A few minutes before midnight, and I'm thinking about pizza. I'm skating, and my head's mostly in the game, but it's summer, hotter than normal, and it's been over an hour with only two subs on the bench, and I'm dead tired. And thinking about pizza. Also beer.
Other nights, I crave some other specific food (it's always food) — some carb or protein bomb my body wants to offset what is the single quickest loss of calories it knows.
The game is the game, and I love hockey like no other. There is little, in fact, I'm willing to trade precious sleep for, but this Wednesday night skate is my weekly ritual. Year-round, for the past decade. Part insane hard-core workout, part shvitz, part meditation. It's exhausting, cleansing, invigorating.
At the same time, it both slowly debilitates me and keeps me alive.
But right then — with my sweat-drenched, stinking gear making me feel like I've shrunk incrementally since 10:45 — it's really just about putting one leg in front of the other until Bill, the rink man, punches the blessed buzzer to end the session, and warms up the Zamboni.
A few minutes till I hit the locker room, peel off my gear, pop a melatonin, put on my civilian clothes, and head home for a shower. My bag feels ten pounds heavier than before. And by the time I get back to the house 15 minutes later, I'd be willing to pay someone to save me the several minutes I spend hanging up my pads to dry and air out (as if such a thing was possible).
When, mercifully, the buzzer does sound to end our night, there is immediate silence. No messing around, no jump. Just a collective sigh and exhausted plodding as water bottles and extra sticks are gathered in.
Unless something really noteworthy happened, there is little talking as we each change — but for the younger few still seemingly amped up enough to chatter away bits of useless (and generally self-referential) post-game analysis.
I drive past several still-open pizza places on the way home. My body has burned fat and is eager for me to replace it with dough and cheese and sauce. And I am eager to fulfill the request. But I don't.
Over the past decade, I haven't once stopped for pizza. Though I crave it, it seems a beered-up college thing to do. And I graduated college over 20 years ago. So it's always straight home, a few pints of water, the most important shower of the week, and then the sleep of the dead.
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When I wake the next morning to the sound of kids running around, I am exhausted and aching. Between bed and the bathroom, my joints snap, crackle, and pop like amplified Rice Krispies. But it's an inverse trade of bodily strain for mental — and I have cleared my head of all work stress and am mentally refreshed. More ready than any other day in my week to face the kids, the wife, the work, the life.
