A Day Between Game Five and Six of the 2011 Stanley Cup Final

Sonja wanted to get lunch and do our grocery shopping. I wanted to catch the races at Dope City Downs. Sonja does not like watching the whole card, "The cheapies running the first half of the day always look like they are going break down!" If you watched the Boston Bruin's crowd watching the Jumbotron replay of The Hit a week ago you know how women react to animals breaking down. Their eyes bug out and they put their hands over their mouth because they are about vomit. It is not true that the cheapies breakdown any more often than an expensive runner - they do not run fast enough to break down. Not that I would ever try and explain that to Sonja. Explaining shit to women is like explaining to an alcoholic why he should not drink and drive.

I agreed I would help Sonja do her shopping, those big bags everybody keeps in the back of their car now get fucking heavy, so long as we caught the last half of the card. Senor Rojo, presently my favourite horse at our East Side jewel of a racetrack, had found himself a softer than usual field to run his first route of the season.

Usually we take the highway into the city but the fucking government was dedicating a section of the road to the fucking assholes, I mean heroic soldiers, who have died defending Freedom and the control of opium smuggling routes in Afghanistan - The Highway of Heroes. (I do not mind our boys travelling to the furthest reaches of our globe to find Muslim loons to gun down but the heroes bullshit I could do without. There is nothing heroic about volunteering to kill people or being killed trying. The Highway of Killers Who Later Exploded would be more like it.) Traffic was sure to be fucked up as a politician's logic so we took the old highway most of the way, stopping, as it seemed the synchronous thing to do, at the Army Navy along the way.

I bagged up some groceries in the haunted old store while Sonja picked over their racks for anything that might suit her and not look like she bought it at the Army Navy. (The Army Navy is not the hippest shopping outlet. As my mom says, "The fucking Hindoos all shop there.") If you do not shop there, ever, and you are trying to save yourself a little money here and there, like fucking near everybody is because we have to pay for our soldiers dying in Afghanistan and planes bombing the shitfuck out of Libya somehow, you really ought to. You cannot beat the prices they sell some of their shit for.

By the way, the Army Navy had sold out all their Canuck crap. People used to laugh at the Chinese dressed in their Mao era suits, now the same people's children pay good money to get dressed up in a hockey uniform that is fucking near identical. Later they march to the Central Square and cheer the Great Leaders. I could go on.

Once we got to the Drive, everything was cool. There is something both relaxing and wholesome about seeing lesbian couples holding hands as they walk down the street. Same goes for the boys and their public affection at the other end of town. Then again, as far as I am concerned we all ought to be fucking in the streets.

While Sonja and I were waiting for our lunch Sonja noticed something about a guy at another table she liked. She got up and asked him, "Where'd you get the cool toque?" It was a Minnesota North Stars toque, a new one. He told her, "Found it in a sale bin in Kelowna. That's where we're from." Hicks from the sticks. Sonja tried to buy it from him for me but he would not part with it. Canadians can get mighty possessive about their hockey shit.

After we loaded up with groceries we were off to the track. Sure would be nice to live a five minute drive away like people on the Drive do. Made five bets, including a wager on the Belmont Stakes. Bet the Belmont very lightly because New York has been hit hard with rain. Looked like my horse ran fifth, same as he had in the Kentucky Derby. Hit two of four at the home track, 5-1 and Senor Rojo at 4/5. A small profit, enough to pay for our day out. I do not ask for much more than that from the horses.

I should mention there were damn few people wearing their Communist Canuck uniforms in the crowd. Guess they were being laundered after having been worn during hot sex and/or puked on after the glorious home team's bloody victory on Friday night.

While we were waiting for the last race to run a woman walked by holding two drinks. My kind of woman. She was wearing a jacket that read HOCKEY across the chest. I asked her, "Where'd you get the cool jacket."

"It was a gift," she told me. "I love hockey so much that is all I get for gifts for Christmas and my birthday." She had been given paintings of players, including Kirk McLean, signed sticks, all that hockey crap you can buy on the internet. Sometimes, because I am a Canadian I do not have to think about it, I forget just how much we love hockey.

Goes good with beer.