According to a Finnish proverb, “if sauna, tar and booze don’t cure the disease, it’ll kill you”. I’ve never had to try all three to feel better, so I’ve always simply assumed it to be true, which is why I keep spreading the words of wisdom to Wife, and Son and Daughter.

Fortunately, those three aren’t at the top of the list of cures in our household. Fortunately, because we haven’t been sick very often, and because I’m not sure how to use tar as medicine.

Anyway, at the first signs of a cold I turn to another holy trinity.

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On the top shelf in our basement, there’s a brown cardboard box with dozens of baseball hats in it. I don’t know the exact number, but if I say forty, I won’t be off by more than five, either way. And those are hats that aren’t in active rotation, because those forty or so, are in a metal basket next to our front door.

On my way out, I grab the one that matches my mood, if not always my clothes.

Nobody needs close to hundred baseball hats, of course. I didn’t want a hundred hats originally. All I wanted was one.

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Like many, or most, small boys, I, too, had ideas about the future, and what the world would look like when I grew up. Well, I had one idea. I thought it would be neat – that is the technical term for it – if the roads and streets of Finland were covered by a similar electric ceiling like the bumper cars at Linnanmäki, the amusement park in Helsinki.

I also thought it would be neat if all the streets in Helsinki would freeze over so I could just skate to school every day.

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Greetings from Poprad, Slovakia. Ďakujem. That’s all I can say in Slovak, and while I know it’s not much, according to my mother it’s the most important word in the world. It means “thank you”.

I’m here to cover the women’s Olympic qualification hockey tournament, and – as far as I can tell – I am the only reporter who’s not either from Slovakia or Japan.

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