and keep playing. The game hadn't stopped, so I figured my fall hadn't looked too serious to anyone else. About 10 minutes before our time was up I was able to call a halt so I could tighten my laces; I think that helped contribute to the cleaner skating at the end and the three goals.

In the locker room after the game, I discovered that the reason the game hadn't stopped when I fell was that nobody had noticed that I'd hit my head. When I told them I had, Mike held up two fingers and said, "How many fingers do you see?" Me: "Two." Mike: "You're OK." I thought so too. Then this morning I got my first migraine in months. I figured it was probably from the fall but didn't think much of it until my friend nj suggested that I might have a concussion. I've made a doctor's appointment for tomorrow just to be safe. In the meantime, I'll probably just do drills at the clinic tonight and not participate in the scrimmage.