Game #1 in the books....

Morning started with a great breakfast from Scott G. Then we played a 11:45 a.m. & won it in OT 13-12. It was a great experience. We arrived at the pond with most of our gear on. Laced up our skates in a tent & made the very difficult skate out to our rink. Once there, we had to shovel off the access snow with shovels & warm up. There were huge cracks in the ice that we tried to avoid. Most of the time we were unsuccessful resulting in some fun crashes. I also had a hard charge to the net which had me flying over a snow bank. We had a blast & learned a little bit from this first game.
1. Toe warmers, a must. 2. Shields... NO!! They freeze up at times, making it hard to see. 3. Could lose a few layers. I had 3 socks, 3 layers of thermals & under armour, probably could lose a few. 4. Get conditioned!! 15 minute halves sounds easy... No way!! If I think of more, I'll pass it on... the good thing though. After every game, a free 12 pack of Labatt Blue. Oh & we got a free Labatt Pond Hockey jersey last night too. Definitly recommend this trip, its been a blast. I cant seem to get pics up, because of the slow internet here, but I'll make sure to get some up soon. GO MONKEYS!!

Day 1... travel

Ok, so we are in Eagle River, Wisconsin. It took all morning to get here, but it was a fun experience so far.
We left Seattle @ 12:50 a.m. Thursday morning, got to Minneapolis around 5:50 a.m. ( C.S.T.) roughly a 4 hour flight. It was 18 degrees when we landed. Since we had about 3 hours til our connecting flight to Rhinelander, Wis. We had breakfast & wandered around. Minneapolis has a pretty big airport.
Once our twin prop plane that sits 40 arrived, we had a 40 min. flight to Rhinelander. Our gear made it all in once piece & we managed to fit 5 guys, bags, sticks & luggage in a Dodge Durango ( not recommened ). It took another 30 minute drive north to reach Eagle River. It was about 12 degrees, some snow showers & about 3-5 feet of snow. We are staying at a wonderful cabin resort, Eagle Waters Resort.
We also got to see the set up for the pond hockey, as well as practice in a private facility ( took a little bribing ). Its been a busy day, not much rest for the weary as we start play @ 11:45 a.m. tomorrow. I will update tomorrow night. Our only internet access is down in the main office so I will try to keep up with my posts. GO MONKEYS!!

13 hours to go...

Trip is finally upon us. We leave Thursday morning, around 12:30 a.m. & should be in Wisconsin by noon. Hockey bag was packed last night, bought a couple of wooden sticks so I didnt have to worry about breaking my good sticks. I made sure all the electronics got plugged in last night & I think I'm good to go. I will update the posts every night while in Wisconsin, & post a few pictures. Next stop... Eagle River, Wisconsin

Puck'n Pond Monkeys

Left - Right: #67 Aaron Davenport, #13 Darryl Peterson, #12 Troy Buduan, #6 Ken Salo, #10 Scott Glowaski Photo: Deborah Buduan

Pond Hockey Schedule

Here are our game times for the tournament.

Friday, February 15th - 11:45 a.m. Puck'n Monkeys vs. Old Steel On Ice
Saturday, February 16th - 9:00 a.m. Puck'n Monkeys vs. NM Hockey
Saturday, February 16th - 1:00 p.m. Puck'n Monkeys vs. PHA-Q

Playoff - Sunday, February 17th - 8:00 a.m.
Championship - Sunday, February 17th - 11:30 a.m.

6 Days To Go!!

Hey All... I just created this blog for everyone to follow our team - the Puck'N Monkeys, on our trip to Eagle River, Wisconsin. 5 of us will be participating in the LaBatt Blue 4 on 4 pond hockey tournament. ( To check out info. on the tournament, click on the USA hockey link to your right. ) We will be leaving for Wisconsin on the morning of February 14th & will be returning back to the Pacific Northwest on February 18. There is a 100 teams participating this year from 18 different states.
So what I'm planning on doing with this blog is... Giving everyone a idea of our experience, from getting ready, to the flight over & some of the sights, as well as the hockey part of it. That way if you decided to take this trip next year... you'll have somewhat of a idea of what to expect. I'll tell you right now, decided what to wear under my gear has been the hardest thing for me to figure out. So I'll definitely keep you posted on that. So I shall end this for now. I will be posting some pictures & more random things later on this evening.