Crawford Rd tunnel

Ahh yes, mid-October in mid-Michigan…fall colours and for some reason for the past week, beautiful weather in the high 60’s-mid 70’s! (And it’s OCTOBER of all things) On CMU’s campus, everything certainly looks a lot more beautiful, but signs are seen even more across all of Mount Pleasant.

Here’s what Millpond Park looked like a few days ago…

But of course, the most scenic spot in Mount Pleasant by far, is a spot I don’t think most people on campus know about. If you turn north onto Crawford Rd from Pickard on the outskirts of town, you drive/bike under a sea of orange, yellow, light green, red, and brown.

But the most beautiful spot is just south of the entrance to Mission Creek Park, a tunnel formed by all the trees along the side of the road, covering the road with shade for a stretch of about 300 feet or so. Looking to the left & the right, you would think you’re in a forest, and you certainly don't feel like you're near a city like Mount Pleasant.

It’s now a fall tradition, on my bike rides, I detour my route up Crawford Rd between Pickard & River as much as possible, while it looks so nice. I had only a single midterm this week, and that class won’t meet the rest of the week because of it. Now my Wednesday & Friday morning between 9 and noon is empty. Time for more bike rides!

Season Preview part II

Now that the first game is over and I’ve had time to think things over, let’s go a little more in depth, and be a little more critical.

First order of business, hats off to the Leafs on the 2-0 win last night, I had to miss the second period due to a meeting, but I saw the Phaneuf goal, with an assist by Kessel. THAT WAS EXCITING!

Though Toronto did pull through quite well, they had some AWFUL play in the 1^st period, and gave the puck away in their own zone maybe, what, 5 or 6 times? How they got away with playing like that I haven’t the slightest idea. I wish guys like MacArthur, Connolly, Kadri, and of course Orr, were playing last night, the Leafs line-up seemed incomplete. Here’s hoping they’re stronger when they play the Senators tomorrow night…

Second of all, since I forgot to mention it yesterday, one thing I’m not looking forward to watching is this “new NHL.” I’m completely against what Shanahan is doing right now; he’s over-policing the league’s players and ruining a key component of the game. I support everything Don Cherry said last night in Coach’s Corner, especially the part about Scott Stevens. Hey Shanahan, how many games would Stevens get for the hit on Lindros in 2000? Or all his other big hits?

Hey Shanahan! How about this hit from the 2010 NHL Playoffs?

Turns out Sutton got suspended NO GAMES AT ALL! NOT EVEN ONE! You’re telling me Sutton could be gone for a month for THAT? Ridiculous, if players didn’t skate with their heads down, these “headshots” wouldn’t happen. The fact that there was NINE suspensions by Shanahan in the PRESEASON makes me really disappointed. MacArthur being one of them had me really worried the Leafs would be dead on offence.

Overall my focus this year is ultimately going to turn to how the game is played, and how physical it is. Just like Cherry said, if everybody’s gonna play like they did in the first period of Leafs & Habs last night, who’s gonna pay $175 for those tickets? Just wait for a nasty headshot/touch-icing to be the turning point, then hitting will be GONE. That’ll be a sad day...Believe me, I LOVE HITTING AND FIGHTS. Here's hoping Shanahan somehow loses his support for his job and has to give it back to Colin Campbell.

2011-12 NHL Season Preview

So it's once again that time of the year where the NHL season is starting and I get excited. Unlike previous years, my life as a college sophomore has pretty much taken control of my mind, so the preseason & regular season have snuck up on me. I have a little whiteboard in my room, where last year I wrote down team records, and until October 7th, counted down the days until the Leafs' home opener on there as well, starting at 30 days or so. This year there's been none of that. It's already week 7 of classes and I can't believe it's already October. Time sure flies when you're busy/maybe having fun.

So now I feel obligated to make a 2011-12 NHL prediction, even without knowing how to weigh teams as well as I have in the past. ESPN sure put in their fair share of predictions, with their "experts" putting their hopes in teams like Vancouver, Washington, Chicago, San Jose, and Pittsburgh. (Surprised to not see much for the Bruins) If I had to pick a team to win the cup, well........I don't know. It's probably toughest for an "expert" to predict a Stanley Cup caliber team, scanning the entire 30-team league for ONE champion is obviously difficult. I honestly don't want to pick one this year, in fact, I won't!!! I like teams like Philadelphia, the Rangers with Brad Richards, and Los Angeles with Drew Doughty & Mike Richards. If Crosby gets back, then I think Pittsburgh could head to the Finals, and if San Jose gets their act together in the playoffs, they've got a great fight to put up in the Finals. But for the fun of it, I'll just say the Winnipeg Jets will win the 2012 Stanley Cup! That'd be nice.....

Living in Michigan I obviously know my Red Wings as well. It'll certainly be a different year, and very likely the last for the captain Nicklas Lidstrom. Holmstrom & Bertuzzi are also on their way out sooner or later, at the ripe ages of 36 and 38. I'm excited to see Conklin back in goal for the Wings, as well as seeing Commodore & Ian White (former Maple Leaf) sign on. It's just a question of will this Wings team still be able to play as a team, like they have for the past 5 seasons? Lots of new/young faces either from other teams, or from the AHL. Detroit regardless shouldn't have any problems making their 21st postseason, but when they meet a team like the Sharks in the 2nd round again, if it happens, they once again won't get any farther.

And ahhhh yes…the Toronto Maple Leafs. Ever since I’ve been a decent fan, (right after the lockout) the Leafs have never made the playoffs. That to me is the goal above all things for Toronto right now, get some playoff hockey back in the ACC! Just like the start of last season, Toronto has a good line-up and some things going for it. I’m excited to see Reimer as the primary starter, hopefully he’ll be just as strong as he was in his 20 wins from last season, a team record for a rookie goaltender. I’m looking forward to the addition of Connolly, Lombardi, Franson, Liles, and just in the last few days, David Steckel (even with him being the guy who hit Crosby on New Year’s Day, but whatever, I guess we can look forward to some good headshots…RIGHT?). The Leafs seemed a bit more beefed-up then previous years. Some new faces, but ones I already know will be great, Kessel, Grabovski, Kulemin, Phaneuf, Schenn, and MacArthur are all here. It should be a great season, and if things go well, I can see Toronto slipping into the playoffs with 7^th or 8^th place. You’ve gotta hope, but hey, last year I predicted the Leafs would finish 10^th. They finished 10^th. MAGIC I TELL YOU! Even with this “hope” of mine, I’m just excited to get the season underway again, I just love following Toronto regardless of their record, it’s another source of entertainment in my college life, which by January or February gets a little sparse. Hockey’s there to fill the void.

And to watch Orr & Rosehill pound guys into the ice, like so!!! Hopefully Orr will be back on the roster soon enough...

Either way, I’ll be tuned into the home opener against Montreal tonight at 7pm EST, cheering for the blue & white as usual. I’ll have my Sundin jersey on, and maybe my Kessel sweater over top of that. Depends on how cold it is outside when I walk to a meeting afterwards, and how the game’s going.

My Leafs Vintage Hockey sweater, which I got customized with a big "81" last fall. Definately worth the $14 per number, I had always wanted to do that to it!

Even in Mount Pleasant, MI, there's still Canadians floating around somewhere....I FOUND THEM!

Journaling: The Number One Stress in College.

If there’s anything I wish I could improve in college, it would be having more time to do things. With classes every two hours on Monday-Wednesday-Friday, and then Marching Band, things get a little stacked up. I still go on bike rides in the evening, I keep up on my Facebook, Twitter, and Google+; and then I’ve still got some sort of reading/homework to do. I’m also someone who journals everyday, (a diary for those of you who call it that) and that usually takes place right before I go to bed. So consequently, if everything else I’m doing pushes my bedtime really late, like 1:00 or 2:00, then I sometimes put off journaling the days’ events since I’m already pretty tired.

Honestly, and interestingly enough, out of everything that can stress me out in college, putting off journaling has to be the Number One stress creator for me. Journaling everyday has been something I’ve done since August 2007, with the exception of a few long summer trips, a day or two every 6 months, etc. So basically I’m holding myself to the tradition of recording everything that happens in my life. Of course, I didn’t have even close to this amount of stuff going on in my life when I started journaling at 14. No social networking besides YouTube, it was my rookie year in High School marching band, I only had 2 or 3 core friends, and no one else. (Oh, and of course, Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday night) As I’ve gotten busier and busier, I’ve still somehow held onto this journaling thing for 4 great years.

The problem is obvious; my brain can only hold so much detailed information. If I hold off journaling for another day, I’ve not only got that day to write about still, but I just went through a whole other day, that I also need to process in my mind & write about. If this cycle continues – and recently it’s been happening a lot – I end up reaching the point where I’m at overload and have to cough up everything from the past week, as best as I can remember. It’s the biggest pain, trying to describe a day that was 5 or 6 days past, and needing to take about 5 times as long to write it down, compared to if you had just done it on that night. Not only that, but getting behind makes me feel like I’m missing out on the “present” of my life, since my mind’s desperately trying to hold on to the memories of the past couple of days.

Then I have a day where I’m in catch-up mode, spending much of my free time in the afternoon/evening getting back up to pace, journaling the last couple of days as best as I can remember. It’s also a setback from the writer’s perspective; when you journal on time, you might be able to write about a page or two for that specific day. If you get behind, and try to catch-up a few days later, you’re getting about half the length in your journal entries than you would’ve originally gotten. An epic 5 page day would now be about 2 pages.

So, funny story for everyone out there, getting behind on journaling is the absolute reason why I get stressed in college. Then finishing homework, grades, and stuff like that follows, ONLY when I’m behind on my journal entries. It’s an interesting cycle to say the least.

Back in 9^th grade, our school had a presentation about Rachel Scott, who was killed in Columbine HS in 1999. It was Rachel’s Challenge, which had a few key points to it, but one of them to accept the challenge was to keep a journal. I had tried to journal before and never got into it very much, but the statistic they then threw at me got me very intrigued. They showed something on the projector, it said that 97% of the people that kept a journal in college would graduate. And sitting there, 13 years old in my junior high school, I found this stat to be ground-breaking. I don’t think I’ve ever gone through with all of Rachel’s Challenge, but the journaling part? YES. For the next 8 months or so after the presentation, my drive to journal consistently went off course, until my best friend showed me his journals one time. He had been writing in one on-and-off since he was SEVEN!  We read through it and watched his writing, his humor, his friends, and life in general progress. I was completely re-inspired by that night, and motivated enough to start over. August 8^th, 2007 was the start of my journaling life, and since then it has stayed put as a staple of my evening routine. What abuse I’ve given such a tradition lately! How can I let myself lose it?

In writing this blog entry, I realized that I can’t do without it. I mean come on, I’ve got to be part of that 97 percent!!! I’ve gotta get my mind on the present & near future, I mean hey, this Saturday the marching band’s heading down to East Lansing, for the CMU-Michigan State game! FIRE UP CHIPS!!!!!

Leafs fans should be treated better than this

Playing pond hockey in 2008

Living in Michigan and being a die-hard Leafs fan is a hard thing to do. First of all, you have to actually care, and try to follow them as best as you can. The only Canadian TV channel I ever get to watch is CBC from Windsor, meaning those games are almost always the only ones I will ever get to watch. To keep up, I do watch every Game-In-Six on the Leaf’s website, basically a highlight reel of the game, goals, fights, etc. Though I may only get to watch about 15 live games during a season, I watch ALL the Game-in-sixes. If you don’t call that die-hard, I at least call it passionate.

Second of all, you’ve gotta have the balls to openly be a Maple Leafs fan, and take all the shit that goes along with it. Going to high school with a Leafs jersey on would sometimes even be an unpleasant experience, especially during playoff season. In my time at grade school, I only saw ONE OTHER PERSON ever wear a Maple Leafs jersey/sweater, back in 9^th grade. The one time we both wore ours the same day, and stood next to each other in the hall, was likely one of the coolest things I had ever done. Sadly that guy moved away about a year later, so I was now the lone Leafs fan.

A few days ago, I got a facebook message from a friend still in high school, she walked into her Law & Society class and there was a kid with a Leafs jersey on. When I read this I literally yelled at my computer, “WHAT??? Nawwwwwwww, THIS IS NOT HAPPENING…….THIS IS AWESOME!!!” I’m telling you, this kind of occurrence doesn’t happen much. Hats off to that kid, he probably got a lot of hate, just like I did. Even the Pittsburgh fans gave me hate! And they’re already in metro-Detroit of all things. Why are you telling me Canada sucks when over half your team is made up of Canadian players? (Or European, which doesn’t constitute American either)

Third, and the most obvious, you have to continue to be patient, as I have. The first season I caught onto hockey was right after the lockout, 2005-06. The Leafs had been making the playoffs consistently until the lockout, since then everything went downhill. After two 9^th place seasons, Toronto started to fall apart. Players started to leave, most importantly Sundin, leaving me quite disappointed in ’08 when he sat out half the season considering retirement, then simply joined the Canucks for millions. 2008-09 and 2009-10 were sad years for the Leafs, not even a team captain, the only club worse than ours was the Oilers. (And I felt bad for them too) We didn’t make the playoffs in 2011 either, so that’s six straight years. Many years of saying “we’ll make it next year” have never amounted to anything.

My teenage years of being a sports fan mainly consisted of my team letting me down, year after year after year. Though I have also been a fan of the Red Wings, the passion isn’t there like it is for Toronto. I get sick of bandwagon hockey fans, ones that simply yell at the TV and tell the players to “GO THE OTHER WAY” and get all pissed off at the goalie when he lets in one goal. That pretty much describes half the Red Wings fans I know, sadly. Who knew that when you have a classy hockey team like Detroit, who’s been in the playoffs every season since the early 90’s, you’d spoil all your fans in the process. Well, if anything, I can proudly say that I’m still proud of my team, even when they suck. I still watch every Game-in six, every game I can catch on CBC, even when they get curb-stomped by Boston or Buffalo or the Capitals, I’m still tuned in, because that’s all I get to watch.

Which brings me to my point. Yeah, lookin’ at you Leafs TV. If you check out a good amount of NHL team websites, you’ll find that many of them carry their preseason games online, live stream, for free. For Toronto, one of the biggest hockey cities in the world, Leafs TV thinks it can monopolize even PRESEASON GAMES for Christ sake, and make you subscribe to Leafs TV Interactive to watch them. Their “freeview” feature is only available to LeafsTV customers, so it’s actually not even free.

What a bunch of scumbags. I remember curling up in a blanket next to my desktop 2 years ago, eating a bowl of ice cream, watching the Leafs & Wings in a preseason game. They won it 5-4 in a shootout, had to be one of my favorite memories of the Leafs. What a shame that the Maple Leafs organization doesn’t give back to the fans. They’re the most valuable franchise in the NHL, at $505 Million, with an operating income of 82 million. Is there no room in the ACC for some love for the fans? Fans like me, who after following the team like mad, even when they’ve been mediocre the whole time, get shit on like this? A 2008 poll on all the teams of the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL finds Toronto ranked 121^st out of 122 in rewarding fans. And LeafsTV is now part of the problem. So fuck it, I guess I'll just go to Joe Louis Arena and see a Red Wings game for $30 a ticket, while Morbidly Obese Cats in Toronto continue to price the same type of ticket at over $200. Us fans can only do so much!

Beal City

So I never got to it since I've been a little busy with college stuff, but last week I did a ride to Beal City, MI. The whole ride was only 25 miles or so, but on my college bike - an 80's mountain bike with no suspension - you can't ride as efficiently as on the 7300. So in workout terms, it might've been just as good as a 40 miler on the 7300, I usually feel pretty drained after a long ride on the college bike.

As far as I know it's a 1988 Cycletech Novapro, and I can't find almost anything about this thing online. It's an 18-speed, with a bio-pace chain ring, and as far as I know, original chain & sprockets. The only thing I've altered while owning it is the actual seat, and replacing the tires & tubes. I doubt my dad ever rode it as much as I do, so it's in fairly good condition. The overall mileage for 2011, on both my 7300 and the Cycletech, is almost 3,000. WOO-HOO!

So far at CMU

So far Central has been quite a good experience, new classes, new people I know, and new adventures everyday. It turns out the FA is under a temporary restraining order, so classes have gone on without trouble. My favorite so far is a journalism course, required for my Journalism minor. One of the ongoing assignments is to write about a news article everyday, summerizing and giving a response. It's gotten me reading our campus newspaper, the Toronto Star, and the Morning Sun on a regular basis.
Our first home football game was awesome, the Chippewas beat SC State 21-6. As for the marching band, we rocked our first pregame & halftime of the season.
Being home for Labor Day weekend is almost a 'reward' so to say, for a well done first 2 weeks of the school year. I drove down to Ann Arbor to visit some good friends at U of M, and I'm even planning on checking out Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at Arts Beats & Eats tomorrow!