We went for a walk the other day and John said, “I miss this smell.” Ocean mist, damp technicolour trees, ribbons of smoke in the air from someone burning leaves in their yard… welcome to Fall.

Today, 24 Hours featured a couple pumpkin patches around Vancouver. I’m glad I made asked Jenny to write her Pumpkin Patch Review, since it’s been my #1 post recently. Now that we’ve been smacked in the face with some Fall weather this week I feel like getting all cozy-snuggly, drinking some hot chocolate and traipsing through the stores’ Halloween displays (which are currently right next to the Christmas decorations).

I wrote about Ice Skating on Metblogs a little while ago, sharing some childhood memories and info about where to go in Vancouver for some ice time. Remember when it snowed in Vancouver? Yeah, things actually froze. Late at night my brother would set up a border of 2x4s around the cement patio behind our house. He’d then turn on the hose and flood the area so that we could wake up to some ice in the morning. Sometimes it worked. Most of the time we’d just settle for the road our front, which had snow packed down so tight it was ideal for hockey and skating around in your shoes.

Thinking of our setup now, it reminds me of a CBC documentary I saw a couple years ago, called The Hockey Nomad. It’s by Mike Downie (Yeah, Gord‘s older brother) along with Dave Bidini (of the Rheostatics). Based on Bidini’s book The Tropic of Hockey, they travel around the world to the most unlikely hockey places like Dubai, Transylvania and Mongolia. The Hockey Nomad is available on DVD and you can probably find the book over at Chapters.

I’d love to go ice skating this weekend but they just interviewed the head coach of the Vancouver Giants on Pratt & Taylor (as I’m typing this). The Giants are 10-0-1 right now – hot damn. They play tonight vs Spokane (featuring Canucks draft pick Grabner) and tomorrow night vs Saskatoon. Tickets are under $20 and the games are always exciting. I think that’s where we should end up this weekend but I’d be pretty content just going for another walk.

Last night John suggested one of the most geeky things I’ve heard come outta his mouth in quite a while, and I was totally on board. He said, “We should just spend an evening on YouTube…” for the soul pupose of finding anything and everything we can to entertain us “…before it all goes to crap.” Honestly, I haven’t poked around there perhaps as much as I should have. I dunno. Seems like everyone’s got a video on their blog post nowadays, and it’s become the Google of the video world, fittingly.

This topic came about while we were watching Sportsnet News last night, catching up on the world of hockey, baseball, football and everything in between. John had seen the Cardinals’ coach have a spaz on the video Tony Pierce posted on his blog earlier in the day [youtube].

It’s not likely we’ll be able to goof off and have an evening like that any time soon, although we’ll still be doing geeky things, much to my sister’s dismay. We had to call off a meetup yesterday because we were going to record a Crazy Canucks podcast. We still have the audio from the Abeerdeen City show to get through and tonight we’re going out with a co-worker, here from out of town. Continue reading this post ⟩⟩

Number three already! John and I have been so busy lately, especially with the concert last night that left us very sleep deprived. Despite missing the last part of yesterday’s game, which was apparently a snoozer anyway, we got the gang together for this week’s episode of The Crazy Canucks podcast.

Everybody’s here for this episode as we are now five games into the 2006 season. We go through our first impressions of how the lines have been put together, who’s standing out, and who needs to step up. We can’t fail to mention something about the goal and the guy who stands in front of it to block pucks… or something like that.

There’s a lot talk about now that we’re seeing how this team is performing on the ice. A lot is happening on the bench, and based on some listener feedback, we dig a little deeper into the man calling the shots behind the bench.

Record as of this podcast:
3-3-1 (3rd in the Northwest)

Looking ahead to the next few games to round out the week, we give some of our insights as to what we can expect from St. Louis and Nashville match ups.

Got something to say? Leave a comment or email us, feedback [at] thecrazycanucks.com

Click for MP3 audio and visit the website for more info.

Aberdeen City & The Electric Six – Richards on Richards, Vancouver – Oct. 17, 2006

I knew it wasn’t going to be a regular night at the theatre from the minute we arrived 20 minutes early. We waited for the club to open, called the band’s manager and confirmed some details – being informed that the first act, The Blue Van, were denied entry into Canada so Aberdeen City’s set was bumped up. A guy in line behind us, here from Newfoundland, overheard our conversation and asked about the podcast, John promptly gave him a business card.

When the doors opened I realized that I had forgotten my license. Genius move. Once inside we were hassled a little about the recording equipment, found our names on the list and walked over to the merch table to talk to the band’s manager. Brad Parker, the band’s lead vocalist and bassist was sitting close by so we chit chatted a little then moved someplace quieter to talk, although for the sake of the podcast, we really didn’t mind all the ambient noise the club had to offer at that point. Continue reading this post ⟩⟩

I did a wishy washy pre-game post on Metblogs earlier today – not knowing what would happen tonight, just hoping something would. And it did.

The game ending in a bit of a scrum, with Burrows in the thick of it with Willie to the rescue, it was evident tonight that we do have talented offense and defense when we use it effectively.

Vigneault (or Viggy as John likes to call him) put Kesler on the 2nd line with Morrison (BMo) and it seemed to work out pretty well. As Larscheid said, yeah I’m actually quoting Larscheid and not rolling on the ground laughing, Kesler’s “hands are catching up to his feet”. Well, we can hope so since it would be nice to get our money’s worth with this lad.

A name you heard a lot of this game was Bieksa, who was working uber hard earning his 4th point in two games. In the locker room interview after the game (btw, nice towel shots of the players eh?) I finally got a good look at him, does he NOT look like an rougher/angrier Nick Lachey? Ha!

Speaking of “pretty boys” Taytay Pyatt got his 100th NHL goal tonight and 2nd this season. Um… does he wear mascara cause it looks like he just got his eyelashes tinted like me. It’s nice to see he can score on the ice too.

Our D was on fire. Salo, back from his time off due to a groin injury, stepped up to the plate. Is there any sweeter sound that “Salo one times it!” because ya know, the puck is usually headed into the net. Although his goal tonight came with patience, bringing the puck from one side of the zone to another, behind the net and sneaking it past Rollie to put us up 2-1. Salo also drew penalties. When he got bowled over by Smyth in front of Luongo he “fell like a Sedin” our friend said and opened the game up putting us on the power play.

Ohlund was a force as well, very steady leading our D-men with an average of 5 scoring chances each. The Sedins played hard and the line had some GREAT puck handling.

We’re heading into Edmonton tomorrow night (6pm PT). With tonight’s game getting a little rough towards the end proving that the Edmonton match ups this year will certainly keep your heart racing.

With that said, I’ll save the rest of my comments for this week’s Crazy Canucks Podcast. I swear I’ll try to talk more, I’m usually just in awe of the great commentary by my co-hosts and fellow roundtablers. Look for the next episode soon.