US Customs Port Alcan.  Early July, 2011.

“Are those your plates?” the customs officer asked.  “Yup!” was my reply with a smile as I handed him my passport.  The “Explore” plates had been going over quite well on the trip.

Key punches.  Waiting.  “You’ve been randomly chosen for a secondary inspection.  Please pull up and to the left.”

I pulled forward as directed and turned Sam off.  The customs officer checked under Sam’s hood, then continued walking around to the hitch-mount cargo container.

“How do you open this?” he asked me.

“Well… it would be easier if I just showed you.  Would you mind if I showed you?”

“Ok.”

I got out and walked around to the cargo box.  As I was fiddling with the lock, I said, “So, I thought it would be fun to play hockey while I was up here.”

The lid popped open, revealing my hockey gear bag.

The officer poked the bag with his finger and said, “Hockey, huh.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “and my sticks are in the back,” nodding towards the back seat.

The officer paused for a moment while looking at me, mulling over the situation.   Then he handed my passport back to me.  “Have a nice day, sir.”

“Thanks!”

Maybe he was a fellow hockey player.  Or maybe he just didn’t feel like digging through a bunch of smelly hockey gear.

When I was planning this trip, I decided to start by heading north from Minnesota because, as written on the route page, “Which place is more likely to have hockey in early July: Calgary or New Orleans?”  The flaw in that logic was that I didn’t actually check to see how much hockey Calgary would have in the middle of summer.  It turned out to be more scarce that expected, and that led me to stay in the Stampede City a day longer than I had planned.

I had put out a number of feelers in advance of my arrival.  Posts and replies on Craigslist, Kijiji (which is more popular around here than Craigslist), and hockey message boards came up dry.  So did calls to the local rinks operated by the city.  They had weekday lunchtime shinny, yes, but I arrived on Friday afternoon and had planned to leave on Sunday.

I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I got the list of all of the rinks in Calgary from Rinktime and started going through them one by one.  Near the end of the list, I struck gold: the privately operated Trico Centre had evening shinny on Saturday.  I gave them a call to confirm that the shinny would be happening, and then I relaxed, knowing that I would be able to check another province off the list.  Or so I thought.

Saturday evening arrived, and I made the 10-minute drive from my hotel to the rink.  With great enthusiasm, I announced my arrival to the (very attractive) young ladies working the front desk.

“Ok, that will be $5.25” one of the women said.

“Well, you see, I’m a goalie,” I replied.

“Oh, okay.  That’s free then.  Just check your name on the reservation sheet.”

Reservation sheet?  Uh-oh.  “Wait — I thought there were no reservations?”

“Except for goalies.  Goalies phone ahead in the morning.  The spots usually fill up right away.”

D’oh.

I hadn’t made a goalie reservation, and the window to execute my backup plan (a private lesson at The Goalie Shop) had closed about half an hour earlier.  I was a goalie without ice.

I stuck around for a little while to see if the registered goalies would show up.  They did, and I didn’t have the heart to ask them to give up their spots for me.

What to do, what to do.  I knew that there would be shinny around noon the next day in Edmonton, but that would mean a six-hour round trip to get there and back, or going there and skipping Banff, neither of which were appealing.

At that point, I did the only thing I could do.  I pulled the Minnesota card.

Literally.

I said to the women at the desk, “Ok, here’s the situation.  I’m doing something that is going to sound either crazy or awesome, depending on your perspective.  I’m doing a road trip to every state and every province, playing hockey as a goalie in each of them.  Alberta is next on my list, and I really need to find a game here either today or tomorrow.  Seriously.  I’m really from Minnesota” at which point I pulled out my driver’s license and held it up for them to see.  “Is there anything that can be done?”

There was a brief pause, and then one of the girls said, “Well… it’s against the rules, but…”

And that’s how I found myself with a reserved spot to play goalie during Sunday’s shinny game.

The next day came, and I knew I was going to be in for a challenge the moment I walked into the changing room.  The half-dozen guys already there all looked about 20 years old and knew each other.  In fact, they played on the same rec league team.  That sort of situation usually indicates that they grew up playing hockey, which in turn portends a rather higher level of skill that I possess.  My fears were further reinforced by the topic of their discussion, the salient point being that their team played in the “A” tier, which is as high as the tiers go.

Things went about as expected.  I managed to get a photo of me in net:

...at least that's what it felt like. (Cheese photo credit: Arz)

The good news is that the guys were good sports about the situation, even when I fanned on a puck coming from the other end of the ice and watched helplessly as it casually went into the net.  I had fun.

The next hockey will be in Alaska in a few weeks, so I’ll have plenty of time for my ego to recover.

The pleasant surprise in the email far outweighed the initial disappointment.

I had emailed a guy named Adam from Couchsurfing.org in an attempt to find a place to stay in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  He wrote back: “Unfortunately we are renovating our rooms and are sleeping on the couch/living room right now,” so the couch was unavailable.  That was a bit of a let down.  However, he continued: “So, instead I’ve got a great offer. How would you like to play a real game tomorrow night? My team’s goalie just msg’d me that he can’t make it.”

Would I like to play hockey in a real game as a sub goalie?  Of course!

The little catch was that I was in Winnipeg at the time, and Saskatoon was a 9-hour drive away.  On top of that, I still had a drop-in game to play late that night.  It would be a busy 24 hours.

My Winnipeg shinny session got done around 12:30 a.m., and I finally got to sleep around 2:30 a.m.  The alarm clock’s clamor came at 8:00 a.m., and I was on the road by 9:30.

How to dry hockey gear in a dumpy (aka cheap) motel

Nine hours of driving later, including a time change and a major detour to avoid the flooded Trans-Canada Highway, I arrived in Saskatoon.

Nine hours of this...

...and sometimes this (better large)

Two hours to spare before ice time.

I was to sub-goalie for “The Eh Team”.   (What a great name!)  It was composed of an enthusiastic group of 20-somethings playing in the ASHL, the local adult rec hockey league.  Sadly, enthusiasm had not translated to much success during the season, and the team went into Wednesday night with a record of 1-8.

Before the game, the story of my trip was greeted with surprise and excitement.  “I wish I could do that,” somebody said, to which another lamented, “I wish my wife would let me do that.”

I felt good on the ice in spite of the short previous night and the long day of driving.  I think that the Winnipeg pick-up game helped, since it gave me an opportunity to calibrate to a slightly faster game than I was used to.  D2-level in the Saskatoon ASHL seemed about the same skill level as C2-level in the Minneapolis AHA (my league last winter).

Things went well.  That’s not to say that it didn’t get a bit hairy at times: I was making virtually all of my first saves, but I got burned by a couple of shots off rebounds and front-of-the-net scrambles.  Still, whether it was the clarity of instinct that comes from mental exhaustion, the large bolus of coffee I had downed, or my freshly sharpened skates, I made enough saves to not lose the game.  (Or at least that’s what I like to tell myself.  Really though, it was the rest of the team’s offensive and defensive talents that saved the day.)

That’s right: we won!  The team’s record improved to 2-8, which was cause for much celebration.  It helped that a beer cart came around to the dressing room selling refreshments, which was something that I had never seen while playing in the States. (Oh, Canada.)

Team photo to celebrate the win, eh?

My first game as a sub goalie in Canada was great fun.

Goodbyes are the gateways to growth.  This trip began with several.

I said goodbye to my mom.  I said goodbye to my sister.  I said goodbye to my dad, at least by phone.  I said goodbye to the family dogs.  I said goodbye to my roommate for the past year, Rob.

Mile 0: Fridley, MN

And then I was gone.

My first hockey stop will be in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Tuesday, but for the first night I stayed in Woodenfrog Campground just outside of International Falls, Minnesota.  It was a semi-rustic state forest campground, appealing for both its large pine trees and its low price.  The bugs tend to be horrendous this time of year in northern Minnesota, but a constant breeze and mild temperatures kept them at bay during my stay.  It was, overall, quite pleasant.

Woodenfrog Campground at Kabetogama Lake

Between Fridley, Minnesota (where I started) and International Falls, there is a city called Eveleth.  Like the other towns in the area, Eveleth is a mining community, its prosperity tied directly to the productivity of the enormous taconite mines on Minnesota’s iron range.

Sam looks tiny in comparison to "King of the Lode," a retired mining truck

Since Eveleth is a small rural midwestern town, it’s required to have a enormous statue of something to draw in tourists.  Since Eveleth is a hockey town, it should come as no surprise that the large gaudy object they chose was… a big hockey stick!

A HUUUUUGE hockey stick in Eveleth, MN. And a normal-size picnic table (?)

My encounter with the “Big Stick” was serendipitous.  I had not been aware of its existence until I passed billboards advertising it.  Given that this trip has hockey at its core, I knew I had to stop and see it.  A good omen, perhaps.

Given that the Big Stick was a big wooden hockey stick shooting a big wooden puck.  I knew what I had to do.

I think he's going high-glove. Might be a stinger. (That's me in the lower right -- click to zoom)

With the Big Shot saved, I continued on.

One of the questions I often get asked is, “Will everything fit?” (That’s what she said.) Until today, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to stuff everything needed for the trip into my Outback. I’m happy to report that I did a dry run this afternoon, and everything fits nicely.

With the seats up, no less.  And without blocking the view out the rear window.

As you can see, the hockey gear (giant red bag) dominates the cargo area

Unfortunately, a couple of things don’t quite fit in the cargo area.  My hockey sticks, for example, need to ride in the rear seats.

The hockey sticks have to ride in the back

Then again, they don’t fit in the cargo area even when they are the only items present; they’re just too long.

Likewise, my camera gear is in the main passenger area, but that’s part of the plan to keep it easily accessible for impromptu photo opportunities.

During the actual trip, I'll probably keep the camera out of the bag so that it's even more handy

I’ll admit that a few things were missing from this experiment.

First, I forgot about my hiking boots.  Those will probably go in one of the rear footwells.

Second, I’ll probably want to have a cooler and a cache of reasonably healthy food so that I can cook for myself.

Finally, I haven’t actually tried traveling with this configuration of equipment.  I’m planning to do a couple of short test trips before the main trip, so it’s possible that I’ll need to radically alter my gear manifest.

Still, this early result is quite promising.