Making It Up As I Go Along #597

Another long delay in blog posting.  This time sickness was the main culprit.  If I desperately needed to write something over the last week I could have but with no hard deadline and a head that wilts with exertion, I put it to one side.  Even today, I’m not feeling terrific.  Tis the season I suppose.  But the improvement is slow and steady and if I don’t write today, it’ll be at least four more days before I would.  Work is on the horizon.

As far as daily activity, I didn’t bother writing it down while I was sick.  I mean really, cooped up in the house, coughing while in a semi-zombie state… does that need to be added to the passage of history as my “WEDNESDAY…”?  Nah.

One thing that has happened since I last wrote.  It occurred just before getting sick actually.  The last day I felt 100% healthy… I went to watch the Montreal Canadiens.

The Thirty Year Wait

Thursday morning, November 13, I scamper about the house getting clothes and toothbrush in order.  Truth be told, I started getting stuff in order Wednesday night.  Picking out clothes for the journey, clothes for the game, and clothes for the return home.  Figuring jackets and hats to take, tucking train tickets into my bag, and leaving it all in a pile in and around my bedroom chair.  I didn’t trust myself to remember it all on Thursday morning.

But here it’s Thursday and I’m nervous.  I suppose it’s a combination of several things. 

Will the construction work mess up me walking from work to the train station?  Is there a security to go through boarding a train?  Am I going to find my way around Montreal while waiting for Geoff? Could our hockey tickets be counterfeit?

Truth is, I rarely take the train.  I rarely go to Montreal.  And I have never been to a Montreal Canadiens home game. 

In the bathroom, brushing my teeth, I look in the mirror and wonder how the hockey players manage this.  A game day for them… knowing they’re going to be on the ice in front of 20,000 religious hockey people, whose god is symbolized by that red white and blue sweater with the big “C” and little “h” crested on the front (holding as much meaning for them as any cross does for a catholic)… Must leave them as jittering messes.  I mean I’m simply going to go watch.  To be part of that 20,000.  And I’ve got game day jitters.  

Anyway, a half hour later and with my teeth sanded down to the quick, I leave the house.

At work, I leave my car on the back lot, pull out my bag, and begin the march to the train station.  The construction zone makes the walk far from pleasant, but it’s uneventful too.  The last five minutes of the walk veers me off the roads.  The sidewalk meanders up a grassy hill and into a small wooded area before reaching the train station.  Walking it reminds me of my first summer in Ottawa.  Back then, I took the bus to the train station each day, made this twenty minute walk from the station to my office before retracing my steps eight hours later for the return bus home.  Back then, groundhogs and squirrels distracted me on my hike.  Today there are none… and the train awaits.

The train to Montreal is pleasant.  A scan of my ticket is all it takes as I board.  The paranoia and tension found at airports is non-existent here.  Boarding a train is like checking out a book from the library, whereas boarding a plane is like being processed for a life sentence at some correctional facility. 

I’m alone in my row.  Flop into my seat, drop my fleece into the empty seat beside me, check for a seatbelt to strap myself in… it does not exist.  Train travel truly is a delight.

The countryside passes my time.  I look out at it thinking of the English countryside this summer.  Viewed from my trains there as this is here.  There’s something about landscapes as seen from the train.  Where planes give an almost satellite, spying point of view, the train gives a time machine quality to the world.  Everything seems older, simpler.  Small communities stop what they’re doing as the train passes through.  Roads are momentarily closed, the hustle and bustle paused, and I sit in my seat, unbuckled, watching the world go by.  And when towns give way to nature, it’s largely forests and farmlands where train tracks find themselves.

I’ve a few hours to kill in Montreal before meeting up with Geoff.  With the google earth map still in my head, I wander towards the bank and, from there, head towards the hockey stadium. 

More construction brings obstacles.  It seems the entire country is under construction these days.  And here, condo towers rise up around the Stadium.  The sidewalk to the shop no longer exists.  I must brave life and limb walking half a block in the street.  Then venture up a flight of unmarked stairs.  But I make it.

I enter the store ready to spend money.  I think back to the jersey my sister bought in the rink at the old Forum when I was just a kid.  Of me wearing that, my first Canadiens sweater, with Lafleur’s number 10 on the back.  And here are the modern day sweaters.  Hanging in the home of my favourite hockey team.  I browse the walls of jerseys.  I check out hats and t-shirts too.  Pucks and key chains.  Dolls and mugs.  All red.  All with that CH logo.  Yet I walk out again having bought nothing.  It’s as if the being there was souvenir enough.

Finally I meet Geoff.  We pick up his son at daycare and head home for some pre-hockey hockey.  It’s the first hockey I’ve played with Geoff in about twenty years.  We slap plastic children’s sticks off the backyard patio stones, using the bottom step as a net… trying not to save too many of little Noah’s shots.  Unable to save some as the slap shot of that three year old is more fluid than any I’ve taken. 

Those twenty minutes in the backyard feel as Canadian as one can possibly be.  On a fall evening, in downtown Montreal, on a game night.  Playing some pickup hockey in the backyard while neighbours prepare their suppers in the glow of kitchen windows.

From there it’s to our supper.  A short walk and two subway trains take us from our backyard game to a downtown restaurant.  BBQ ribs and fried lasagna our pregame meal.  Seated next to us, Bruin fans.  He in hat and her in t-shirt.  But they’re well behaved.  Minding themselves in this world of Habs.  They leave before us, heading to the same location… yet never to be seen again among the sea of hockey humanity.

Getting our tickets scanned at the gate is the last test.  I fear the tickets are fake.  I prepare for sirens and horns to alert the staff of our deceit.   That we’ll be taken away, oh so close to my first game here. 

But with a “beep”, I get my ticket back and step through to the corridors.  We’re in.  It’s real.  This will happen.

With beer in hand we find our seats.  I sit and marvel at the banners above.  Other hockey arenas want to celebrate the banners as well.  But without enough championships in their history, they resort to “regular season champions” and “eastern coference champion” banners to fill the gaps.  In Montreal, it’s only Stanley Cups that count.  The banners line the ceiling above.  The last two victories (the ones I remember celebrating from my parent’s basement) are closest to my gaze. 

And in a separate row are the numbers.  Retired numbers of legends.  Some I watched on TV.  Others I’ve seen black and white footage of in hockey history shows.  And bringing my gaze back down to the present, the players warm up for tonight’s action.

Music and deafening cheers bring the players on the ice.  An early Boston goal brings a little worry.  Concerned that perhaps my first Habs game will be a humiliation.  I worry about a shutout lose.  Could I come all this way… not only via train but this distance through time… some thirty years a Hab fan… could I come these thirty years and not even see a goal?

In the first intermission we meet an old friend.  Danielle hasn’t been seen in decades but we all happen to be here tonight.  We would never known of each other had it not been for social media.  My facebook status update from the afternoon got passed along to her by a mutual friend… and a few facebook messages and a couple of texts later, we’re here catching up in the corridors of the Bell Centre while Zambonis scrape the ice.

Our talk runs long, and into the second period we remain away from the action.  A roar hints of goings on.  Seconds later, a great thundering shakes the floor while horns blare.  Montreal has scored… on a penalty shot… and we missed it.

Finally back to seats, we miss no more.  Four more Montreal goals are scored, with the fans becoming more excited each time.  By the time the fifth goal goes in, people are singing in the stands.  Singing soccer songs at one point.  Singing the visiting team “hey hey hey, goodbye” at another.  Geoff and I agree, this is the fastest hockey game we can remember.  We both wish for four more periods.  If only hockey games were seven periods long… at least on this night.

Post game nachos and beer at a nearby pub bring the celebration to a close.  We walk and subway home buzzing. 

A night well worth the thirty year wait.