God Blessed Texas

As the season begins to change from fall to winter, the days grow shorter. The mornings have gotten a little bit chilly by Texas standards. Never did I think I would have to wear pants or long sleeves down here!
My perspective is unique and might sound a little crazy. This is because the college I transferred from was in Standish, Maine. Saint Joseph’s College sits on Lake Sebago, a large body of fresh water that freezes over in the arctic chill of the Maine winter.
Growing up in Massachusetts, I had seen a few tough winters before I went up to school for my freshman year at Saint Joseph’s. I didn’t think much about the weather when I made the decision to go to college up in Maine. The drive up took a mere two and a half hours, so I figured it couldn’t be all that different; I was wrong.
The first snow of my freshman year fell sometime shortly after Halloween. About two weeks later, the stuff was falling out of the sky like you see in a snow globe. I literally felt like it snowed twenty-four hours a day. Now, in fairness, I enjoy snow in moderation as much as anybody. Snowball fights, sledding, and many other great things come out of a nice snowstorm. Let me tell you first hand, the novelty wears off QUICKLY.
It got to the point where it was so cold and there was so much snow on the ground that you had to bundle up in layers upon layers just to make the journey to the dining hall for dinner. Darkness falls earlier in Texas now than it did in the summer. But darkness FALLS in Maine. In the dead of winter, at around 3:45 every afternoon, whipping snow and freezing wind mask the last few drops of sun before darkness ensues. It is depressing! I’m a generally happy person, and the lack of sunlight in Maine during the winter definitely affected my mood.
The final straw for me was when baseball season came around. I had braved a tough winter and was looking forward to getting out on the field with my teammates and welcoming spring in the right way. Mother nature thought otherwise. We would be up at dawn three days a week shoveling the snow off of our field! This continued for six straight weeks leading up to the season so that when the ground had finally begun to thaw, we could play our version of baseball on a mucky, wet field.
It was then I knew I had to make a change. I visited Texas in early October of the next year. When I got onto the plane at Portland International, it was snowing and I could see my breath. Not six hours later, I touched down in San Antonio to the tune of sweat dripping off of my brow. My mind had been made up before I ever saw Trinity or met any of the baseball coaches here. I wasn’t sure what I was going to think of the people, but I was sure that they couldn’t be bad enough to affect the way I felt about this incredible climate.
So here’s to my first winter in Texas. If my friends back home could see me now, shivering to the tune of fifty degrees!

Pictures: http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/content/binary/texas2.gif
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Dog Attack

Last night I was on my way to the library at about 8:30, darkness had fallen. Typically I drive to the library since I live off campus, but I was feeling like taking a good walk. About 100 yards into my walk, I came across a stray dog that was barking at some other dogs. The stray was out in the front yard of a house, and the other dogs were in the backyard behind a tall fence. The stray was a good-sized black dog. I couldn’t make out the breed, but needless to say he was a force to be reckoned with. I saw the altercation going on between the dogs and figured I’d get over onto the other side of the rode-make it clear I was minding my own business. As I was doing so, the large stray turned his attention to me, apparently feeling threatened by my presence. He began to growl and approach slowly. I remained calm; decided I would head off in the direction opposite him in order to make it clear I wanted no trouble.

This technique didn’t work; the dog became even more infuriated! I peeked over my shoulder to see that he was only a few feet behind me, and not stopping for anything. He seemed to be in a frantic state and I no longer had a plan of attack. So what did I do? Probably the dumbest thing you could do; I ran. There was a pickup truck about 50 feet in the distance and I figured I could beat the beast to the bed of the pickup and recalculate from there, hoping he would eventually just turn back to the barking dogs. What I didn’t calculate was that a dog of this size could potentially jump itself into the same bed of the truck. I made it into the bed feeling like Benny “the Jet” Rodriquez in Sandlot.

This dog was foaming at the mouth trying to get up into the bed of the truck to do who knows what to me. At this point I was beyond freaked out and ready to call animal control. All of a sudden, a passing car with its lights on drove by the scene and noticed I was in a little bit of a jam. The motorist beeped his horn several times until the dog took off. I didn’t get a chance to thank her for what she did before she sped off but I was truly grateful. I jumped out of the bed and continued on to the library, laughing off what could have been a horrible situation.

This got me to thinking, what is the best technique when a dog or other animal approaches you like that? I didn’t think running away was the best, so I did some research, and here’s what I found:

Picture: http://www.los-angeles-injury-lawyer-blog.com/Dog_attack2.jpg

Roots

I haven’t been back home since early June when I came back down to Texas to play baseball for the summer. When I made the decision to transfer to Trinity, I did so knowing that there would be times when I would miss home, miss my friends, miss the comfort of everything I had known. I also left home for the same reasons. I knew that moving to a new place for my college years would offer me a chance to grow in ways I wouldn’t have if I had stayed in the Northeast.

The different culture and customs of the South came as a bit of a shock at first, but I find myself taking to them quite well. I’ve learned to tolerate and even embrace the use of the term “ya’ll”; though I still maintain I WILL NEVER use it myself for as long as I live. I’ve learned to two-step, another thing I swore I would never do when I first laid eyes on it.

I’ve met people down here with much different views on everything; politics, religion, to name a few. Now that I’m home for a brief stay, I realize that I do miss the things I had come to take for granted while I lived here all my life. There is something to be said for how different people are up here. They aren’t always as polite and hospitable, but they’ll always tell it to you straight. When you’re around your family and friends, it’s humbling and serves as a reminder that no matter how far away you choose to travel, your roots will always remain. I think sometimes we are so quick to want to get away from what we know for the idea of something new that we forget how fortunate we’ve been.

Picture: http://fotosa.ru/stock_photo/image100/p_2439917.jpg

Loyalty is EVERYTHING.

There have been several times in the past few weeks where I look around in disbelief at some of the decisions that people make. I am part of a team at Trinity and have played on teams my entire life. If you’ve shared in the same experience, then the following will make perfect sense to you; and if you haven’t, then let me enlighten you a little bit.

A team is a weird thing to explain. When you’re a young kid, you grow up playing sports with all of your buddies from the town. You’re on various teams, but you don’t really understand what it means yet, and you’re just having fun playing the game. You get a little bit older, and adults start to get involved. Expectations, disappointment, politics; they all make their way into the team and try their best to ruin the purity of the game. The thing that saves you is the team. Its easy to forget about all of the problems and pressures of the world when you’re around a bunch of guys you can laugh with.

By the time you’re in high school, you might be playing next to the same guy you’ve played with since you were ten years old. Things like this are truly incredible. When you can look to your left and look to your right, and know that each guy is in it with you through thick or thin, you feel like you can’t be beat.

The best thing about teams is that the same guys you play with become your best friends off of the playing field. Its natural; you spend so much time together, share the same experiences, so of course you spend time outside of the game talking about anything and everything. You TRUST them. They run next to you when the coaches are pissed off and decide its time to teach the team a lesson. They pick you up when you throw your helmet because you’ve been playing like garbage for the last two weeks. They take you out when your girlfriend is giving you a hard time to try and raise your spirits. They pull for you-always.

No team is perfect, fights happen. In the heat of competition, or even in the locker room, things are said and sometimes a guy has just had enough. Most times, some pushing and shoving, a few curse words, but then it’s done. The next day you slap hands, flash a grin and say, “I would have had you if they hadn’t broken it up.”

The only thing that destroys a team is when somebody inside the circle decides they want to break the bond. What I’m getting at is when a guy runs to the coaches anytime something is said, or anytime things aren't going smoothly. Rather than handling it in house, this type of guy feels so powerless in his situation that he decides to “run and tell” rather than man up and handle his issues within the team. Are the coaches a part of the team? Sort of. They facilitate things, give the players directions, etc. But there are some things the coaches need to know about, and other things that can be handled in-house. There is NOTHING more damaging to a team, than when a coach brings up something that was said in confidence amongst the players. Something that was not to be repeated so that one guy could get a pat on the butt. This type of thing ruins a team if not addressed. The same way that lack of trust ruins a friendship, a marriage, you get the point. You may think I’m blowing this out of proportion, but if you’ve been there you know I’m not. I don’t give a damn how good you are, what year you’re in, or what your parents do for a living. If you’re on my team, all I ask from you is that you have my back like I’ll have yours. That when somebody gives you some back talk, you handle it like a man and address it face to face. If you feel the need to go whine to a coach at this point in your life, you might as well punch your ticket out of here, because the guys on the team don’t forget.

Photos: http://abritishman.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/a-disillusioned-robinson-cano-reacts-after-having-witnessed-his-team-lose-to-the-netherlands-3-2-in-the-first-round-of-pool-play.jpg

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Tour de Ignorance

I know this has happened to you; you're in your car, driving down the street, and there right in front of you, where there should be a car, is some fool on a racing bike with his arm out for a left turn signal!

I get it all right; the law says that these bikers have the right to pedal in the middle of traffic and pretend like being on a bike is the same as being in a car...it's not! I have absolutely no problem with the bikers who stay to the side of the road; this is their hobby and I realize that trying to get a workout in on the sidewalks of America would be frustrating and dangerous. All I'm saying is that the majority of bikers have taken it too far. I feel like at least once a week my heart is in my stomach while I'm behind the wheel because some Lance Armstrong wanna-be pedals out of a stop sign right in front of me. For me, there is nobody who will ever be able to justify that a bike belongs in traffic. Let's get hypothetical to prove my point. Scenario: I'm in a car, you're on a bike, one of us messes up, which is always a possibility, we collide; I hate to break it to you bikers, you lose every time! We're not talking serious injury; we're talking life or death! I know you have your body tight riding gear and your awkwardly long plastic helmet, but neither is going to do you much good if we collide.

Laws are laws, I'm not a lobbyist, and I don't feel the need to write a letter to congress in protest of the bikers' rights to the road. All I'm saying is use common sense. If you were on a bike, wouldn't you want to err on the side of caution when on busy roadways? It comes down to this, if you're on the side of the road, you are giving yourself an exponentially better chance of not being hit by a passing motorist. What drives the bikers out into the middle of the street? This might not be a popular statement, so I apologize if I offend anyone, but I get the feeling that most bikers have a ridiculous sense of entitlement when it comes to the roadways. Every guy I pass on the street seems to be wearing this tremendous grin of satisfaction that while he's getting his workout in, there's a line of pissed off motorists behind him who are just going to have to go at his pace; because rules are rules. A locus of control for some power hungry biker who probably went on the ride to blow off some steam in the first place. What better way than to ruin everyone else's commute?

Call me outlandish for taking a shot at the road racing biker clan, but I've had it with you people. Get yourself on the side of the road or buy a stationary spinning bike that you can use in your living room. Done.

Pictures: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/8/19/1250670387113/Lance-Armstrong-riding-in-001.jpg

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The Inevitable Collapse

I'm not a huge TV guy, but I do have a tendency to get hooked on a certain show every now and then.

First it was 24, Jack Bauer saving the world from terrorists and the like. I would get so excited to watch Jack pump the bad guys full of lead that I planted myself on the couch faithfully every Monday night for 5 seasons. My Dad brother and I would declare "man time" downstairs, letting my Mom and sister know it was time for them to clear out for the next hour. We celebrated each triumphant Jack moment with a "whooooooooo" or some high fives. The guy just personified what man-hood was all about.

My latest TV addiction has been Entourage; an HBO series about four friends from Queens, one of whom has made it big in Hollywood. If you haven't seen the show, its basically four buddies living the life that every guy dreams of; dating models, driving Ferrari's, and playing golf seemingly every other day. The creators of the show struck gold with the college male demographic from episode one. Watching Vinny Chase drop smooth as silk pickup lines on supermodels time after time just never got old. Ari Gold showed us what it takes to be a tough businessman, even if he is brash at times.

These shows caught me for different reasons; but sadly both have reached the same point for me. I watch 24, plant myself on the couch now for the last two seasons, just hoping, WISHING that THIS will be the episode where the magic is captured again! Where Jack dramatically struts out onto the screen and blows up some terrorist with such conviction, that I leap up off of the couch and celebrate the return of the magic that the show once had.

Entourage was the ultimate bro-time hangout show, and still is by many standards. But I'm starting to sense the same thing happening that happened with 24. I find myself hoping, anticipating the same magic that the show provided for me when I got hooked. I have sat back for most of the season thinking, "this looks forced," or "come on Ari cut Lloyd some slack", and most of all I can't stand Andrew Klein.

So my question is this. Is it inevitable for a show to reach its end? I think the answer is yes. Just like all great athletic careers come to an end, I think it is in the nature of a show to reach its pinnacle and then trail off gradually. New characters get inserted, some stupid love interest shows up, taking away from what made the show great in the first place! The best shows with the best writers can delay the cycle, last about four or five seasons...both Entourage and 24 are examples of this. But what the loyal fans are left with is a sense of sorrow and remorse for what the show USED to be. The writers know they have us hooked, they know I'll still watch, my buddies and I will still gather 'round the TV with anticipation for Vinny and the boys every Sunday night. But as I push into my twenty-first year as a self proclaimed tv critic, I'm here to say that you better get it together fast, because I've learned my lesson about waiting around for something that isn't coming.