Sunday, June 8, 2008

Old Skool

Big sports day for me today! Brought back lots of old skool memories of my youth sports experiences...

Started out with some Euro 2008 action where Croatia took on Austria, and Croatia scored early on a penalty shot in the opening minutes of the match. Great coverage I was watching - pretty funny to hear the announcers chattin' about "dumping" an opponent - the description the color guy gave was "it's a move that sometimes happens that defies description" - or words to that effect...

I played a lot of youth soccer in my day back in the 80's. In the early years, I was a striker on the left side - it seems as if there weren't many left footer's amongst the available 8 year olds!
;-)

in my later years in the "select-teams" (you had to try-out to make the team) days of my competitive soccer years I played a lot of midfielder and often times as a defenseman. I was a little guy back in those days - but I was slow to make up for the lack of height! LOL!

Anyway, good stuff watching that euro match. I look forward to how things unfold over the next few weeks!

Next, I made my way to a bike race, and did the old-skool thing. I pedalled around without a heart-rate monitor nor a power meter (forgot it! doh!). Anyway, the chula vista course was the site of the CBR state crit championships. It was an interesting start to the race, as the promoter, started everyone off by saying "if you get dropped, you need to be training more..." or words to that effect. He was kidding around, and it lightened the mood a bit.

I hadn't done that course, and was a bit bummed to see that it included a U-turn at one end fo the course. But, it turned out to be alright, though the legs (or maybe it's the supercomputer??) just weren't there. I didn't really ever get put into any difficulty, but I just didn't seem to have the desire to do anything. Pretty disappointed in myself, now, actually. Not sure what is up with that.

Caro, and Galvan took off early, then Thurlow, Bordine, and another guy set off in pursuit. I was on Bordine's wheel, near the back, when he decided to throw down. Like I said, I saw it happening, but just didn't make it happen. Not sure why that is...

Caro and Galvan eventually lapped the field, then the other three did as well. The green machine - otherwise known as five star, lined it out for bordine and he took the win...

Pretty lame effort on my part - I tailgunned it, then moved up with five to go. Lost my nerve a bit when I saw Joel Stangeland bury a pedal on the u-turn with two to go. Never went au-bloc, which was disappointing for me...



Anyway, the real deal today is game 2 of the NBA finals. I'm a huge Celtics fan - in fact, I can remember back in the 80's when I was a gym rat and basketball freak, writing a report (and presenting it orally) about the history of the celtics in the 8th grade class of Mr. Day. Man, that would be neat if I could read that report today!

I can remember spending all day in the WSU gyms (bohler, smith, can't remember the one where the lights made things look green!) as a middle schooler. Good times. Shootin' around, wearin' knee high tube socks, and short shorts... ahh the good ol' days!

I always wanted a pair of those Converse Weapons, but was never successful in negotiating a pair like Magic and Bird had back in the day (image from The Converse Blog):



I reckon I was a total slacker back in the day, cuz I can only name four out of the six guys shown! Can you name all six?

I'm totally psyched to watch the new skool rivals of Garnett, Pierce, Kobe, and Gausol duke it out. Though, I reckon it will pale in comparison to the Old Skool rivalry of Bird/McHale/Parish and Magic/Kareem/Worthy. The supercomputer, though, I reckon will always favor the nostalgic moments, though, huh!

I think it is that nostalgia, that emotion that wells up inside you when thinking of the good ol' dayz - it's that feeling that makes old skool frames of reference so appealing and vivid.

And, it's those feelings that stay with you for a lifetime.

Go Celtics!

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