trying really hard to be a fish...

For those of you who know me well, you know how much I love the water. It seems like my newest undertaking is quite broadening the limits of that love. I am officially a member of the Munich Unterwasserhockey team. I mentioned it briefly yesterday but here's a more accurate description of what the sport involves:

First of all, let me explain the equipment. In addition to a bathing suit, we wear flippers, a diving mask, a snorkel, a waterpolo hat (i KNEW i would have another occasion in my life to wear one of those), a latex glove (on the right hand only, mine was white, hehehe), and a little wooden stick.

The game is played entirely on the bottom of the pool. And the pool is not shallow...it's about 9 feet deep. The goal of the game is essentially just like hockey: push the puck around, score goals. But of course the dynamics are entirely different because it's played on the bottom of the pool. First of all, it's weirdly silent. There's no "hey pass to me" or "idiot, how could you miss that shot" or "nice one." There's mostly a lot of swimming down to the bottom, pushing this heavy puck around till you have no more air left, and then shooting back up to the top for some air. Theoretically you keep your head in the water and breathe through the snorkel, but I found that everytime i surfaced I couldn't resist the temptation to rip my mask and snorkel off and breathe normally. I'll have to work on that...

The hardest part, for me, was equalizing the pressure in my ears. Apparently one is supposed to be able to swim at 9 feet without pain, so i'll have to work on that one. With the exception, then, of aching ears, I only had one other problem. Our team captain designated me to swim for the puck, and I must say the one thing I did succeed in doing was swimming pretty fast. Of course, I push off the wall and instantly get a shooting leg cramp...I had forgotten what it was like to have one of those in the water. At any rate, all I could do was haul myself to the wall and swear my head off until someone helped haul me out. In the process I scraped my knee. Needless to say, not the most graceful ending to a relatively good first practice, but what can you do? My leg hurts today...

Another cool part of this whole adventure, aside from learning a ridiculous new sport and meeting a bunch of Germans is that our practices are all held at the 1972 Olympic Arena...which is actually quite a creepy spiderwebby structure at night, but fancy and fun nonetheless.

That's all for now...glub glub glub