A rant about time (or lack thereof)

The southeast portion of our country might have seen a congregating force of some of the most unintelligent people that populate our great 50 states.

Idiots Protesters came out in full force today to show their boastful animation against dog cruelty. Really though, what are they doing? It's probably 90°+ where they're at, on a Thursday afternoon, and people somehow find some free time to drop everything they are doing and go shout in front of some cameras. Maybe next time, they should spend their free afternoons on Wednesday's creating a half way decent sign if they want to be out in public with people. Yes lady in the picture, I'm talking about you. Either she's never used a Sharpie before, or she told her three-year old that was the only way he was going to get dessert at dinner.

Surprisingly, my big question isn't how these people find time to protest, it's why they're out protesting. I can't imagine the demographic that they are trying to reach. Everyone knows that animal cruelty is wrong. Even those people (notice how I danced around saying "Vick"? Innocent until guilty, right?) who organize the dog fights know that what they are doing is wrong. I just can't imagine the person driving by in his/her car that stops and looks over to think, "Really honey? You can't do that?"

If you're going to protest, protest for a just and reasonable cause. It reminds be of the late Mitch Hedberg who said, "I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it."

If anything good came out of this whole ordeal, it might be from the Long Beach Armada minor league baseball team. They are throwing the very first "Michael Vick Animal Awareness Day." If you bring in a Vick shirt or jersey, you get in for free, and of course, you get to bring your dog to the game. I should call up the Braves and tell them to continue this on for their "Bark in the Park" nights that they organize every year.

So after all of that has been said and done, here's to you Ron Mexico.
Here's to you.

Greatest toy (idea) ever?

For some reason while growing up, every kid seems to have a distinct liking to toys. I can even say that I've seen my fair share from the Mattel He-Man series to Marvel's X-Men. Then I saw this toy.

This might be the most creative toy, if you can call it that, ever produced in the history of mankind. The sad thing is that it's just funny enough, that some people probably actually purchased it.

Maybe I'm just a little prejudice because I love MacGyver, but the concept is just brilliant. The best part has to be the fact that it says "AS SEEN ON TV" on the box.

Why Erica is awesome

Over the 4^th of July weekend, Erica flew back in to surprise dad for his birthday. On the day before she left, she found out that someone broke into her house earlier that day. Obviously she was distraught over what happened, but what she did when she flew back home was amazing.

If something like that happened to me, the minute I landed back home, I'd rush to my house and start an inventory in my head of everything I could remember. Not Erica though. When she landed, Tucker picked her up, and they went out sailing. Absolutely amazing. There's no way that I could do that at all.

Other little things for this month why she's awesome include (but are not limited to):

1) Finishing her master thesis. She said she will be defending it on the 26^th of July in Monterey.
2) Coming to visit us on the 6^th of August.
3) Moving (back) to Germany.
4) Taking this amazing shot of the Golden Gate Bridge on her camera. Her film camera, mind you (Erica's old school like that).

Maybe next week I'll write about how awesome my sister-in-law Beth is. She did just get engaged, so that's pretty much awesome in itself.

3 out of 4

I had a really long Saturday as I took my baseball team down to Silver Cliff to play a best 2 out of 3 tournament. We ended up winning the games 20-8 and 17-5, respectively, as we earned a birth into the Colorado state tournament.

Thinking back, I've been a primary coach for 4 different years. In my first 2 years of college, I coached the Seward juniors, in college I coached our club team, and now I'm coaching in Colorado.

In my first year with Seward, our team went to state. For those that know, we hosted state that year, so people might say that doesn't really count, but we ended up getting 2^nd, so we showed we deserved to be there.

With the club team, the only year that I coached, we made it to regionals and found out why Colorado State had won the national championship the past three years. Regardless, we were ranked in the top 5 most of the year and earned a birth to a regional tournament.

Then this last Saturday, our team qualified as one of eight 15- teams to compete for a chance to play in the regional tournament in Iowa (woohoo ... I know).

So thinking back, in the 4 years that I've had a major role in coaching a team, I've taken 3 of the 4 to tournaments that you have to qualify for. I'm not going to say that I have a great coaching technique or anything (well, at least I won't tell you), I just think I've fallen into the right teams at the right time.

Team chemistry is first and foremost for qualities that help you have a strong season. So if you're reading this Matt Richart, that's the reason we selected you for the '06 club team.

Contain it and Clip it

Apparently the love of Rock and Ice is spreading throughout the web. I just got a few emails in the past few days notifying me that my sites have been posted in some CSS galleries.

Click on the images above to view the RI site in their respected galleries.

Big thanks to csscontainer.com and cssclip.com. You guys rock, just not as much as our magazine. Yep, the pun was intended for sure.

Roughin' it at the Peak

Christi and I headed out on Friday to go up for a camping trip with Matt and Korri. Our adventure got of to a weird start when we were about 10 miles away from meeting up with the other two.

While watching the car in front of us, with 5 full sized dogs in the back, one of them flew out when the truck hit a bump on the road. The dog luckily landed on some soft gravel, rolled a few times, and then walked off. Christi and I honked, threw on our blinkers and did everything that we could to get the attention of the car in front of us, but with no luck. They finally stopped in the same city that we did, and when we tracked them down, the wife who was driving, didn't even acknowledge us when we pulled up.

The husband who was sleeping in the back had no clue, and the wife didn't tell him that we were trying to stop them. So, we told the husband what happened, and by the look on his face, we're both guessing that they didn't have the most fun ride back looking for their dog.

After the whole ordeal, we met up with Matt and Korri and started driving through the park to Pike's Peak. We finally got to a spot with a sign that read: "No vehicles permitted beyond this point." Matt looked at us and told us to throw our Jeep into 4-lo and just follow up him up the mountain.

This part of the trip was probably the most exciting. We spent the next 20-30 minutes, climbing and balancing our cars driving up rocks that had fallen down the mountain. To say the least, on our 300+ ft. car climb, we broke in our Jeep and really used it for what it was intended to do. It's tough to write about because you really had to be there to experience what we went through. It's not like we just drove up some gravel road to our campsite, we literally teeter-tottered our car while strategically navigating our path so that we didn't rip out our transmission on the boulders we were driving over.

After we got down with the most exciting car ride of our lives, we made it to our campsite. It is a little place about a mile away from Pike's Peak and about 2000-3000 feet below it, elevation wise. We're lucky to have known Matt since he used to work for the City of Colorado Springs and traveled up the road when you used to be able to. So, thinking back on it, we camped out in a spot that probably only a handful of people in the entire world know about.

Our campsite was amazing and since we got up there a little late, we spent a little bit of time walking down to the fishing hatcheries and then came back to set up shop before the sun left us for the night.

We did the usual camping stuff by grilling out, making s'mores and of course sitting around a huge fire that we made. When we woke up the next morning (freezing), we found ice chunks in the dog's water dish to let us know that it got pretty cold the night before.

We then took a long hike down to the lakes to view the Peak and get a different look of the mountain. After our treacherous hike back up to the campsite, we gave Christi her first lessons in firing a gun and then packed up and headed into Colorado Springs.

Both Matt and Korri are from the Springs, so they were great tour guides for us. Especially Matt. He took us to see the little historic parts of town, to a great popcorn place, and then to the Garden of the Gods. What a site that is! If you're ever in the area, you definitely have to make the trip to check out the huge boulders there.

I've finally updated my picture page and loaded the pictures from the 4^th and from the camping trip on there. We had a great weekend, and our next voyage will take us to Omaha in two weeks.

Our American Hero?

Since Kobayashi entered the American eating stage (and more importantly, Nathan's 4^th of July hot dog eating contest), I've dedicated 12 minutes out of each year to watching the Japanese phenom scarf down as many hot dogs as he can.

As many know, this year he was uprooted as the American Joey Chestnut consumed 5.5 hot dogs (plus buns!) per minute (66 total). I'm not here to go on and on about the actual competition, but more so on how ESPN sent their worst reporters to cover the action. Somehow, the broadcasters had enough to talk about during the hour long event to make you feel interested.

Nothing was better than when the announcer, who's name escapes me, was screaming with about 1:00 left, " ... Chestnut is up by one dog, and if he can hold on, it will be the greatest upset in the history of American sports!"

Sure, Kobayashi had won 6 straight titles, but THE GREATEST UPSET IN AMERICAN SPORTS?

Seriously ESPN. Seriously. Maybe next time you have one of your workers open their mouth on national television, have them stop to think about that hockey game in 1980. Oh yeah, I heard that was in the middle of the Cold War ... no big deal.

We're green again

A while ago, I was complaining when Google switched to the new Blogger. The gripe that I had with the search engine giant was that they could've made one tiny switch in their code to make everyone's blogs valid (or at least those of us who really care).

I'm big into validation, and I strongly believe that anyone who has control over their content on the web, should be as well.

Either way, I was relieved to have finally found a fix to the problem that has been bugging me (no pun intended) for almost 6 months now.

Go check it out: I'm green again!

Differences

Here's one thing that I've never understood in life: why are some keypads and number pads inverted while others are not?



It just seems strange that no matter what you use: ATM, keyboard, phone, etc., the keypad that you are entering your information into is different every time.

Maybe I missed the memo on this growing up, but is there a standard on when you should invert the numbers and when you shouldn't?

Beyond my years?

On our road trip the other day to Steamboat Springs (by the way, our AVERAGE road trip is 2+ hours), some of my players and I brought up 9.11 for some reason or another. This got me saying something to the effect of "I remember that was my senior year of high school ..."

With this, everyone in the car was stunned. I wasn't sure why, but then they let me know that they all thought I was older. Much older in fact.

The general consensus in my car was that I was 30+. So with this, I waited until the rest of my team met up with me at the field, and I asked them to see how old they thought I was: 29, 30 and 34 were the guesses.

I scruff out a beard up here in the mountains, but I assure you, I don't look like I'm anywhere close to being 30. I'd like to think I still have that college-ish look to me (since that was only 6 months ago).

In the end, I was pleased that they are giving me 10+ years of respect that I really shouldn't be getting.

With this, here are some highlights my team has put together in our short 12 game season so far:
1) No hitter
2) Right-center fielder throwing a runner out at first on a single
3) Triple Play
4) Clean up hitter stole home
5) Suicide squeeze performed with my Jim Abbott style hitter
6) 6-6 overall record and we've only had a full 9 man lineup for 6 games

The Clique

Ben VanKat
Troy Bell
Chris VanKat

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