A bit of context — Banff is a kind of tourist town amongst the Canadian Rockies, in Alberta. Alberta has two major cities — Edmonton and Calgary, the latter of which is closest to us. Hence it has two major NHL teams — the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames. Naturally, Matthew, Andy and I are fervent Flames fans. Matt almost bought a jumper!

But they were $110. So he, uh, didn’t.

Before we left, we had to see them play. So some weeks ago, while Olivia visited us, we went to the Saddledome in Calgary, where the mighty Flames were due to play the Dallas Stars, with only a few games remaining before the playoffs.

The bus trip to Calgary was largely uneventful. Andy and I blocked out the rest of the universe by use of our discmen and iPods respectively. These had to be turned up quite loud, as the bus’ TV had been turned on. We arrived, and immediately went in search of food before entering the stadium. Fifteen minutes later, still searching, we returned to the dome and entered. Things weren’t too expensive — except Flames jumpers which were still $110 — and we all had some super greasy burgers as we sat down in our not terribly good seats. The excitement was palpable… Olivia had bought one of those blowhorn things… Matt managed two different notes… The USA’s national anthem was sung… The Canadian national anthem was sung… By this stage the excitement had died down a bit.

We hardly noticed the game start. Suddenly, the players had begun their spinning around the ice. Suddenly, it looked like Dallas had scored. We weren’t sure though. It was about a minute before the scoreboard was updated. The same happened again. Before we knew it, we were down 2-0. All this inamongst some cheesy sounding organ music, the purpose of which eluded us.

Then, a Calgary player got the puck in the net. WILD CHEERS! FLAMES shot out of gas turrets above the rink! The massive screens displayed a 3D rendering of the word ‘goal’ in several different styles! The FLAMES shot up again!

Then play was suspended for a few minutes as they decided that the goal had been kicked in, and was invalid. This was the first and only time we witnessed the over-elaborate home team goal celebrations. Watching the eventual 4-0 destruction of the Flames became somewhat painful, leaving us wishing that the segment of the game where the players left the rink and hot chicks with snow shovels skated around cleaning the chewed up ice went a bit longer. The high point of the night ended up being ‘smoochcam’, where the cameras would focus on a couple in the audience and that couple would snog for us all. Specifically, the high point was when the camera focussed on two obliging ladies. Man-on-man kisses had clearly been decided alienating of the game’s major demographics.

Universally glum — except Olivia who had managed to enjoy the night, being as she was emotionally unentangled with any of the teams — we jumped on the bus and headed home. Residents of Banff were grateful to hear Matthew announce our return with a jaunty little two-note ditty, and we got home in time to catch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Thursday, April 15th, 2004. It concerns such pressing issues as . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.