Saturday, November 14, 2009

11-14-09: Strangely Good Night in New Haven

I had a pretty good night in New Haven last night, all things considered.

Myself and a few friends attended the Yale / Cornell Men's Ice Hockey game at "the Yale Whale" (Ingalls Rink). Cornell was ranked third in the country, and Yale is the defending ECAC champions (they beat Cornell 5-0 back in March). It was a great game overall. Unfortunately, my buddy Tom and I miscalculated how much walking was involved beforehand, and arrived well into the first period. I hate being late to hockey games, but did catch a great game-tying goal by Yale with a couple minutes to go in the first stanza.

The night started with me getting rear-ended on I-95 in West Haven on my way to dinner. It was stop and go traffic, and raining. At one point, I went to move forward, hit the brakes to stop, and looked into my rear view to see the car behind me, a small Honda Civic, still moving. I let go of the brake, moved forward a bit to help absorb the blow, and it happened.

My first reaction was "Oh man, I hope there's no damage. I'm in a hurry!" Fortunately, there was barely a hint that the bump even happened; might need a little touch-up paint in the rear bumper one day. The kid in the car behind me couldn't have been older than 18 or 19, and felt terrible. The weird part was, I wasn't even pissed. It was sort of a Zen type feeling. I said "Hey man, not a problem. There's no damage. I don't feel like waiting for the cops and holding up traffic. Just let me write down your insurance information and we'll be on our way." He was so relieved; he probably thought to himself "Geez, didn't I hit HIM?". So I jotted down his information, then we just drove off. My buddy Tom was behind me in traffic, and ended up passing me. We still got to dinner about the same time.

Archie Moore's was packed, so when our friends Jason and Taylor arrived, we decided to walk to JP Dempsey's. That was a little after 6:00PM. Game time was at 7:00PM. We should have just gone straight to the game, but thought we had time. Still, we ate fast (I had the Parisian Pepper Burger, which was great), and hoofed it over to catch most of the game. Our total walk was about 1.6 miles.

I ended up standing behind the Cornell goal (first and third periods), and with five minutes left, had one of the best views in the house of Yale's game-winner. Nice little screened shot from the top of the circle. Good win for Yale. It felt great to see a hotly contested game. I thought there were a few too many penalties called; it didn't help the flow, but otherwise, it was a good, spirited match-up between Ivy League rivals. Cornell is a bigger team, but didn't get enough shots on goal in the end, and paid for it. Yale was persistent, and got the win they deserved.

Afterwards, I felt like a social organizer. I've never received so many text messages in one night! I'm not really into the texting scene too much; I'd rather just call some one. But when you're in the middle of a loud hockey rink, you can't really carry a good phone conversation, even in between whistles (I don't talk or text while the game is going on; that's just good etiquette, kids). The lady was having dinner with her Sorority sisters in the area (which she had a great time doing, which I love to hear), and a few buddies were looking to do something. So we ended up going to Richter's (as I did last week), and it was a lot of fun. It's a good bar.

Despite the rain, the no-damage rear-ending, and all the walking, I had a great time.

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