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Street Hockey

Markus Naslund comes down the wing, dekes left, dekes right, he shoots, he scores! The Vancouver Canucks win the Stanley Cup! Sadly, I never actually saw this happen but I played it out hundreds of times. Like a lot of kids growing up in Canada, I was hockey obsessed. Every time I played I pretended I was my favourite player, Markus Naslund and I would pretend to be in game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. This took place in many different forms, mini-stick hockey in my best friend’s basement, on the ice at practice, on video games, or most notably on the street outside my house playing road hockey. 

Every summer day started the same way, my best friend Kyle would come to knock on my door bright and early and ask to play street hockey. I’d run into my garage, grab my roller blades, helmet and stick then race outside. For a few years it was just Kyle and I that played and one of us would be the goalie, but when we were about seven years old a new kid moved to our street. His name was Geoffrey and he was a goalie, it was perfect! For hours Kyle and I would battle outside on the street with Geoffrey in net. Kyle was a much more skilled hockey player than me but I was bigger so I could use my frame to guard the puck well and it won me some games. Not only did I use my frame but Kyle used his as well and it sometimes resulted in injuries. Sometimes it was intentional, other times not but Kyle and I would often knock each other to the ground while playing on the street. We took these games seriously and it showed. Back then I never was seen without cuts and bruises on my elbows and knees. It was especially bad because I have a bad allergy to adhesive, which prevented me from putting on band-aids so my wounds would drip all over me. It resulted in my mother refusing to buy me white t-shirts because they would always get blood-stained within the week. To this day, I still have a few scars that were the result of street hockey battles. 

Days playing street hockey were often long, and because of that, we would have to eat and get refreshments. One of our parents would often bring us out some Gatorade or lemonade for while we play. We would also go to one of our houses for hot dogs at lunchtime. None of us wanted to take our roller blades off because it would waste too much time, so we would wear them into the backyard and walk up the deck stairs with them on. This was often the best part of the day, because we were so exhausted the hotdogs tasted so good. If we were lucky, sometimes we would get a freezee or a Popsicle after. I will never forget those summer days.

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I wish our hot dogs were this fancy after street hockey!

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There is nothing better on a hot summer day than a freezee.

BRAIN FREEZE!

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The characters in Wayne’s world pretended to be players on the Chicago Blackhawks, while we would always pretend to be on the Canucks.

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Fights often broke out on the street between me and Kyle.

#tbt Sam and Jake drop the ‘gloves’ at a ballhockey game ( 09.23.16. )

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Westwood Plateau

My first summer job was working for my dad as a general labourer on his job site. It was the new Mercedes - Benz dealership in Burnaby. My dad thought that it would teach me the value of hard work, and he was right. At just fifteen years of age, I would spend my entire day carrying a large amount of lumber upstairs or sweeping the showroom floor. I hated it and vowed that the next summer I would get a job that I actually enjoyed. 

I lived five minutes away from the Westwood Plateau Golf and Country club and when I was a kid I thought that working there would be the coolest job ever. That next summer I applied and got the job! Some of my closest friends and I all applied together and a lot of us got hired. There was me, Spencer, Lucas, Adam, Liam, and many other guys that we soon also became good friends with. The best way to describe working at the golf course is by imagining it in a movie. In all movies, kids work at awesome places in the summer, a waterpark or carnival often times, but I worked at the golf course and it was a blast. 

One of our favourite pastimes was going to lock up the course as a group. There were many gates along the course and we had to go at the end of the night to lock them up. A few of us would go lock up and we always brought a big bucket of golf balls and a rental set of clubs with us. These were the top of the line, newest Callaway clubs and definitely were too nice for us. We would play our favourite holes while locking up and I always brought my portable speaker with us, usually playing some kind of country music. Wagers would often take place on these lock-up trips, placing our hard earned tip money on the line to see who could hit the ball further, or closest to the hole. The cart that we took on these trips was gas-powered and significantly faster than the other carts, causing us to rip around the course. This resulted in more than one accident throughout the years.

My best-friend Spencer was responsible for the worst accident that I saw during my time at Westwood. While locking up one night, he was driving around on the course and I jumped on the side of the cart. To joke around with me he turned the corner really hard to try and knock me off. He did this a few times and I was still holding on tight. Now, going as fast as the cart would allow, he pulled a quick U-turn for one final attempt and nailed a pole. I went flying off the cart onto the ground, but so did he. After we got up, we slowly approached the front of the cart to assess the damage, and it wasn’t good. The wheel axis was completely destroyed, and Spencer had to pay for the cart repairs out of his paycheque. To this day we still laugh about that memory, as well as many others that we experienced while working at Westwood.

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This is an accurate representation of my reactions when I lost my tip money in a bet at work.

Angry Golfer😂

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Although Spencer never set a golf cart on fire, he did destroy a few.

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This is not so different than the pranks we would pull at Westwood Plateau.

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Pemberton

When I graduated high school it was very bitter-sweet. I was excited to be coming to UBC with one of my best friends, Winston but I was also very sad to be leaving a lot of my other close friends. Some of my friends were going to other schools, travelling or starting work. Our last great hurrah was at the Pemberton Music Festival. This was my first music festival ever, and I was unbelievably excited to spend one last weekend with my friends. 

Upon arriving, we soon realized how unorganized the festival was. The parking lot that we paid for was full, so we had to park in a parking lot on the other side of the festival grounds, four kilometers away from our camping spot. Usually this wouldn’t be that big of a deal, however, we had a ton of camping supplies to bring to our spot. We embarked on an adventure that took us over two hours. We emptied out a nearby garbage-can that had wheels and used it to wheel a lot of our supplies. While one of my friends wheeled the garbage-can, I carried multiple bags and coolers. Along the way, a lot got left behind, I just couldn’t carry everything. On top of all this, the wheels on the garbage-can broke off after half an hour. This resulted in us having to drag this massive garbage-can all the way to our campsite. When we finally got there I was just thinking about how this was going to be a terrible weekend, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. 

The Pemberton Music Festival ended up being one of the best weekends of my life, some of my favourite performers were there but that wasn’t even what made Pemberton special. What made Pemberton special was the good times spent with friends and the stories that we have because of it. One of the most interesting stories from that weekend was the chicken fights. One morning this random person was telling us a story about these chicken fights and it sounded like something out of a movie. 

“Every night, at 3 a.m., follow the beat of the drum and you will find the chicken fights”

That was all he said, we figured he was just a drunk idiot, but we thought we should stay up until 3 a.m. just in case. Sure enough, at exactly 3 a.m., we began to hear the drums. Like kids on Christmas morning, we chased after the sound with anticipation. Upon arriving, it was everything we imagined. There was a circle of about 200 people, crowding around to watch people get on their friend’s shoulders and fight. Everyone was included, short, tall, skinny, fat, boys and even girls. Nothing was off limits, the amount of hair pulling that I saw would shock you. There is no part of that story that is safe and I did not take part because of that, but it was definitely something that I will never forget.  

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This is an extremely tamed down version of the chicken fights I witnessed at Pemberton. 

my babies in the quarry… which pairs do you think would win at chicken fight?

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When we finally showed up to our campsite at Pemberton we were exhausted. 

cat, tired, monday, falling, sleepy, bed, done, boomerang, nap, exhausted, garfield, faceplant, give up, boomerangtoons, boomerang cartoons, boomerang cartoon, monday motivation, miserable, boomerang toons, naptime, face plant, i hate mondays, case of the mondays, garfield the cat, garfield on boomerang, fall flat on face

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I was not alive for Woodstock, but Pemberton was my Woodstrock.

Festival of the Flower Children at Woburn Abbey, 1967

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J Cole was an amazing performance at Pemberton.

J. Cole performing at Pemberton Music Festival in Pemberton, BC