It was 8 a.m. on a recent Saturday morning. I was shoveling snow off the hockey rink at my regular weekend pick-up game. My teammate Fred Haberman skated up to me, shovel in hand. Working together, we pushed a mound of snow over the sideboards. Haberman, founder of the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships and one of the greatest dudes alive, wore the same tattered Icelandic sweater (with giant holes in the elbows) that he has played hockey in for the last 20 years. He had frost on his beard and was grinning ear-to-ear.

“Hey, Todd,” Fred shouted. He was amped up like a toddler on Pixy Stix. “My favorite animal is a pterodactyl.”

“Wha?” I replied to Fred’s complete randomness.

“Seriously, dude,” Fred said. “Who wouldn’t want to be a Pterodactyl? It’s a bird and a dinosaur.”

The ice was finally clear and the hockey game started up. I sat on the sideboards next to my teammate Mark waiting to go in. Mark wasn’t ready to play, though. He was holding a beer in his left hand and a brat in the other. It was 8:30 a.m. I gave him a quizzical look.

“I see you judging me,” Mark said. Then he took a serious chomp out of his brat and washed it down with a sip of beer. “I got six month old twins and a three year old at home. I need this.”

We played hockey the entire morning. Eight hours later, I remarkably found myself at the opposite end of the hockey spectrum. I sat in the press box of the Xcel Energy Center attending the Minnesota Wild game. I was working on a hockey story and sat in press row next to renowned sports journalist Larry Fitzgerald Sr. Fitzgerald’s son is Larry Fitzgerald Jr., the Arizona Cardinals All-Pro NFL wide receiver who recently played in the Super Bowl. He talked about the awesome Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl in Hawaii, and vacations all around the world. I glanced over at the massive diamond studded ring on his finger. It had a football filled with jewels on the face and was wrapped in gold. Then I looked down at my dinged up wedding ring on my left hand. There was Desitin diaper rash cream still encrusted in the creases. So much for bling.

So there I sat in the greatest hockey arena in the country, surrounded by legendary sports journalists, talking about Super Bowls and trips to Dubai and watching the most talented hockey players in the world. I should’ve been relishing every minute of it. But I couldn’t. I just could not shake two lingering thoughts A.) Pteradactyls are awesome; and B.) A beer and brat sounded really, really good.