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.

Only 13 hours separate me from the start of my trip. Am I nervous? I’d be lying if I said that there wasn’t a little bit of self-doubt. Questions like, “Will this be a good use of time?” and “How will I make the most of the trip?” dance in my head. Fortunately, I’ve been able to spend the day distracting myself with packing.

The equipment I'm bringing on my trip, minus my hockey gear and a cooler

Starting Monday morning, it will be too late for second thoughts, for I will be on the road.  The first stop: International Falls, Minnesota, just across the Rainy River from Ontario.

The road trip starts in just over four days!  I’m excited.

While browsing YouTube the other day, I came upon two videos that seemed particularly relevant to the trip.

The first is a mini documentary of a Motor Trend road trip through the Australian outback — in a Subaru Outback, natch.  I don’t think I’ll be traveling on quite so many dirt roads, but it’s nice to see that the car is capable of doing so:

The second is a long-form ad from Ford that follows a group of friends on a road trip from Missouri to Minnesota to play pond hockey on a frozen pond.  Yeah, it’s an advertisement, but it’s beautifully shot and keeps the pitch tastefully in the background.  The lead also plays goalie, as told on this forum post, which is how I found out about the video in the first place:

I’m not planning to do much (if any) video during the trip, but I hope my still photos will tell the stories as well as these two videos.

There are three basic needs: food, shelter, and clothing.  Of late, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to satisfy the first of those while on the road: what should I eat?

The easy path would find me going from fast-food joint to fast-food joint, never cooking for myself and swelling up like a beach ball.  That would be disgusting, not to mention expensive.  Instead, I have three requirements when it comes to supplying myself with metabolic fuel on the trip:

1. Inexpensive
2. Reasonably healthy
3. Easily prepared

Inexpensive.  Eating nothing but restaurant food would quickly wipe out my budget.  When I can make a really nice sandwich for $1.00 that would cost me $6.00 in a place like Panera, the motivation to do it myself is very strong.  Sandwiches, stir-fry, eggs, cold cereal, burritos — these are all things that can be prepared on the cheap.

I’ll have to be careful about the costs of raw ingredients, since I won’t have the facilities to keep much fresh food from going bad.  The prevalence of supermarkets will help.

I will still stop at restaurants every now and then, particularly to search for the world’s best cinnamon roll, but I plan to limit such decadence to a handful of times per week.

Reasonably healthy.  I want to stay healthy on the trip, and an important part of that will be filling my belly with good foods.  That means minimally processed shelf-stable items and plenty of fresh foods.  I’ll have to be careful to time my purchases around my numerous transits of the US-Canada border, since bringing across most unprocessed foods is forbidden, but that’s an easily managed task.

It turns out that eggs, hard cheeses, and many fruits and vegetables don’t really require refrigeration, so as long as I don’t leave them in my car, they should all be good options.  Thus, a cooler may or may not make the cut.  If I bring one, I’ll have to deal with getting ice and emptying water, which I consider a hassle.  Those reusable cold packs won’t be an option since I won’t have a way to freeze them, and the common thermoelectric coolers don’t work very well.  The main reason I’d want a cooler would be for milk, which would otherwise spoil quickly, but it might end up being less of a headache to simply buy pints of milk for immediate consumption.

I’m going to try very hard to avoid eating in the car.  That shouldn’t be too difficult, since I almost never eat in the car anyway. (In fact, I can’t remember the last time I ate in a car.) By avoiding in-car consumption, I will be forced to interact more with my surroundings and minimize boredom eating — not to mentioning removing the source for irritating crumbs and stains.  Drinking in the car will be fine, but only water, coffee, or tea.

Easily prepared. I’ve learned to be reasonably competent around a kitchen over the past few years, so the prospect of preparing meals for myself is not only comfortable but also enjoyable.

Now, I will not have the kitchen sink for this journey.  What I will have is my MSR backpacking stove, my MSR Blacklite cookset, and my favorite chef’s knife.  Oh, and probably a polycarbonate storage container and a spatula. Compared to my normal cooking tools, that’s a minimalist set, but it should be sufficient.

I’ve been practicing cooking with these limitations for the past few weeks, and I think it will work.  The biggest change is the size of the pan in the cookset compared to my normal big, heavy saute pan.

All of this presumes that I’m in a place where I can cook, which will probably be a campground.  Most motels would frown upon the use of a backpacking stove indoors.

That about sums it up. Worth noting is that most of the above won’t apply when I’m putting together food for the backpacking legs of the trip.  For those, the main considerations are energy density, simplicity, and cost (in that order), which typically leads to highly processed sugary, salty, and fatty food-like substances.  But that’s a post for another time.