After stumbling across their website on the ‘net, I decided I wanted to give a women’s ice hockey team a try.

Went to my first practice last night. Let me just tell you its a helluva lot harder than it looks! At first I could barely skate and hold the stick. Thankfully by the time the warmup was over I was doing OK on that…and breathing a little hard. The drills the coach ran us through for two hours were hard, attested to by even the girls who had been doing it for a while. I was the only one on the ice who’d never held a stick…and it showed! You know you suck when the coach claps his hands and says, “Good effort!”

I did not, of course, manage to get through the evening without falling…a couple of really hard landings on my backside and a spectacular headfirst skid into the boards. Those helmets really work.

Achy shoulder and tender butt aside, I had a great time…the other girls and the coaches were super and very tolerant of my bumbling around. They invited me to the group outing for beers afterward, but by that time I was quite ready for a hot shower and bed. A massage in between would have been nice.

But I’m definitely going to give this a shot. Two weeks from now look for another sore backside post!