Ice Hockey!!!

     Wow. In the third period of the US vs Canada Gold Medal game of the Olympics, the US just pulled the goalee and managed to score a tying goal in the last 24 seconds. How often does that happen?  I white knuckled the whole game, cheered from my comfortable seat beside the TV, watched that puck with wide open tense eyes. I thought, now, Wow, whoever loses now, it will be so very painful. And indeed, it was very painful. Canada scored and won in sudden death overtime. But I do think Canada was the slightly better team and it showed. Anyway, what a game!

     It recalls my former love of hockey years and years ago. When I came to Madison, WI to medical school, I met my husband to be. He was an Israeli sabra but inspite of that he learned to like Wisconsin ice hockey. As a medical student I didn't have too much time for dates. Mostly we just got together to somehow spend time together. But one of the rare dates was when we went to a hockey game. At that time the Wisconsin games were played in an unheated corrugated steel shed with a few bleachers along the edge of the ice. But I found that I loved the game. There is no spectator sport that is so very very fast. And at that time, the TV technology was such that you couldn't watch a game on TV. The camara lost the puck repeatedly. So you had to be there at the site. As my medical school years wore on, Wisconsin began playing hockey games at the Dane County Coliseum. But there were still very small crowds in that larger venue. After I graduated from medical school after we moved to Milwaukee, we tried to see some Wisconsin hockey in Milwaukee. There was an annual Invitational Tournament held in Milwaukee on the Arena ice. We got tickets for that tournament in the first few years. But slowly without the college connection, we stopped seeing hockey. So this game recalled my love for the sport. I don't think there is any sport that so produces tense emotions in the spectator. It is a great game!

     So ends the Olympics. I have spent so much time watching all the events that I have not even taken time to keep this blog going. But like all exciting and good things, it must come to an end. Back to our regular life.