74. Go to an NHL game, 95. Take a road trip, 98. Drink green beer on St Patrick's Day

74. Go to an NHL game,
95. Take a road trip,
98. Drink green beer on St Patrick's Day

I realize after a long absence of updates on these lists, one is supposed to avow that one has neither forgotten nor forsaken one's commitment to completing said list of tasks in 1001 days. Fact is, though, that I haven't really been paying close attention to the list, nor actively pursuing completion. Really, there are at least a half dozen items for which my priorities have shifted away...

For instance, #94 (move out of apartment dwellings and into a house). My intention was not to buy a house, but rather to just find a decent little house to rent someplace. Even if my credit was such that buying would really be an option, I'm not sure I'm really ready yet to own someplace, and know I plan to live there for the next X-number of years. But given where I'm working right now, if I rent a house that's higher grade than "piece of shit", I'll be either paying way too much, or I'll have too far a commute. I'd rather just find a nice little apartment someplace close to work.

When I picked out #84 (gingerbread house), I was in a more... domestic mindset, I suppose one could say. Now, my mindset is more in line with, 'gingerbread house? wtf?'

Nevertheless, there are still many things on that list on which I actively desire completion. And as you have no doubt deduced from the title, three have been successfully accomplished. First:

74. Go to an NHL game
Around, oh, we'll call it last August, it was learned that the Detroit Redwings were going to be visiting Vancouver, BC, to play the Canucks. They were only playing on two nights, and one of them was this last St. Patrick's Day. Having been Redwings fans for quite some time, Jason and I quickly came to the determination we had to go. It quickly elevated to a group outing, which was extremely fortuitous, because Paul was the only one of us savvy enough to track down tickets, after it'd become painfully apparent that any 'public' tickets had most likely been sold out to "exclusive internet pre-sales" for at least a week.

1.0 procured transportation that totally didn't make us look like terrorists, and I'm sure had nothing to do with us being stopped at the border for an (albeit brief) interrogation. Admittedly, a van-ful of self-proclaimed comic geeks crossing international borders for the purpose of going to a sporting event may come across as implausible. Alas. Anyway, between the van rental and several hours on the road with eight people, this also accomplished 95. Take a road trip.

98. Drink green beer on St Patrick's Day
So, at the very beginning of the trip, I asked everyone if they could help me make sure I got this one crossed off. After we arrived in Vancouver, we decided to do a little hiking around the city. On the recommendation of the hotel chickie (that totally took a liking to 1.0), we stopped by an Irish "pub" that was really more of a club with a vaguely Irish theme. And while they no doubt had green beer, they did not have really any sort of sit-down restaurant-y accommodations, and we were really looking for lunch. As we continued, there didn't seem to be a lot of Irish to choose from, and a combination of hunger and rain resulted in ending up at what turned out to be a pretty nice little Greek restaurant. Upon asking, on the off, off, off chance they might have green beer, our waitress looked at me roughly as though I were some sort of freak of nature (it usually takes at least three questions for me to get to that point) and informed me that "no, no we do not." Alas.

After a disappointing post-lunch excursion to HMV (formerly a Virgin Megastore) and a visit to a relatively dreary underground mall, we headed off to the hockey game. Really, it was great to go with a big group of friends. I had a blast. However, it would have been awesome if the Redwings had actually come to fucking play. Between a few key injuries and resting other first-stringers for upcoming more important games, most of the actual match felt like the Canucks beating up on the Redwings' junior division team. They didn't actually start looking like an NHL team until midway through the third period, and by then it was already 3-1. I mean, I totally appreciate the pragmatism involved in planning your team strategy towards winning the Stanley Cup, but does that pragmatism have to involve suckifying the only Redwings game I've ever been to?

Ultimately, there was far more action in the stands around us. There was a row of fervent, drunken Canucks fans about five rows above us (what's that you say, drunken Canadians at a hockey match? What're the odds?), and a couple of Redwings fans a few rows down. The heckling and trash talking got pretty heated, which was fine until somebody above us upped the ante by chucking an empty beer cup at the Redwings fans. They retaliated with the empty cup, plus one with a bit of beer in it, and the Canucks fans fired back with a full cup of beer. Unfortunately, turns out a drunken Canadian really has poor aim. Deuce took the brunt of it, I got splashed a bit (Russian Fedorov jersey escaped unscathed, thankfully), and several of the Canucks fans and the two Redwings guys got ejected. Good stuff.

Final score: Canucks, 4-1. Suck.

After coming back to the hotel and ordering up a couple pizzas, Paul, 1.0, Deuce and myself went out on a quest for beer (green, preferably). We went back to the first place we'd stopped at during the afternoon, to find the line stretching down the block. Despite 1.0's valiant attempt to sneak us in a side entrance (I totally made it upstairs, to find myself un-followed after the bouncer cut off the point of entry), it was not to be. Just about everywhere we looked had a line ranging from 20 people to a mob of 150 or so waiting to get in; the few places that did not were also lacking in green beer. For my part, I was quickly sinking into "screw it, better luck next year" mode, but my companions were a bit more stalwart and committed to helping me cross this one off. The payoff:


..and why wouldn't I have a red crayon behind my ear, anyway?