BUTT-COLD ICE FISHING

Damn, it’s been one hell of a rough week.

Had a game last night and I had to take three Advil’s before I figured it wasn’t going to kill me to just pick up my bag. Sheeeeet I am so sore!

We lost one last night. Happens sometimes ya know. Ya can’t win em all. Nope. Not even the Red Wings can do that. Not even New England could do that.

So I’m not complaining, except I broke one of my Sher-Woods. That always upsets me just a might. I kinda think of them as being like a fine piece of handcrafted furniture or better yet like a loved young one, or an obedient golden retriever. You get the picture I’m sure.

Did my usual routine before the game except that I’ve cut out the aspirin now cuz of my stomach but still did the two hot shots of extra sweet coffee and a Snickers bar. Amps me right up. I think that when I was pretty heavy on the aspirin-train was when I was the designated team bleeder. Seemed like I couldn’t get out of game without stitches. Maybe it was just a bad batch of luck, ehh.

Oh, yeah. So I was saying … pretty achy but amped up. Busted stick and all I thought I played pretty good for an old lopsided defenseman. I got a couple of assists, three penalties (four in a game and they add a ten minute misconduct in this damn pussy league were in – yeah I’ve had a few) and pounded a couple of cold ones in the dressing room after the game before we went to the bar.

And we would have won if Otis hadn’t got hurt in the nets. Pulled his groin pretty bad I guess. That was a couple minutes into the third. Jingles said he’d cover the net to finish the game and let a couple in that would have been easy saves for Otis, but Jingles is, what forty-eight I think (few years younger then me you guys) and he’s never been a goalie. When he was younger he was a center and now he plays rowdy defense like me (maybe a bit rowdier, ehh?). Crap, he didn’t even use a goalie stick or nothing – so he did ok if you ask me. Pretty ballsy! We’re still playing against a few young pups that have some wicked slap shots and some of em don’t really like Jingles all that much, so they don’t hold anything back just cuz he’s not geared up.

And we won in the bar I guess though. Hell of a hangover this morning. You play – you pay!

But the week was tough and I’m achy not so much from last night’s game as I am from a wild escapade last weekend.

Jingles, Stinky, Bronzy and me decided to go ice fishing. We knew that cuz of the thaw that we had had and then the damn bitter cold that been on us for a while now that there’d be some good ice so we brought enough hockey gear along to play a little shinny if the fishing got boring.

The ice was really sweet, but we never did lace’m up. It would have a good time and there were a few guys out there in the afternoon that we could joined up with but didn’t.

Bronzy’s got a little shack out on the ice that we drive out to. Nothing fancy, just a shelter with some benches, a heater, windows and an electrical hookup for his genny so we can watch the tube some if a good game is on or a fool movie or some shit (course he’ll have to get a new portable that’s gets that hiney HDTV shit for next year). He’s got Outlaw stickers stuck all over the place. A few NHL team bumper stickers, too, here and there with a mess of sporting goods ones that we’ve gotten in the mail and bring out to stick on all the time. It’s tradition ya know. And the damn stickers are probably holding the shack together.

Me and Jingles rode out with Bronzy in the Suburban that he just picked up - used but great shape and sure has got all the bells and whistles. Stinky said he’d be out around noon.

The fishing wasn’t that good. Jingles caught a little six inch perch, wasn’t no bigger then my pecker I swear. We made fun of him and strung the little sucker up on the flagpole outside to flap about in the breeze. No wind though, so it just hung there like a limp dick frozen solid as a pop-cycle.

Because of the thaw, we noted that the shack was pretty much encased in the frozen lake. Probably was about three inches in if you asked me. Bronzy said that we ought to chip it out and move it a foot or so. Jingles and I both said at the same time, “Fuck that shit!” It was too damn cold that day and besides we didn’t bring any tools.

So around noonish Stinky shows up. I guess he’d seen Jingles’ perch and yelled “Who the hell caught this monster?” before he even opened the door to the shack.

We all laughed a bit and Bronzy shot Paul a quick one, “Where’s your short stick, Pauly, ain’t ya fishin?”

Stinky paused and then sort of snuffled back, “Ahhh heck, you guys don’t look like your havin much luck, there ain’t a game on I know, for sure, so I brought sumpin else for us to do. Come on, you guys. Come out and give me a hand with what I brought along.”

I hand Stinky the bottle of brandy that we’d been sippin (used to chug beers out on the ice but not so much anymore – guess old age has whupped us a bit something) and quiz him, “What’s ya got, my old pal?”

“Come on, come on and see. Just give me a hand and we’ll have a blast.”

So we all get out of the shack and see that Paul’s got a trailer towed behind his old van.

Bronzy walks around the trailer and tells Paul, “I think your trailer smells like shit. What ya doing, hauling pig pucky or something?”

Jingles pipes in, “I don’t smell a fuckin thing.” And we all laugh cuz he hasn’t been able to smell a damn thing since he was fourteen or so, back from the time I busted him open across the bridge of his nose with an errant pass as he was sitting on a bench watching me play.

Damn it did stink.

Paul had that those slobaggon thingies that he’d made from a travel trailer holding tank. Like I said before, a more appropriate name for them things would be shit-house-slammers.

Stinky gave the bro’s a quick tale of their construction and use. While he undid the back ramp of the trailer so we could get all of the stuff out.

He had a really old snowmobile back there too. Sucker must have been from the sixties or something. It was a pukey orange with a lot of duct tape on the cowling and it wasn’t so damn small – just kidding: it was about half the size of an ice-cat.

“Help me guide this off of here. I modified the track a bit for running on ice and built new ski’s up front with a ridge in em kinda like a skate blade so it’ll steer ok on this glaze ice we got out here.”

So he fires it up. Loud as a straight pipe dragster and smoked like a son of a bitch. He gets it out of the trailer and leaves it idling while he sets about rigging things up.

The deal is that one of us steers the snowmobile while a second, he says, should sit in the back facing backwards (yeah he rigged up some reverse pegs to get your feet up out of the tracks) to watch the slobaggoneers. One person per shit-house-slammer as you get towed around making tight-ass turns and getting some crack-the-whip action back there.

But he says, “Best of all, well I think, cuz we haven’t tried any of this yet, is I rigged some quick releases here at the tow connection on each sled so that anytime you feel like it, you can just pull the release and you’re on your own with these side paddle rudders to steer with. They may not steer so good on the ice but they were supremo in the snow. Ehh Jasper?”

“Ahh yup. Worked damn good over in the snow on the hill over past the tracks by Willow Creek. Uh huh.”

Jingles keeps saying, “No shit, no shit.” He’s like Stinky and has always been inventing stuff and building all sorts of contraptions since he was just a kid. “Wish I’d a brought Ryan and Dillon along. They dig this kinda shit.”

Bronzy says “Them things smell so bad, I think I’ll just stay on the snowmobile and you guys can ride back there if ya want. If I come home smelling like that I won’t be let in the house and will have to live in the garage for a week like that time the skunk nailed me.”

Stinky drove first with Bronzy as the safety observer on the back. Me and Jingles rode in the shit-house-slammers. We just let ourselves be towed for a bit first without disconnecting. Paul pulled into a tight turn and then stopped and we just snapped around the snowmobile in a tight circle. I was on the outside and Jingles' sled slammed into me and I rolled. A little messy but no damage done the ice was damn smooth. I suggested that we head back to the Suburban and snag our hockey helmets – might be safer. That we do and off we go again.

Jingles and I decide to disconnect at the same time and the snowmobile pops a wheelie as it loses the load and Bronzy slides right off the back end skidding on his keister for twenty or thirty yards. He kept his head up and didn’t eat it too bad. Jingles is free and clear, sliding along digging the rudders in hard and making some sweeping turns with him leaning hard the opposite direction to keep from flipping as he heads to open ice. Me, on the other hand am heading towards shore and one of my damn rudders breaks off (I had hoped that Stinky had fixed it since our first episode in the snow) and I dig the other one in hard to try to avoid the embankment at the shore line. All it did was getting me spinning like the Teacups at Disneyland as I did a forty mile an hour slam in to the embankment. Full-on out of control spin-o-rama tumble de jour. I hurt. I hurt bad. I hurt really, really bad. I felt like I’d been boarded with high sticks and elbows flying by three guys at once.

It knocked the wind out of me. It bruised me. It gave me bumps and lumps. It cut my face up, split my upper lip and gave me a bloody nose. I felt like my left nut might have to be amputated. It might have broken my tailbone and sprained my wrist. Ah shit I hurt.

Stinky finally sees what has happened to every one and gathers Bronzy first to come and check on me. Jingles is half a mile away or so, probably oblivious to my mishap. So I get helped back into my sled by Bronzy and I lay down as they slowly tow me back to the shack. I tell them I’m ok that I’ll just sit it out and rest on a bench in the shack. And that is exactly what I did as I polished off the brandy to stave off all my pains.

They head back out for more fun and games. Bronzy drives the snowmobile the rest of the afternoon as Jingles and Stinky go for joyrides. Thank God nobody else got hurt, ehh.

I’m pretty damn sure that we all had a good time last weekend. But I’ve gotta tell you that you can have a pretty rough week after ice fishing, you know.

Jasper here, just remindin ya to walk with wood and skate hard (yah, I’ll be better soon … I think).