NHL Super Skillz

This past weekend, the wife and I attended the 2010 Skills Competition for the NHL All-Star weekend. Since I broke my camera on my last trip to Germany, we had to precede the event with a trip to Best Buy to purchase a new camera. I was already in the market for another point and shoot (I had taken over 7,000 pictures on the last camera over two years of international travel) and me breaking the old one was just the excuse I needed.

We showed up to the event a bit later than we planned to because traffic was crazy.
The last game we went to at the RBC Arena, on New Years Day, we got to the arena about an hour before and we pulled right in with almost no wait and walked to our seats. Of course, the game was not sold out but it was not empty either. For this, we tried to get there about 50 minutes early and we walked in about 15 minutes before it started. Traffic! We ended up circling the entire arena to get to this dirt parking lot. I don’t know if a bunch of normal spots were blocked off for All-Star festivities (concerts and venues) or what? Pandemonium! The arena was about half empty for the start of the event and I did not see an empty seat by the last event, so I do not think that we were the only one surprised by the traffic. And that is about the end of the negativity because everything else about the event was awesome!

The new camera has a panoramic feature but it did not work so well with that glass

When we walked in, we discovered how awesome our seats were! Row E (five) near the goal line. You could see the players well and even read what brand their skates were (if you’re a goalie gear whore like I am, things like that are important).

We immediately started snapping pictures and trying to update our status on Facebook (stupid AT&T/RBC Center prevented this until after the game, but that is not the fault of the All-Star game). Shortly after that, something terrible happened. A Penguins fan sat down next to me. I consider myself lucky that he was a nice guy and we had a good time bantering with each other, but in reality, he is the lucky one. Lucky there was no snow for me to make a snowball with a battery inside of it to throw at him and/or Santa Clause (look it up, Philly fans are classy!).


Highlights from the event were:

One of my favorite events was the trick shot shoot out. This is where the guys try to do crazy between the legs shots and other imaginative things. Surprisingly, one of the highlights was the Pittsburgh goaltender Flurry. He was doing push-ups as the guys came down the ice, stacking the pads, and twisting poke checks. Just having a good time. Personally, I think Suban had the best attempt at a goal (they typically don't score because they are trying crazy shots) where he flipped it up as he came down the far side of the goal, then skated around the goal and tried to bat it out of the air as it came down. My next favorite was the guy who got the puck up on his stick and flipped it around like he was playing lacrosse and then flung it at the goal (hit the crossbar). The fans gave the award to Ovechkin which I'm not upset about. He had some good ones too and he has such a fun personality when he is out there. Plus, he is the Great 8.

Another funny event was during the accuracy shooting contest where you try to hit styrofoam targets in the net. One of the Sedin brothers went four for four which is pretty awesome, but that was not the funny part. The crowd got excited when the home team, the Hurricanes, player (Staal) decided to compete. They started a "Lets go Canes" chant. Normally, good idea. When your player is going head to head with a player named Kane (pronounced just like Canes), you might want to rethink which cheer you use. In fitting fashion, Kane won (probably because the crowd was chanting his name).

The team's mascots were roaming the arena that night and we had the misfortune of running into one of them. As if sitting with a Pittsburgh fan was not bad enough, I had to put up with this crap!

You can tell how happy I am to have a Devil behind me creeping into my picture

Another highlight was witnessing a new World Record for hardest shot. Chara beat his own record and posted 105.9 MPH. Glad I was not standing in front of that shot.

As a final reflection, I must say that there were a TON of Flyers fans there. I believe that after the Hurricanes fans (which had to have been over 80% of the fans) the next jersey I saw the most was a Flyers jersey. And you know they all loved my orange pants.

Giroux doing one-timers

Brier had two goals in the game on Sunday and he was not originally invited

All things considered, we had a great time and the event was well worth the money. I’m not sure I would fly across the country and pay for a hotel to attend another all-star weekend, but I might be willing to drive a couple of hours if they have it somewhere nearby.
It would be a cool opportunity to see a city and plus the players honestly look like they are having a good time. The players all start out on the bench and by the end of the night, they are all on the ice in a line so they can see what the next guy is going to do.

I can see/ski for miles and miles

A group of work friends decided that since we were so close to the alps we just had to go skiing. I was probably the most passionate about going so I organized the trip. I selected an Interlaken area with skiing in the Jungfrau region because it was the closest quality skiing to Marburg Germany (only a 5.5 hour drive...assuming you go the right way). This brings us to the start of our trip. So we divided up into the two cars (Land Rover and BMW M3 Wagon) and started heading south. Rob and I tried to enter the hotel address in the GPS and we were having trouble finding the hotel because it is technically not in Interlaken. Apparently, you can walk across the entire length of a town in a few minutes because our hotel was technically in some silly suburb town even though it took us about 11 minutes to walk to downtown Interlaken. Either way, we found the intersection that our hotel was on and saw that it had a funny city listed. We figured this was just the Interlaken suburb and started our journey.
We made great time for the entire duration of our trip and as we were edging in on our destination we started to look around and wonder. As they said in the great Dumb and Dumber, “I thought the Rocky mountains would have been a little rockier. Yeah, that John Denver is full of shit.” We apparently discovered a town in Germany that sits between two lakes, which is why it looked like Interlaken from the high view on the GPS system. Of course if we had checked any one of 50 things we would have realized our mistake, but at the time nothing seemed strange. As it turns out, our 5.5 hour drive became a 7 hour drive and we did not get to the ski shop before they closed. Oh well.

Eventually we arrived at the hotel, the Hotel Sonne in Interlaken (but not really Interlaken), and unloaded our stuff. The three star hotel was closer to a hostel but nobody in our group was too prissy so it worked out OK. We had four guys in one room and three girls in the other and each room had their own bathroom with shower. Luckily, we also had a common bathroom in the hallway, which allowed for the timely completion of hair/grooming for the girls and pooping for the boys. Odd what each gender appreciates more.

We were beat after the 7 hour drive so we elected to eat in the hotel restaurant. The food was quite good but it seems that everything we did (which of course we did like Americans) pissed off our waitress. We were way too loud for Swiss tastes and I believe some tables complained about us. Also, the group tried several different bottles of wine, which the waitress explained would give us headaches, throughout the dinner. By the time she was clearing our plates, the eyes were rolling back into her head every time we asked a question. Luckily, we’re American so we don’t worry about that. Class? We don’t need no stinkin’ class.

Apparently our hotel has a house cat and this was one of the fattest cats I’ve ever seen. It was really like Puss from Shrek 3.

After dinner we went out for trouble. Lo and behold, one of the Interlaken “discos” was diagonal across the street from our hotel so we walked over. The security guard did make us show passports, which is weird, so of course we had to walk back to our hotel to get them. I have never been asked for my passport in a club in Europe.
Anyway, once we all return with our passports we get past the security guard and at this point we’re told we can't wear our coats in the club. We will have to check them. OK, fine. We walk over to coat check and realize none of us have any Swiss Francs. From past experience I know that some places in Switzerland take Euros, but this place did not. So we all pile back out of the entrance area and walk back to the hotel. A couple people are pissed about all of this so they elect to purchase wine from the hotel and hang in the room and the rest of us get some cash from the ATM and go in for one more try. Third time is a charm (a saying that was proved in Star Wars: A New Hope as Luke, who destroyed the Death Star, led the third trench run).

Once we got into the club, we had a drink and then headed back. What a sad group we were. The club was playing dance music but overall, no one was dancing. Sure, there were 5-6 girls who were trying to dance but most people were standing around. Anyway, there was wine waiting for us back at the hotel.

When we got back to the hotel we also started our wallet search. Earlier, when we tried to withdraw cash from the ATM, we discovered that someone in our party had misplaced a wallet. This led us to tear apart the rooms and then call our Marburg hotel to see if they would go into one of the rooms to look for the wallet. Luckily, the bartender Timm, who we spend hours with almost every night, knew our group well enough. He checked the hotel safe first and sure enough, a taxi driver dropped off a wallet earlier that day. The taxi driver knew it was a Novartis employee staying at the Vila Vita because every fare he had that day was a Novartis employee staying at the Vita. As we were trying to search down the wallet, someone tried calling the taxi so they stepped out into the hallway to use the phone. This greatly upset the Swiss people staying there and someone came out and yelled at us. Considering that in many Swiss apartments you are not allowed to shower or flush the toilet after 10 PM, this is not surprising. There must have been no one in the room next to us because it is amazing that we were not kicked out of the hotel that night. Eventually we went to bed so we could be waiting at the ski shop as soon as they opened.

We walked one minute down the road to our ski shop and picked up our boards and skis. The place was nice and upon talking to the guys about where to go we discovered that the World Cup was being held on the Jungfrau slopes this weekend and that there would be 50k people out there. Wow, what a weekend to pick Interlaken. Amazingly for us, this made the skiing better. Tons of people were in town for the World Cup but they were not skiing and that kept them to that side of the mountain, so we skied in the other parts and had almost no lines for chairlifts. This explains why all of the hotels that were halfway up the mountain were booked.

We headed to the Shilthorn side of the mountain because Angela and I had been there before and so we knew where to go, where to park, and what to expect. We led everyone up the first three gondolas and walked out onto an amazing view...and a very steep slope. Technically the slope exiting the gondola is a blue and once you go past 30 yards it was a relatively flat, but narrow, trail but that first drop in was intimidating for some of group. At this point we broke out into groups (one of us had binding problems so that person headed back down to the ski shop) and headed out. Having mostly skied West Virginia, all I can say is wow. The views while you are skiing are just amazing. As I mentioned before, I had already been to this mountain and paid to ride the Gondola up just for the view. Now here I was skiing while taking in the same view.

We could see the air show while we skied

More air show!

Unfortunately/fortunately it was really warm the weekend we went. Temperatures got as high as 11 C (52 F) on one day so needless to say it was warm out there. On the plus side, you’re not bitterly cold. On the negative side, the snow gets really slushy and if it is not slushy then it is icy because all of the slushy snow has been pushed to the side by skiers. It still got below freezing at night so they could make snow if they had any bald spots near the bottom. As I said, it was good and bad.

I also got to do something I never got to do in West Virginia, go off-piste (off the trail). Don’t get me wrong, I loved skiing in West Virginia, but if they did not make the snow there would be none on half the trails. So when the trails end, so does the snow. It is just rocks and trees everywhere. Not so in the alps. You can often look over the edge of the trail and just see the same trail further down the mountain. If it looks pretty clear between you and the trail, you just go over the edge and make your way down. Now I know enough to know that I don’t know a thing about skiing like this, but luckily you have some very simple guidance. If you see multiple ski tracks of other people who have jumped off the trail at a certain point, it is probably safe for you to do so. Using this guidance, another guy and I just had a blast all day going off trail. We would just pick a lift and tell the people who stuck to the trail where to meet us.

We decided that when they build a restaurant for you on the top of a mountain that rotates while you eat, you pretty much have to have lunch there. We met for lunch and did a couple of laps (while sitting down) as we enjoyed good food and an amazing view.

Before we went up the more advanced group that I was with had decided we were going to ski back down. It was a steep black but we’d been on blacks all day so we thought it should be fine, though it looked steep as we rode up in the cable car. At some point during lunch we noticed that instead of taking the trail down the mountain, you could go off the other side of the mountain. It looked even steeper. Perfect! What a way to resume skiing after lunch. Instead of telling what happened, I’ll let the pictures tell the story. Like a cartoon clip.

Chris goes down with no problems

Marissa starts timid and the mountain senses her fears.
You can't see her in the bottom left picture through the cloud of snow her fall makes.

I bring Marissa her skis before we successfully make it to the bottom.

Here you can see where we skied down.
We started at the restaurant and went down the right side toward the saddle between the two mountains.

At the end of the first day we made our way down to Murren (and discovered how slushy it was at the bottom of the mountain on the easier slopes) for some apres ski. I guess it is because I have never skied Europe, learned French, or skied as an adult but I had never heard the term apres ski before. This was odd to most of the skiers in my group. I was able to translate it easy enough because I took some French in high school and by took some French I mean I got C’s in a class that really was not that hard. I’m American. I speak American.
Anywho, we followed up the day with some drinking in a nice little restaurant near the cable car. I enjoyed a hot chocolate while everyone enjoyed a beer or spiked hot chocolate. We had to cut this a little short because we had to return the snowboard with binding problems to the bottom of the mountain by 7 PM but it worked out ok. We got back to the hotel/hostel, showered, and then walked to dinner. Thank goodness that someone had an iPhone with a GPS because we were borderline incompetent with it.

After dinner, the old people (and even though they are 35 or less, they are called old because they did not go out after dinner because they were “tired”) went home to bed and the kids walked to another “Disco” called Johnny’s. We discovered a rare gem in Interlaken. To start with, the DJ booth (which was massive) was filled to the brim with CDs and the DJ was spooling up the hits of yesterday and today. I haven’t seen anyone actually DJ in a while. Now-a-days everyone just has their laptop and a playlist but here in Interlaken, they kick it slightly old school (old school would be records or even a live band). The other reason I called Johnny’s a gem is best explained in the following graph.

• You will notice that the old people in the club when we got there did not leave as the young people arrived, so the average age never drops below 35
• You will notice that the three cougars dancing near us were ready to go all night long
• You will notice that only one guy was willing to hit on said cougars

Early the next morning we headed to Grindelwald to check out the other side of the mountain.

I spent the day with the same person going off-piste again in the same area and we spent the first couple of runs trying to get a good picture of each of us with the beautiful Alps in the background.

As with the day before it was hot as could be and in the sun and slightly lower altitude, we were sweating. I wished I had brought a T-shirt to ski in. I must have packed two long sleeve shirts and two sweatshirts preparing for some crazy cold in the Alps and I end up wishing I had a T-shirt. Such is life.

We wrapped up the day around lunch time so we could get to Marburg before it was too late. My plan was to finish when they kicked us off the slope. This will be important later. We all met at a nice restaurant on the mountain for some dinning with a stunning view, once again. We all tried the Alp Macaroni which is just like Mac and cheese. This particular one had ham in it as well. Delicious. Stupidly, I spilled mine all over myself while I tried to carry too much food/drinks but I managed to catch it with my body and direct it back into the bowl. While I told this to the group, someone else spilled theirs all over their chair but also managed to get it back in the bowl.

The view during lunch!

After lunch, we rode down to the car and changed into clothes in the parking lot (the girls, who went down before us, explained how you could create a changing screen if you opened both car doors and stood between to which we responded to them by stripping to our boxers and changing in the open. After that, we drove back to Interlaken to return our equipment to discover that the shop is closed during the middle of the day. Thank goodness we rushed off the mountain...not! (little Wayne’s World for you). We should have known the shop was closed. I did not think of this when the plan was changed from skiing all day to leaving after lunch. The other car volunteered to wait so we headed home, which means back to Marburg.

While there were a few mistakes (getting lost on the way there, hotel being less than advertised, and the ski shop not open) we all agreed we had a great time. At the end of the day, it is hard to have a bad time skiing in the Alps. The views are incredible and the snow is great.