<img style="float: left; margin-right: 8px;" src="http://cdn.nhl.com/canucks/images/upload/2009/09/schneider_blog.jpg" alt="" border="0">After years of reading about it in news articles, I have finally come to the mercy of the blogging world, thanks to Canucks.com. I don't know a lot about it but what I do know is just from things I have read so bear with me if it takes me a couple tries to get the hang of it.<br><br> I remember when the internet was just starting to get popular and my first internet connection was through one of those clunky big cell phones and I was amazed. I've continued to try learning new things and teaching myself but technology is changing so quickly, there's no way to really learn it all. It's amazing how far computers and the internet have come because my kids have been teaching other kids in their class different things on the computer since they were five. I guess my wife and I have just passed that along to them.<br><br>

The move up to Canada has actually been pretty good – in fact a highlight of my summer. The weather has been great so far – although I hear that it's not always like this and I should probably expect it to get wetter pretty soon. My wife and our two oldest, Mathieu Jr, who is 8 and Abigail, who is 7 right now, flew up here a week before I did so they could get ready for school. Myself, my mother, and my two youngest, Micah, who is 6 and Ella, who is 3 stayed back in LA to pack up and straighten up the house before driving up to Vancouver.<br><br>

We packed up the Suburban and it took us three days and honestly I was dreading it was a great trip and I loved it. It took us six hours to drive up to Sacramento, where we had our first stop, then nine hours to Portland, and five hours on the final day. My favourite part of the drive was probably going through the mountains through Oregon, it was pretty amazing and the scenery was just beautiful. It was the first time I've ever been to Washington state or Oregon so it was great to get to experience it that way.<br><br>

<img src="http://cdn.nhl.com/canucks/images/upload/2009/09/sep1309_schneider_t.jpg" alt=""style="float: right; margin-left: 8px;">Mathieu

Jr. scored 10 goals in his summer hockey league and we told him that

we'd take him to Universal Studios but we didn't get a chance to get

out there. My wife and kids did make it out to Disneyland (which I

missed out on) so they were happy with that but my son is going to make

sure that the first stop we're making when we get home next summer is

Universal Studios.<br><br> Today was the first day of formal on-ice sessions with the coaches and I'm not doing any contact but it's just good to be skating after surgery this summer. Honestly, short training camp is great, especially when you're 40 years old. I think to go for a whole month like it was before (wow I'm dating myself) is too much.<br><br>

When you look at the summers now, though, there's a huge difference now in what guys do in the offseason because guys will take 3-4 weeks off in the summer and then get right back into training. It's not just jogging a couple of miles – it's heavy training, re-building your body, recovering from injury and everything that we used to come into camp and work intensely on for a month.<br><br>

Guys are in just so much better shape and that's what training camp was for in the past. Now you come to camp and it's more fine-tuning and getting everybody on the same page, learn the systems, get the new player acclimated, maybe get in a couple of exhibition games.<br><br>

For me, I'm optimistic about getting into some preseason games, I'm feeling good right now and I think everything's coming along nicely. Now, it's just a matter of when I feel comfortable and getting contact so we'll see.