The Hockey Life: Week 3

Given that the Tampa Bay Lightning have been on a West Coast road trip over the past week, hockey-hounding has been in a holding pattern. That doesn't mean, though, we didn't lead our hockey lives.

Rather than collecting autographs, we focused more on Colin's hockey, in anticipation of intrasquad scrimmages (that's him, #37, shown above) finally turning to games against teams from other rinks here in the Hockey Bay area.

In what's becoming something of a weekly tradition, Colin and I worked on his shooting and passing skills Wednesday. We take advantage of a street hockey rink in Largo, where Colin practices his in-close one-timers and rebound shots as well as getting a better handle on passing.

From there, we headed farther north to a small ice skating rink inside a shopping mall in the Countryside area, where Colin got put through the paces, as he has for the past year, working on his skating, building up his endurance and thanking people for compliments on his skating.

Oh, yeah, we even broke down and bought some hockey cards, including Panini's 2010-11 Score offering. A low-end product, it does offer a deep checklist. I even ordered and received three dozens pucks for our hounding adventures this month.

Even without hounding, we had a pretty busy hockey week, I'd say.

Scary dudes

So, how was your Halloween? As usual, we had a fun time, as I had the night off from work. Colin was a Clone Trooper and I reprised my role as Anton Kantstopapuck, an old, fat Russian goalie.

Too bad, though, that Halloween came on a Sunday. We didn't have as many trick-or-treaters as normal, meaning we had plenty of leftover candy. Adding to it, Colin brought home a bulging bag of treats.

If you'd like some, we have plenty. No Reese's peanut butter cups, though. They're mine and, sorry, I'm not sharing.

Farewell, Houndmobile

For the past seven years, there had been one constant companion in all of my hockey-hounding adventures -- a 1998 light blue metallic Ford Taurus.

When in New England, it made the rounds from Portland, Maine, to Providence, R.I., to Manchester, N.H., and Boston. After arriving down here in Hockey Bay, it made so many trips over to the St. Pete Times Forum that I was convinced the Houndmobile knew the way on its own.

Along the way, it drove through snow and ice, driving rain and strong winds, over bridges and through tunnels. It wasn't the prettiest of cars, but that isn't the point.

Bottom line, the Houndmobile did its job, getting me from Point A to Point B and back about 99 percent of the time. I'm thankful for that.

Sadly, though, all good things must come to an end. It lacked a working air conditioner. It needed some catalytic converter work. And the odometer stopped working two summers ago, stuck on 235, 454 miles. Lord knows the car had many more miles on it.

Because of that, I took it off the road in May. It sat at the top of our driveway, waiting for me to decide what to do with it. A couple of weeks ago, a decision was made. After buying it for $3,200 back in 2003, I sold it for $200, nothing more than a parts car. I like to think I got my money's worth.

About a year ago, I bought a car from some cousins in South Carolina. I'll tell you what, I won't do that again. What was supposed to be a solution was nothing more than another set of problems. But, it runs. Since May, it's made a number of hounding trips, for our Summer of Baseball as well as the current hockey-hounding campaign.

With some luck, it'll last long enough until we can buy something better. Until then, the spirit of the Houndmobile remains alive.