A 'lil HooHaa

With wacked hours and rarely having back-to-back days off, I find myself trying to plot my vactions for this year a little more than normal.

In the past, I’ve picked a week or something and planned around that. But this year, I’ve plotted a time I’d like to go on a trip, as well as a couple of other things I’d like to do. I now just have to run the dates by the boss and make sure those times are cool and all.

I got to wondering, however. How much time do people put into planning vacations. For example, I know I’m going to Montreal for at least four days this summer. But I’m looking into different things and I’ve started planning already. I’m hoping the weekend we picked will have a home Alouettes game again. I’ve been looking at different parts of the city, hoping I can see some new things this year. I’d really love to take one of the days and drive up to Quebec City as well. Or at a minimum, take one of the boat tours up the St. Lawrence a little ways.

It will also be my 10th trip to Montreal, so I’m looking to make it a little bigger. We always say we’re going to different things, then we get into the same habits. It’s not that bad — we always have a blast. But as I get older and others start falling off, it’s hard to keep committing time to make this trip. So before it stops becoming a yearly trip, I want to make sure I see everything I want to see! Not to say I’ll never go back (I will for sure), but I want to make sure I see these things.

So my goal is to go in late June/early July. It’s early in the softball season and early in the O-Tigers season, so hopefully I won’t miss a ton. I’d also get to visit Montreal again during Jazz Fest as well as Canada Day, which would be fantastic.

If I don’t go then, all of July is shot and part of August is. Whether work, weddings or softball. Mostly work (weekends — big events).

Also, the past couple of years, the bulk of my vacation time is all bulked together in December and I’m finding it unfair that I have to use most of my vacation time in the middle of the winter when it’s tough to go do stuff. I need to be able to take a good bulk of time in the summer to go do some things and I don’t want to wait until the final part of summer schedules come out to make the plan.

Which leads me back to the original question — when is too soon to plan? Is it crazy that I am already starting to plot a four- or five-night vacation? Or is it normal? I mean, yes, I am months and months away from leaving this area and making the travel to Canada, but still, it’s always good to think ahead, right?

Also, if I am going to plan a trip to Quebec City one day, I need to plan way ahead. It’s a 2 hour, 30 minute ride to Quebec City and it would take some planning to know we are going up there, touring the city a little and having to drive back to Montreal. I wouldn’t want to travel in the dark in places I have no clue about.

Crazy things vacations are. But I find it makes work easier at times when you can know you have some good things to look forward to and not just a vacation where you sit around on the computer all the time (as I seem to do during December vacations!)

Outside of the state tournament, my paper doesn’t usually cover the first day of a wrestling tournament. We go to the second, check out the consolations and cover the finals. In fact, I think that’s how it is, for the most part, for most newspapers. The first day is just full of quarterfinals and wrestlebacks. You can usually get all that info with a call in or a fax.

Today, I went for the second day of the tournament. And when I got there, four or five people bitched right away to me about how the wrestling was getting treated at this school. Now, we don’t cover the school where the tournament was. So I’m not sure how the normal protocol is. I do know that where the tournament was held was in the old gym. The new gym, I always thought was smaller anyway. By looking around today, things looked fine.

Two mats, all the bleachers down, things moving faster than expected. Where’s the problem?

Apparently Friday was totally different.

Three mats set up, two sets of bleachers gone. Fans couldn’t sit or even get in the gym. It was apparently not a fun situation for wrestlers, fans or coaches. Which is never a good thing.

Today everything seemed calmer.

Then it was time to work. As I looked at the brackets, my eyes were rolling. Fifteen weight classes and I had at least one kid in each class and in six or so, we covered both kids. Now this was a league tournament with 10 teams and we covered six of them, so that would explain that.

But damn, I was pulling double duty — covering it, tracking wrestlers down, working on a sidebar– AND — taking photos. Ouch!

Now I like covering wrestling tournaments. It is, after all, my beat. But when you have that many kids in the finals, it makes it tough! I think I did a pretty solid job and should work out fine. It’s also nice that my paper is a 6-day, so I have an extra day to get things together and write it up.

I could see today where some people would have been annoyed with the tournament and the school. The lighting was dim and it was pretty crowded. But the problem with league tournaments is that they are usually held in a gym of one of the schools involved. This league is a lot of rural schools, so the gyms aren’t going to be huge.

I thought things went pretty well today. Food was well priced, admission was good and everything else was solid. They did the spotlight in the middle for the finals, which is nice for the wrestlers and fans. But, they turned on the lights in one half of the gym after 96 because they needed people to be able to see the awards!!

Here’s the thing I hate about covering wrestling tournaments — with so many kids and weight classes, sometimes it’s hard to find a good way to lead these stories. Thankfully, in the past, I’ve had good luck finding things. Today it was tough. But I stumbled across a solid story to lead things off and the kid actually won, so I’m pretty happy about that. I have a good sidebar and hopefully feature for later in the week, so a pretty good day.

The best part is this is the start of the post season. We’ll only cover two more tournaments — our Sectional Tournament and States, but those are two I always look forward to. And the best part is, when that all ends, I know spring is right around the corner!

I’ve found that as I get older, it becomes harder and harder to do some serious athletic activities.

As most of you know, and if you don’t from my name on the board than you have no clue, I am a softball nut and play as much as possible in the summer.

However, in recent years, I’ve neglected certain things — such as warming up properly, getting the arm loose, stretching etc. By doing that, muscles hurt more, I strain things when I shouldn’t and I hurt a lot more.

So I’m going to be throwing today (Thursday) as part of an off-season plan to be more ready once the season starts. By doing this, I’m hoping my wing is in better shape once the season starts.

See, the problem is, several years ago, I threw the arm out. I went to a game in one of our leagues early in the season. It was a night game in early may and it was cool out. I showed up about 30 minutes before the game, but figured I was just being a DH, as per normal.

Well, about 10 minutes before the game, it was found out that our catcher wasn’t coming. So as the backup, I got the call and never had a chance to loosen up properly. In the first inning, the leadoff guy gets on and decides to challenge my arm right off the bat.

I threw him out trying to steal and along with it, I think my arm sailed into center field. Needless to say, my arm hasn’t been the same since. I can’t blame the arm for my throwing problems when trying to get the ball back to the pitcher, that’s all in my head. But the lack of power, or being able to humchuck it, well that’s all part of it. And that probably helped with the head problems, too. I loved catching, but had to give it up. I still do it sometimes, but my arm really hurts at times after.

So this season, I’ve decided to do things different. And it all begins with today’s throwing session. I need to start learning to stretch my arm, loosen it up and get it ready to go before a game. Considering, too, that I’m going to hopefully be pitching a little bit more, I need to make sure things are loose and ready to go. Our pitcher now, somehow, arrives, walks right on to the field, throws five or six warmup pitches and is ready to go. Not me. I have to warm up or I can’t go.

Hopefully this starts a year without getting pains in the arm. I know I don’t ever want to worry about having it looked at, scoped or full-blown surgery. So it’s time to watch things a little better.

Thankfully, however, I don’t work Thursday. So if it’s sore, I can rest it!

OK, I understand when high school kids are involved, sometimes you have to take a stand and cancel after school activities because of upcoming weather.

Last night, all the games in our area were canned because of freezing rain that was supposed to hit. I never saw any report that said it was basically going to stop everything, rather just a threat of freezing rain. Not even an inch or something of ice.

Then, it was supposed to change over to rain as the weather warmed up.

High schools around here canceled everything. EVERYTHING. Not one game on a rather large datebook was played. And most were moved to tonight, so we’ll have to deal with nearly 40 high school events this evening.

The bad part of this whole situation is that this ice never came. In fact, it didn’t even start raining here until after midnight. Now, the rain they called for did come. There is A LOT of rain as it came down hard all night and into this morning. I haven’t seen rivers or anything yet, but it was pretty steady for a long period of time.

Tonight, all this rain could turn to snow (they aren’t calling for more than an inch), but worse than that is the fact that the tempurature is supposed to drop some and you would think it could create some slippery roads with all the rain that had falen.

So when does it stop?

I know that we as a society have to protect these high school kids. They have to be guarded against and no unnecessary risks should be taken when their lives are on the line. However, if you cancel eveything before a spot of precipitation even hits the ground, you need to be sure that everything they are calling for will come.

These decisions don’t just mess up high school schedules.

Parents, newspapers, future opponents — all of this is affected by these decisions. Take our paper for instance. We had scheduled last night four people to work. It was a sizeable datebook, so we were prepared. However, tonight’s originally was only like 12-15 games. Now, it’s more than doubled and we have three of us working, which doesn’t include our main layout guy. So things could get kind of nuts.

And what’s worse? The weather tonight will be worse than last night. Do you cancel things tonight, too? I mean, it could be slippery out or a dusting of snow. In reality, that would be way worse than last night’s dry roads.

I understand where the schools are coming from. The safety of the students is the first priority. However, if you think you are never going to have to travel with bad weather in upstate New York, you better cancel winter sports. And fall sports, for that matter, if your school is any good at fall sports and could advance into the state tournament.

Trust your drivers. Trust your instincts. But for goodness sake, if you’re going to can events, make sure there’s a reason. I’ve traveled in far worse conditions to cover a game than last night. I’m sorry, the threat wasn’t that great to can everything.

I’ve never hidden the fact that I like the Northeast, the weather, the seasons. I’d rather have it colder than hotter, but at the same time, I don’t mind warm weather. But I HATE extreme weather — too cold or too hot. If it’s 80-85 and above and humid, I hate it. If it’s like 5 degrees and below and bitter cold, I hate it.

I’m sure that’s how most people are. But, the crap we’ve been getting hit with in the Northeast just friggin’ sucks.

Last week, of course when I was sick, it was awesome out. In the 40s, tripped up in the 50s for several days. Outstanding.

Days later, it drops. In one day it goes from raining to snowing and then gets real cold. When I drove home last night from work, it started out at 4 degrees. At one point, my car said it was -1 out. When I walked into my place? A whopping 0.

We wonder why people get sick this time of year?

One night at work last week, when it was nice, one person comes in wearing just a sweatshirt. When we left work that night, it was probably in the low 20s. Not ideal sweatshirt weather.

That’s what pissed me off when I get sick. I dress for the season. When Mother Nature smiles and gives us a couple nice days, I don’t break out the spring clothes. I stay with the cold-weather stuff until I know for a fact things are becoming better.

So when does that stupid rodent pop his head out for the world to see if we’re going to suffer for six more weeks or if the spring is going to come a little sooner this year. It would be nice to see this cold break earlier than normal and not get snow into the early spring.

Doesn’t seem like much crap weather over the next week or so. Some sun, clouds — but still cold. For now, I can deal with that. It’s just time to move on. We’ve had a long-ass winter and it’s time to see things start to improve.

Take some pity on us in the Northeast, Mother Nature!