Category Sports

So mid-morning yesterday my buddy Matt was chatting to me.  He asked what plans I had for last night.  Since I was already pooped from going to the bar Wednesday night I told him I was just going to be hanging at home, probably working on housework.

Matt told me he had a spare ticket for the Heat/Bulls game last night and asked if I was interested in going.  A bunch of his co-workers were doing a bachelor party thing and going to the game was part of it.  Evidently one of the guys had a personal issue come up last minute and wasn’t able to go.

Well there were a a couple reasons I would have normally said thanks but not thanks.  Like I said, my ass was dragging already.  The idea of spending 4 + hours behind the wheel last night to get to Miami and back seemed pretty silly.  Plus I am not a Heats fan in the least, hell I am not really an NBA fan anymore for that matter. The jaunt would also cost a few bucks between the ticket, parking, gas and food.

Despite those negatives I saw it s an opportunity to do something different, something out of the ordinary.  These days these type of things are very appealing to me.

I told Matt that if he had any other co-workers that would want to go he should offer it to them first however if there were no takers I would step in.  Matt said there weren’t any other candidates.  So shortly after our virtual conversation he swung by the office and dropped off the ticket.  I told him I would meet him at the venue.

Even with leaving the office a little early, by the time I got home, changed and back out the door it was maybe 5:45.  With a tip off of 8 PM I knew I would be hard pressed to get there before the game started.

I grabbed an extra large DD coffee on the way home and then supplemented it with rest stop coffee along the way.  It was absolutely necessary. Without coffee I would have been either in a ditch or sound asleep in a parking lot somewhere.

The drive over to Miami was fine until I hit the logjam of vehicles as I approached the stadium area.  I circled the arena bit looking for a reasonably priced place to park.  I saw some places charging as much as $25.

I found a place maybe 4 or 5 blocks away that was only $12 so that was my spot.  By the time I parked and actually got into the building it was probably 8:20 or so.  My lack of passion for NBA basketball meant missing the first few minutes of the game didn’t bother me in the least.

I had not eaten any dinner so the first thing I did before finding my seat was grab some stadium food.  My personal pizza and souvenir soda clocked in right under $20, sheesh.

My seat was in the 400 level which is the upper deck.  My seat was in row 17.  I found out that section 405 has exactly 17 rows.  Yep I was at the top of the arena.

Even being up that high I could see the court well enough, at least well enough for me.  Matt had actually bought two blocks of tickets, he was in a different block that was in the 2nd row of the adjacent section.  I figured he would come find me so I sat down and enjoyed my pizza.

Matt did eventually spot me and come up.  We watched the game from that high vantage point until halftime.  When the seats emptied out we moved his entire group to the better seats.  By that time enough people had started shifting around that there were open seats available.  Knocking 16 rows off definitely brought the game action significantly closer.

Speaking of the game, it was a good one.  The Heat and the Bulls are the top two teams in the Eastern Conference right now.  The game was a physical, low scoring variety with lots of pushing and shoving.  I think there were three or four technical fouls called during the game.  Lebron James and Dwayne Wade both made some unbelievable plays.

Well late into the fourth quarter the Heat had around a 10 point lead.  Matt, knowing I had to work today, said he asked their limo driver if there was a trick to beating the traffic after the game.  He said the only trick was to leave early. Well that  is exactly what I did, thanking Matt and sneaking out with about 4:30 left on the game clock.

The walk back to the parking lot was a bit scary.  There wasn’t the huge wave of humanity that I rode into the stadium with. Instead I was quick walking it back to the lot mostly solo.  Some of the walk included poorly lit sidewalks with plenty of dark corners.  I was quite aware of my surroundings, ready to react if need be.

It was about 10:45 so the people that live on the streets were already starting to lay down in “bed”.  I passed one inlet that had a few guys already in sleeping bags.  The smell of urine as I walked by was quite evident.

Luckily I made it to my truck without being assailed.  I fired it up and headed out pronto, I knew the tsunami of humanity was going to be spilling from the arena at any moment.  I JUST made it out onto the main road that lead to 95 before the crowds engulfed the streets, I felt quite fortunate.

The drive back across the state went well.  I didn’t feel as dangerously drowsy as I expected.  Maybe the coffee, two large diet sodas and the excitement of the game (the Heat won), helped me along.  I pulled into the driveway right around 1AM.

Again my lack of exhaustion surprised me.  I actually checked my email on my pc before heading back to take a shower and go to bed.  Waking up this morning was painful however on less than four hours sleep.

Despite all the driving, the costly gas, dealing with congestion in the city and the day after exhaustion, I chalked up my Thursday night excursion to the Heat game as worth it.

Has anyone else seen the latest version of Microsoft Messenger that is included in Windows Live?  Wow it pretty much does it all.  It ties into almost any popular site/social media you can imagine and aggregates it all into one UI.  I like it, a lot.

I have all my ducks lined up now for the SSR work, including confirming next Thursday as when Sinister Kustoms is going to do the clutch/flywheel work.  I just hope I am able to make the roughly 3 hour drive to his shop without whatever is making noise in the flywheel area blowing apart.

This will be a laborious weekend.  At the house I need to mow and whack the grass, do cleaning, replace the ripped screen and hopefully get the oil changed in the Tacoma.  It would be nice if I got the new plugs in the truck as well.

I also will be heading over to Ali’s place on Saturday to attend to a few more items and bring over some stuff she needs.  I’d like to help her get the majority of her boxes emptied since I know having them around is stressing her out.

I was planning on also doing the hella early GCR run Saturday morning. Busy, busy, busy.

Yesterday I received training on how to use an AED (Automatic Emergency Defibrillator).  They recently installed an AED at our office.  After receiving the training I wondered why it was necessary at all.  It makes the process pretty much idiot proof as long as you can read and follow direction.  The machine talks you through what to do.  One thing I did not know was it actually will do a test to verify if the persons heart is actually stopped before it advises you to administer a shock.

So after work I had a running club board meeting to attend.  It has become a tradition that I indulge in my once or twice a month McD’s habit before going to the meeting since I had an hour to kill.  I approached a near by location and pulled into the rather lengthy drive thru line which had 5 or 6 vehicles in it.

As I was sitting there an eternal dialogue began in my head.  I recalled my visit to the fair the night before and how I felt as I walked through the livestock area, specifically the miserable cow with it’s sad eyes.  I was conflicted about indirectly contributing to the demise of such animals by buying and eating hamburgers from McDonald’s of all places, one of the great facilitators of feeding the population garbage food.

The habitual part of me argued that the burger, small fries and Diet Coke would taste good, plus I only have this junk once in awhile, anything bad if it is in small enough quantities or frequency  is typically ok.

Well the logical part of my mind won out.  I pulled out of the line and headed down to the nearby Subway where I had a 6 inch tuna (never saw a sad tuna) on wheat bread with tomato, lettuce and spinach.  I washed it down with water.

I felt good about my choice and applying some willpower instead of just mindlessly consuming something that conflicts with how I really feel about animals in the food chain.  Although I don’t know that I will ever declare myself a hard core pescatarian(fish as only meat) or vegetarian I hope that when given an option I will go the non-carnivore route.

Of course one established part of a non-meat diet are whole grains, especially wheat. This morning one of my bar buddies posted a video of a professor speaking about the real deal with today’s wheat.

Now I was already familiar with the genetic manipulation of corn and soy to maximize yields while making them immune to toxic weed killers.  Well evidently the same sort of work has been done with modern wheat as well.

Of course this doesn’t really surprise me if I am being honest.  You can be almost assured that anything that is mass produced by the food industry is going to have shit in it that if you knew about would give you pause.

Anyway, if you want to get more depressed about the state of the food industry, take a look at this.

There were two surprises in yesterdays NFL news. The first was the news that Tim Tebow was traded to the Jets.  This didn’t seem to make any sense to me considering they just gave their starting QB,  Mark Sanchez a huge contract extension that he really didn’t deserve based on performance.  It seems like a horrible fit.

Sanchez has a history of having a rather frail personality.  Having Tebow on the team means he will be constantly looking over his shoulder and the fans will surely be chanting for Tebow the second Sanchez screws up.

Then later in the day there was news that the Tebow trade was back in the air and he now had an option to go to the Jets OR the Jaguars.  The Jags seemed to be a much better fit if for no other reason that the presence of Tebow would help pump some much needed excitement and attendance numbers into the franchise.

Well once again this morning the report is Tebow will be going to the Jets after all, that’s a real head scratcher for me.  It certainly doesn’t make the Jets brain trust appear to be very sharp.

However the real shocker for me yesterday was the news that the league was suspending the Saints coach, Sean Peyton for the entire 2012/2013 season for his role in the team bounties.  Evidently the defensive coordinator for the Saints, Greg Williams, was offering bounties for his defensive players to injure opposing QB’s to the point where they are knocked out of the game.  Williams, who is no longer with the team, has been suspended indefinitely.

Anyway, I thought the suspension was really severe.  The idea of bounties in the NFL is quite old.  Hell I remember Buddy Ryan talking about them openly during his time with the Eagles.  Well evidently in the new warm and fuzzy NFL this is a major no no.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think offering money for players to try to hurt an opposing team’s player is cool at all.  I just think the year long suspension without pay (will cost Peyton 6 MILLION DOLLARS) is over the top.

Sure, suspend him for a few games him but don’t cripple the team for the entire year in the process.  Hell they also took two draft picks away from the team in addition to a hefty fine.

Obviously this was intended to send a message.  I am sure the rest of the teams in the league heard it loud and clear.

I have been quite surprised at some of the collateral damage from Peyton Manning’s search for a new team.

At first I thought he was going to Miami or the Cardinals, two teams without very successful or popular QB’s. However recently the focus has shifted to the Broncos, 49ers and the Titans, three teams that had QB’s that all were successful last season to varying degrees.

The Titans have Matt Hasselback, an older QB with a history of injury but statistically he had a good year throwing for over 3500 yards with 18 TD’s.  Even so Peyton Manning would be a step up and he has a Tennessee connection since he went to college there.

The interest by the 49ers really surprised me since Alex Smith had a breakout year last season.  It seemed odd to me that they would be willing to so quickly walk away from that momentum although I did not realize that Smith was a free agent right now.

Then you have the Broncos and Tim Tebow.  Tebow, despite by all accounts being statistically horrendous, was a certifiable league sensation last year.  Somehow he managed a number of comeback wins despite posting numbers that would make most high school QB’s take a seat on the bench.

Of course during the season there were rumblings of overall dissatisfaction with Tebow as the team QB of the future since he seemed very poor at doing the one thing a QB is supposed to do, throw the ball.  Even so, I imagined that dramatic win against the Steelers in the playoffs would have at least bought him one year as the de facto starting QB where he would get a bonafide chance to prove if he can be a real NFL QB or if last year was just a series of flukes.

Well the latest headlines seem to indicate that Denver will be the winner of the Manning sweepstakes.  To be honest, of all of the teams that were mentioned as real contenders for his services, Denver seems like the least logical fit. I can hardly believe that God would allow this to happen to Tim.

Oh well, it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.