Global Warming

Earlier this week I talked with my bro Bronzy who lives in SoCal. Lucky sucker, he and Jingles are still playing a couple of times a week and according to Jingles, Bronzy ain't doing too bad at it these days. I bring this up and he says "Well Jasper, I think we finally got in a league where we're playing against guys closer to our own age." I tell ya, I loved playing against the young pups and rubbing a little in their face, but after a while ya just can't stop 'em. Life catches up with ya. Gotta love hockey though and walking with wood feels so good.

So whats this shit about global warming? Ya got any idea? Ice caps melting and all its kinda scary. One week on the news I hear about some massive ice pack breaking off of Antartica that's the size of Russia (hey don't kid yourself Russia ain't that big anymore). And then I read that the permafrost under Northern Canada (now there's a BIG country) is shrinking by some ungodly proportion. The Tundra gone - no way Jose.

I mean, I s'pose this is reality, but what the f...? I could tell you stories. Hmmm. Let me think about this a bit.

Lets see. I'm hearing that the Dakotas and Minnesota have been having some really mild winters these last few years. Sorta been keeping track of that part of the states cuz I've lived in the area. I can remember some pretty damn cold winters back there.

Ever screw around in high school practice? Yeah, if ya get singled out then ya gotta stay after and flood. You younger whipper snappers probably never skated anywhere 'cept in an indoor rink. Ain't they nice?!?!

Well, Wayzata High School in '68 only had two outdoor rinks. Wooden boards and all. That damn afternoon that I got nailed and had to flood was 30 below. Ya had to change out of your gear and jump in some winter garb with pac's and all that shit and haul a motherf'ing inch and half diameter rubber hose out of the boiler room. First to the closest rink and put down some new ice then move onto the further rink and do the same thing. Course ya catch shit from the guys the next day cuz the ice is still shit. No Zambonies, just a bunch of team mates with shovels, scraping the ice after practice then "you screw up you flood". Colder then poop I'll tell ya.

But it seems as though that same year we had a bit of a thaw. Damn near all of the snow melted and I didn't hear a thing back then about "global warming". But what a bitch-ass thing that thaw did. The snow runoff filled every low spot around and refroze quicker then shit. We had ponds everywhere and I went walking with wood to skate on every one of them that I could find. New ice is great! Of course most of the new ponds I found had crap sticking up out of the ice and as I've mentioned in earlier writing that shit gets ya horizontal if your skate hits it.

At the end of our neighborhood was Gleason Lake. Not too deep and really crappy for fishin' - only held bullheads. At the widest, the lake is only about a half mile across and maybe two miles long. It narrowed in one spot where the railroad trestle was and had a little spit of land further on up the tracks where the trees had really gotten wacked from a tornado a couple of years earlier. You could get to the tracks from the backyards of any of the houses across the street. So I moseyed on over there and walked down the tracks to the trestle. (I've been back recently and the tracks are gone - just a bike path now.)

Beeauutifullll ! The whole lake was like a sheet of glass. I figured this was going to be great! The ice was at least eighteen to twenty inches thick which was due to the shallow depth of the lake and the ice was black as the night. I'd only skated on Gleason once before and that had been in a cleared out patch that was the roughest chunk of ice I'd ever skated on. Ice under snow did that - it kind of resembles porous lava rock. But this was something else today. This was tits!

I laced up and tossed the puck out on the ice and it slid forever as I skated out after it with my wooden stick in mittened hands. Just skate and skate and skate. Stick handle a bit. Shoot the puck somewhere - shit shoot it anywhere and chase it again. There was a bit of a breeze so if ya skated into it ya worked your butt off but with it behind ya - ya could sail. Made me think about a story that I had heard from the guys that a few years earlier some whiz had gone out on the snow covered lake with skis and a parachute. He got sliced in half on barbed wire at the south end of the lake after the wind had really got behind him. Nah - not gonna happen too me. I'm in control - I'm walking with wood!

This was the absolute greatest feeling. So much ice. Sooooo smooth. But I gotta tell ya I also had the biggest damn shot of scared-as-shit goose bumples out there too. Those of you that have done this know what I'm talking about. You're skating along and the ice cracks right between your skates. Nah your not in danger, but the noise that that fissure makes as your body weight causes the settling or shift or whatever the shit it is to happen - just liquifies your bowels. Its like a gunshot - where you didn't pull the trigger but maybe you were inside the barrel. It happened, I think, three times that day. You're never ready for it and its so cold and ya know how the sound carries on those crisp days.

Ya can't pass that up. Winter thaw - global warming - glaze ice out on the lake! I don't know.

Ok. So back to the science of this shit about global warming. I read in our local paper the other day here in wonderful Fairfield, CA that the "Cold Spell" that we've been having is of course unusual but not uncommon (what gobal warming???????). In the past, but still recent history, one of the goose ponds (Fairfield has got geese the same way as Rochester, MN so don't call them duck ponds. OK?) got frozen over several different times. Yeah, don't go skating on that shit - too thin here. Just the same ... frozen over. So what gives?

And snow in Texas. Heck one of the girls at work showed me pictures from this week taken at her brother's ranch in Del Rio (that's like right next-door to Mexico). The picture was of him and his kids out in one of the pastures and they had made a damn snowman. I mean, snow on the ground and enough to build a punk dude.

So what's with this global warming bullshit?

Here's my theory on all this. There ain't no such thing as global warming. The earth's just getting ready to tip on its axis. And the North Pole's going to end up somewhere south of Texas with the South Pole east of Madagascar somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Scientists say that its happened before - so why not again?

Ok enough already.

Skate hard, skate often, and continue walking with wood.

Hey if ya like this shit then let me know. Shoot me an email at hoduhn@sbcglobal.net.

Thanks guys.