Road Tripping: The Frozen Apple

Once again, I remained in Ithaca over Thanksgiving break to enjoy its beautiful weather. I was fed plenty of Thanksgiving food on Thursday, on Friday I didn't leave my dorm, and on Saturday I went to New York City with the band for the Cornell-Penn State hockey game at Madison Square Garden. The game is called the Frozen Apple, I guess because it’s in New York City and it’s cold?

Anyway, we left at a decent hour instead of 5 in the morning like the time we took a day trip to Maryland. We stopped for lunch at the exact same place we stopped last year, watched two and a half straight hours of season two of Community, and got to Madison Square Garden (MSG) with plenty of time to spare before we were expected inside to play pre-game sets. We were allowed to roam the streets of New York City for a couple hours; I ended up with a group of people who walked over to the public library, then got dinner before returning to MSG.

Back at MSG, we got our instruments and tickets and headed inside. After riding over half a dozen escalators we reached the bridge level where we waited for awhile before walking out into the stadium playing Davy. Then we played a couple of sets and went to hunt down our seats where we would get to watch Cornell take on Penn State.

Less than half of the Cornell fans.
In contrast, the Penn State fans didn't even fill two sections.

As for the game itself, it was great, in large part because Cornell ended up winning. The first period, Cornell could barely get the puck out of their own half, and it was just a matter of time before one of the Penn State players jammed the puck into the back of the net. Then in the second period, Cornell finally started getting shots, and during one of their forays into the Penn State half, one of the Cornell players took a shot from distance that somehow got past the goalie.

From there, Cornell looked a lot better right up until the game-winning goal (which was assisted by Cornell’s goalie, who also scored a goal in his first start last season). Following that, the game shifted back toward Penn State, but when they couldn't score again with a couple minutes remaining, they pulled their goalie, leading to the third Cornell goal on the empty net. So we walked away from MSG with a 3-1 win and boarded the bus for the four hour ride back to Cornell, which featured bad movies, neck pain, and a return to everything ChemE, namely, lack of sleep and brainache (it’s kind of like headache, but is caused mainly by ChemE problem sets). All. The. Fun.