On The Ice - In The City

I had the opportunity to go to a Blackhawks game last night. I say it as "opportunity" because thats my way of being positive :) Actually, I was very much dreading it. It was a business thing, taking some customers out, wasn't looking forward to an evening on the ice dowtown as I had a lot to do at home. It actually ended up ok.

The Hawks played Colorado and Colorado won... that wasn't good, I guess. But, there was a good fight and a few times some of the competition got hurt... I guess that was good because everyone around us seemed to think so. Go figure.

It was interesting just to see a game as the fans are crazy! They start yelling from the get go. Its a totally all senses experience. The ice, the cold, the smell, the sound. They do this video thing before about being the Stanley cup winners and the history and all and people are just screaming by the end of it. Then, they continue the emotion by starting the whole thing by honoring a military person (I guess they do this every game). They have this red carpet they roll out on the ice and they march him and out they tell his story and salute him and people are screaming and cheering. Then they play the national athem and they bring this huge American flag down (funny thing is the Canadian flag, which is smaller, but is right by the US flag.... its all Cannucks on the ice I suppose :)). People scream and cheer all the way through the anthem -- there's not a second where they stop.

And then as soon as the anthem stops, there are screams all around you of "Colorado sucks!" And then they drop the puck.

Pretty much the rest of the night is watching the little black puck bounce around the ice, hearing the bodies of the players being rammed up against the glass, watching as big masses of players piled on top of each other, occassional cries of someone who sucks. Oh - and I can't forget the anomosity towards the one fan of Colorado who dared to sit in the row in front of us. He was pretty stupid to stand up and cheer so loudly everytime Colorado scored. One must remember ones location when one attends a game in the Windy City.

It was freezing cold outside as we waited for the shuttle back to our cars, but it was really pretty looking at the lights of the city all around us. All the skyscrapers had their red and green lights on instead of the normal whites. Too cool!