Home Made Goalie Pads

Last week, I got 2 foam cushions made at the foam lady's down on Qi Yi Lu.  Do you have a foam lady in your town?  Too bad.  For the past few days I've spent a few moments here and there looking at them.  I didn't scratch my chin and say, "hmmmm..." out loud, but I said it in my heart.  How will I turn these lumps of comfort into goalie pads?

I've had success making passable sticks and a net, but this time I kicked it up a notch.  Here is the finished product:

I have to say that these are some handsome looking goalie pads.  Not only is the size nice, but the color takes me back to the days of Andy Moog and all of those cool dudes in the 80's.  Here's what I did:

1.  Get the pads made for 10 bucks.  She put zippers in them when I didn't ask for them, but they came in handy in the end.

2.  Buy 4 dog leashes for a dollar each.  They have the buckles and adjustable straps that  I was looking for.

3.  Open the zippers, slit some holes in the foam, and loop the leashes around the foam.  Then I used duct tape to renforce the foam and shape the pad a little here and there.

Yesterday, we tested them out.  The foam held well but the straps were a bit too loose even when I tightened them so I'll need to tweak that a bit.  I am pretty confident that the duct tape will hold up for a while.  I jumped around a lot and when down a few times and they felt pretty good.

The foam and covers were 60 RMB.  The duct tape my dad brought out last year.  The dog leashes were a dollar each.  So, we're talking 14 bucks and a nice pops for a home made set of pads.

Here's a shot in action.

In the next post I'll talk about how the students are doing so far after playing street hockey for only the 3rd time.

Movie Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I found this movie extremely boring and incredibly boring.

Barbara and I sat down to watch this snoozer around 8pm.  By 820pm I was ready to call it a night and lay in bed to reevaluate my life and, more specifically, my movie watching hobby.  We turned it off and watched an episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.  (more on that show in a later post)

This movie is about a boy who loses his dad in 9/11.  The boy has Asperger Syndrome, so that is why this movie is supposed to be interesting.  I understand that it could have been interesting, but I just couldn't get over how much explaining and thinking this kid had to communicate to us.

Quite simply, this movie is too slow.  For the 20 minutes we watched we listened to 19 minutes of the kid talking about life.  If I wanted to listen to a kid talk about life I would sit down and ask Miles about his day in Kindergarten.

The point at which I laughed out loud was when the kid did the old switcheroo with his mom's answering machine.  The kid finds out that his dad died from his dad's messages on the answering machine.  He crawls under the bed.  His mom comes home and, in a panic, asks him if there are any messages.  He says no.  I say, "Yes, there are.  There are at least 3.  Go ahead and check.  They're right down there in the kitchen on the answering machine.  Your husband was downtown, you say?  Well, if I were you, I wouldn't take your kid's word for it and I'd go check the machine."

But no, apparently she goes to sleep without checking the machine because later that night the kid goes out and buys a clone answering machine and switches it with the real one.  Then he hides the one with the messages in his closet so that he can keep the memories for himself.  So, the mother never finds out what happened to the dad.  Why didn't she go and check the freaking answering machine!  Your kid has Aspergers!  He's not always telling you the whole truth.  Your husband had a cell phone!  Go check the machine!!!

We got past that part and moved into another silly section.  What you have is the kid trying to track down someone named 'Black'.  His method, understandably as a kid, is to look in the phone book.  He finds 700 people with the last name Black.  So, he goes door to door and, as it turns out, everyone with the last name 'Black' is really nice and welcoming, no matter what the situation.  I'll have to remember that the next time I visit New York.

I might be exaggerating.  We might have watched 45 minutes of this.  It was heavy on the cheese.  I think that they assumed that we'd like it just because someone died in 9/11.  I didn't really feel it.  I felt like they didn't really go all the way and just figured that we'd feel it.  Thus, when the kid is wandering around trying to figure out the meaning of his life, I am stealing glances at Barbara trying to figure out  the best time that I can try to convince her to turn it off.  I found it, we did and I am happy about it.

3 on 3 hockey at Min Da

Part 4 in the ongoing "Hockey in China" series.

Well, this time I don't have too many photos, but i have a few funny things to mention about the 2nd time I got together with a gym class at the University to play street hockey.

First of all, 'hockey' in Chinese is 冰球 (bing qiu), which literally means 'ice ball'.  So, when I try to tell people what we are doing, I say something like 路上冰球 (lu shang bing qiu), which would mean 'ice ball on the street'.  Of course, there is no ice, but at least we have a ball and a street.  I asked the student from Inner Mongolia what he would call the sport we were playing and he said that he simply did not know.  So it is without surprise that, while a group of Chinese girls walked by, 2 of them shouted out 'zhe shi shen me?' which means 'what is this?'.  Yes, what is this, indeed?

Well, we ended up playing a 3 on 3 game with me as the goalie for both teams.  It went really well.  The coach, who has some hockey knowledge, preached passing and teamwork (always a good way to go) and things were really fun.  I loved it!  I might have been smiling too much, but it was fun.  One guy kept raising his back-hands into my chest and saying sorry for it.  I told him no problem, and in fact, great shot!

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I must pause to say that Coach Jia is the University coach that helps me.  He is Tibetan and I have known him for at least 5 years, since we play basketball a lot and he is the coach.  He is a lovely man, but also quite crazy.  There is just something goofy about him.  While we were playing he noticed that a young man, maybe 25, was trying to get his attention from the end of the parking lot.  So, we stopped and the man came forward.  The following was their conversation, translated for your convenience:

"Can I help you?" said coach Jia

"I'm looking for a sports coach from this University."  replied the man.

"Oh, what's his name?"

"Ming Ji Suo"

"What?"

"Ming Ji Suo."

"Oh, oh no, he's... he's... (raises hands together to his head like a laying it on a pillow) he's in Heaven.  He went to Heaven."

"No, that can't be."

"Yes, this is not something to joke about.  He is in Heaven.  Where have you been?!  Have you been gone for a year?"

"No."

"He's dead.  He died."

At this point you could see that the young man was stricken with confusion.  He looked around at us, we all just stared back at him.  Then he looked up down the road to where, as it turns out, his father was standing.

"What?"  Yelled the father.

The son ignored him.  "It can't be him."

"No, he's dead." The coach confirmed.

After a few moments of awkwardness of us all just standing around, the coach asked the unthinkable:

"Wait, what's his name again?"

The man answered. "Ming Ji Suo."

"Oh, oh, oh, oh.  Ming Ji Suo?  I thought you said Ming Ji Guang.  Ming Ji Suo is at the other campus, just 2 bus stops down."

Holy crap!  Half of the guys laughed.  I couldn't believe it.  The confused man asked for more specific directions and then went on his way.

The thing is that he wasn't joking.  He really didn't hear the guy right.  How you go on telling a guy that his friend is dead without being absolutely sure that you've got the right guy is beyond me.  It was insane.


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After reading my hockey blogs, my friend here in town told me that she had a hockey stick for me.  I really didn't know what to expect, but I was very excited and grateful to get any sort of hockey stick.  Well, here it is:

Kazakh stick; maybe NHLer Nik Antropov used this when he was a kid

It's from Kazakhstan.  She used to live there and it is actually from before the fall of the Soviet Union.  It's a little piece of Eastern Europe hockey history, and I can't bring myself to use it (it's also very small) so I hung it on the wall.  Pretty cool, right?

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Finally, this week I undertake making goalie pads.  I went down to a little shop that makes foam mattresses and got the lady to make these beauties:

Cushions for goal pads.

It cost me 60 RMB, or about 10 bucks.  When I was little I always thought that the arm cushions on our couch would make great goalie pads.  Now, the dream is coming true!  I asked for no zippers, because I don't think I'll need them, but she put them on anyways so maybe it will be a good idea to wash the covers once in a while.  I am going to go out tomorrow to look for some buckles for them and I will probably use duct take to form them into pads.  As usual, I will let you know how it goes.