Olympia recap

Operation Boogie Nights was a tremendous success-- unless of course, if you were expecting it to mirror the movie even remotely. Those of us who took on the monsoon driving conditions for the trip south to Olympia were greeted by a blast from the past in the form of a 1970s roller-rink time capsule. The highlights and lowlights-- for you to decide which-- were as follows:

The rink was dimly lit by hanging globes from the low angular ceiling and a few disco balls were scattered in throughout for good measure. Sadly I must report that Graeme did not damage a single one with a booming slapshot the whole evening. One side of the rink had a painted cinderblock wall while the other side had a carpeted wall about 30" high. The ends had hanging nets that kept the ball from shelling the snack bar area but otherwise did a poor job of keeping the ball in play; however, they were very successful in trapping Chris Koh for a solid two minutes by virtue of his storm trooper helmet. The wood floor was an excellent playing surface and the overall size was smaller than a full size rink, but bigger than the Greenwood Elementary setup.

The first game pitted Seattle Tsunami versus our host Olympia Breakers. We tried to play as close to our Vegas lines as possible with a few exceptions-- Tyler was missing on D; Peto (deadbeat, beach bum en Mexico) and Marshy (deadbeat, hockey freak from Marquette) were missing from the forward lines and we had an odd number of wingers. Vinny graciously played D because the rest of us selfish pricks pretended like we didn't know what was going on and just stood in line to play forward.

Seattle represented well with an energetic 5 - 0 victory. People did a great job of playing a position and maintaining their spaces for the most part with decent line changes. No doubt our cause was helped by the impressive turnout and Olympia's lack of subs (with Payette defecting at one point to give them some help). Despite the dominance on the scoreboard, reflecting our edge in the game, the Breakers played hard and it took a while to reach the final score. After that it was sticks in the middle to split up the teams evenly and play some hockey! It was a great time and many thanks to our gracious hosts.

Dan played awesome throughout-- especially considering the lighting situations. Rob "killer" Anthony took out a number of players in his vortex of D; including Roger (aKa "Dirt") who smacked the back of his head on the ground resulting in a lump and a small cut. Werbicki scored a few highlight goals, as expected. No fights or penalties (okay, there wasn't a ref)! Bubbles (mentor) broke his stick when it got stuck in the net and left it on the surface as he ran off, only to have Carlo (student) step on it unsuspectingly and end up in a disgruntled heap in the corner. Chris tried to talk up some ladies after the game. Finding out they were from the local Olympia area, he queried, "how's the Starbucks?" Aaaah, only from Planet Koh.

Afterwards we rallied at O' Bleary's Irish bar where many of us were surprised to see the Arizona Cardinals whipping the Carolina Panthers. It was the usual food, drinks and good times capped in part by Adam's anti-climactic Vegas toast.

I'm sure I missed plenty so the rest of youse guys that traveled post your stories and commentaries too!