Matt James » Sports

The Relay: A rocking recap

mjames — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:16:37 +0000

This must have been early on, because everyone looks happy, and they can still jump.

DAVENPORT, Calif. — I have so much to catch you up on, including my fear of heights tested on a famous bridge and our van allegedly making contact with another van and phone numbers and license plates being exchanged. We are, after all, good citizens who do not leave the scene of an alleged accident. And, the other van’s occupants were right there.

The relay is finished now. I’ve been home a couple days. I wanted to give constant updates throughout, but there were just too many areas without wireless card reception, and too many moments when typing blogs in the back of a swaying conversion van did not seem like the thing to do, medically speaking. And here’s the other thing: Are you really experiencing an event if you’re blogging while you’re doing it? I’m still figuring this blogging thing out, for the most part, but it’s like that relative you have that wants to stop every three minutes to gather everyone up and take a picture. And then you get home from the vacation and a friend says, “What did you do on your trip?” and all you can remember is taking lots of pictures.

Point is, a lot of what makes The Relay so memorable happens when you aren’t even running. It’s stopping the van on the side of the road to cheer a teammate up a 400-foot climb or through a nasty downpour. It’s getting out of the van in the middle of the night to give your runner Gatorade and a pat on the sweaty back. It’s catching a luke-cold shower and three hours of sleep on a gym floor at Cañada College in San Francisco, literally on the hardwood, because the entire gym is coated with runners and all the Ritz-thin mats are taken. It just didn’t seem right to be on the computer the entire time. Oh, and the inevitable vomitting from car sickness.

It sounds worse than it is. Or maybe it just doesn’t seem that bad because I’ve re-discovered deodorant and my thighs stopped burning. It’s definitely one of those events that shines best when reflected on, and looking back I think we did well. And by that I mean, no on got attacked by a mountain lion. Here’s the final review: Our team name* was “The Fast, The Slow, And The Pretty,” and we left Calistoga, Calif., at 9 a.m. Saturday and arrived at the finish, a strawberry farm outside of Davenport, Calif., at 5:50 p.m. Sunday. The race has ended in Santa Cruz, Calif., the last few years, but apparently there was some sort of disagreement and Santa Cruz backed out this year. That’s 200 miles in a finish time of 32 hours, 50 minutes, 11 seconds, good for 200th place out of 228 teams. Although to be fair, one of the 28 groups we beat was “Team Dean,” which is the famous endurance runner Dean Karnazes running the whole thing by himself. “Google 1″ was the overall winning team for the third consecutive year, and as it turns out, its runner passed our team on one of my legs. (This 6-foot-4 Google guy went flying by me, and as I had suspected, he was in a hovercraft.) Here are the unofficial results, should you get really, really bored.

*Favorite team names from this year: “Jeans Were a Bad Choice,” “Blazing Turtles,” “Tramps Like Us” (because all references to Springsteen songs are cool), “We Run This Town,” “We Got The Runs!,” and “Donor Party,” which I’m assuming is a play-on-words reference to organ donation, and also the ill-fated Donner Party of the mid 1800s, some of which resorted to cannibalism. Luckily, The Relay did not come near that level of desperation.

It’s hard for me to complain about the rain too much, simply because any runner would take rain over 85 degrees. That said, the rain got old. It paused occasionally, but only to re-load. In the course of running three legs during a 32-hour period, every runner got rained on, meaning our van was a caldron of soaked, nasty running clothes. You can imagine that smelled like heaven. Assuming heaven smelled was the inside of John Candy’s gym bag.

***

Our team captain, Amanda Newell. I didn't take this picture. That's why it looks good.

After one weekend, the odometer on this umbrella now reads 4,320,732,549 drops of rain. That's (left to right) Tom, Amanda, Robby, Tamara and Lindsay.

***

I realize this is somewhat like the sport of cricket, or being married to Liza Minnelli, it’s hard to imagine The Relay without actually participating. The basics, though, are that each team has two vans with six runners each and a driver. Van 1 goes for six legs while Van 2 relaxes, sips margaritas and gets foot massages, or whatever you imagine them to be doing while you’re suffering in the rain. (They’re actually trying to figure out how to sleep in a crowded smelly van.) The vans trade off at pre-determined locations, my favorite being the first exchange at the Marin Cheese Factory in rural Marin County, an area that is remarkably close to the Bay Area for having no cell service of any kind. It’s a beautiful little place amongst green hills and known for its brie. They make world champion brie. I’ve seen the trophies and plaques. They do not, however, have the world’s most accessible bathrooms, as evidenced by the Space Mountain-looking line at the women’s bathroom. The men’s line was quite short, of course, which always leads to that uncomfortable glare from the women’s line that says, “We give birth. We go through menopause. We suffer cramps and aches and stretch marks. We age faster. We put up with your whining and your tardiness and your general disregard for our feelings. We work harder for less money. We sacrifice our bodies to have children and wear high heels. We have to shave and twease and pluck, and you sit on the couch scratching yourselves. And what do we get in return?! We get to stand outside in a damn bathroom line for an hour at a freaking cheese factory!? Yeah, that seems fair.”

At least that’s how I imagine it. OK, back to the running. Here’s a mini-recap of my three legs …

Leg #6, 4.5 miles, Easy – They put one of four labels on each leg: “easy,” “moderate,” “hard” and “very hard.” One of the great things about The Relay is you can have runners of all levels, since each set of legs is ranked 1 though 12 in difficulty. So you put your fastest runners on the longest legs, your good climber up the mountains, etc. My first leg (easy) happened around noon Saturday and it was short and flat, on the sidewalks in a town, not that I’d know which town. They all kind of blend together. I jogged alongside a guy from Menlo Park for a while, chatting, running at an appropriate speed and for whatever reason decided I should leave him and try to run faster. I really have trouble running comfortably. Maybe it’s that I’ve decided running should be painful, so I always run at a pace that makes me hate it. This went OK until the end of Leg 6 when my legs suddenly gained 20 pounds each and then I came upon an orange traffic cone. I knew there was a right turn coming up, but was this it? Why was there one single cone on a street corner? I stopped, turned around, put my hands out in some desperate plea to the gods of wayward runners. The gods scoffed. Luckily, another runner about a block back pointed straight ahead and so I kept going. The lesson here, I think, is always trust strangers. Never believe traffic signs.

It was toward the end of this leg, after the actual right turn, that I went to duck under a tree branch and misjudged its height or the size of my head. BONK! It didn’t really hurt that much, but the tree was covered in pollen and when my head smacked it, it all lept directly to my sweat-soaked bandana. So I must have looked ridiculous coming into the exchange point, my head doing a decent impression of an ice cream cone dipped in sprinkles. It’s funny watching the transformation as The Relay goes on, whereas you start the race actually caring about what your hair might look like, or making a decent impression on the opposite sex in your van, or the other van, or on other teams along the way, and then within six or eight hours you could suddenly go to prom in sweatpants and curlers without blinking. A good comparison is probably “Survivor,” when everyone shows up looking nice and excited about making their TV debuts, and a day later they’re covered in mud and an eyelash from killing a crocodile with a knife and eating it raw. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. You’ll notice below one of our team members shaving her legs on the side of the street, and a guy from another team sleeping on top of a van in a parking lot. It doesn’t take long to stop worrying about what people think.

***

We might not have won, but doggonit, some of us had smooth legs.

At some point, you just want to stretch your legs and lie down. Any way possible.

***

The first van exchange point is a church where they have hot meals and showers, and where two years ago I noted that the water comes in only two temperatures, and those temperatures are roughly 70 degrees apart. This year all the showers were out of order, so I guess they showed me. We “showered” with Wet Naps in the van, or maybe they were baby wipes, and we went to lunch. This is the point where you might say the van started to smell differently. We spent the next few hour lounging at the cheese factory, waiting in awkward bathroom lines, noting the rich history of the locally-made brie. Do you ever wonder if enough people are eating the weird cheeses to really make it a lucrative business venture? I understand the swiss people are doing well, the chedder folks are thriving, but are enough of us enjoying the fancy cheeses to make them worth making? And we live in one of the rich nations, so if Americans aren’t eating it, the people of Bangladesh probably aren’t picking up the slack. Then again, I don’t know anyone who drives a Lamborghini, but the company still makes money. Or maybe it doesn’t. Who knows. Lamborghini is probably owned by Pepsi and the cars are made by Korean workers in a Ford factory near Mexico City. What was I talking about again? Let’s move on.

Leg #18, 5.8 miles, Hard – This was the one I was looking for to. By this time we’d made our way through the northern suburbs. It was late Saturday night, darker than “Kill Bill” outside, I got the handoff*in neighborhood near the Bay, where the volunteer monitoring the handoff area was intense. Very intense. He told everyone no cheering, no clapping. We were in front of some shops and a parking lot, so I’m not really sure what he was worried about, but you’ve got to respect a man who takes his volunteer job seriously. Also, he was freaking huge.

*The “baton” is a rubber bracelet that is passed between runners. It’s always entertaining to watch the teams who’ve lost their bracelet and have to high-five or chest bump or forearm bash or whatever it is they decided to substitute for a handoff. And there’s always that great look when one van hands off to the other and the recipient gives that “Seriously, you guys lost the bracelet?” look. Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention how the cheese factory exchange point became a love-fest. There were kisses between runners, butt slaps, hugs, romantic embraces. And the funny part was, it was obvious some of the handoffs were between husbands and wives, which means they had chosen to participate in The Relay together, but in separate vans. That’s how you make a marriage work, designed distance.

I was excited, of course, because this is the leg that crosses the Golden Gate Bridge. I’d already run across it — the San Francisco Marathon crosses it twice — but that was a different. For the marathon, you’re actually running in a blocked off lane of traffic and can’t see nearly as well as on you can on the pedestrian path. I arrived at the bridge around 1:45 a.m., and there was an attendant opening the electronic gate for each runner. (The Google guy nearly knocked me down on his way past just before the bridge.) Normally, you can only pedestrian it across the bridge during daylight hours, which made the experience even cooler. The only thing that stinks about Leg #18 is the two miles leading up to the bridge are a 45o-foot climb, a fact I had ignored up until the time I was dying and cursing San Francisco and hills and everything else. I finally arrived, though, after about 17 Gatorade stops from the van, in the fog and the haze and the drizzle. One of the runners in the other van had taken a wrong turn and run about two miles in the wrong direction, so we were behind our expected time. It didn’t matter, this was the Golden Gate Bridge and I, one on one.

The Golden Gate Bridge is tall, unimaginably tall, taller than the Washington Monument. It’s long, ridiculously long, 1.7 miles across. I’ve read that it’s 220 feet from where I was running to the water below and I believe it. I honestly couldn’t see much because it was so foggy, but I believe every crazy stat about that bridge. You can feel how massive it is. I’ll admit that I’m scared of everything, but it was frightening. I’m so glad that it was too foggy to see down to the water. It was so foggy, I actually thought I had crossed it when I reached the midway point. It just kept going and going and I was running faster and faster, scared of the dark and heights and death and spiders and homicidal maniacs and whatever else might be out there. I passed five people on the bridge, passed a guy in a wedding veil, which seemed odd. I didn’t have time to stop and ask. You think of bridges as flat, but it’s a climb to the middle of that thing, a pretty decent downhill on the other side. I was probably three-fourths of the way across when apparently a barge passed underneath me and blew the loudest horn I’ve ever heard. If I’d have been Marilyn Monroe, my dress would have gone over my head. I almost fell down. My heart-rate instantly went from 145 to 614 and then leveled off at 4o0. It was horrifying. For the next 100 feet I was Usain Bolt. And keep in mind that I couldn’t see anything. Not the skyline, not the shore, not the water, not much of the bridge besides whatever mass of steel was closest to me. It was an Alfred Hitchcock film and what you couldn’t see was more intense than if you’d been able to see it.

***

One of the night handoff points. Notice the reflectors. Those are crucial for night running, mainly in the sense that getting hit by a car hurts.

At least 84 percent of The Relay is spent decorating the van. If it was a van decorating contest, we'd have at least been in the top 150.

***

Leg #30, 3.1 miles, Very hard — This is payback for getting to run across the bridge. Leg 30 is evil. Pure evil. It’s a 1,200 foot climb in three miles. I like to refer to it as the world’s worst 5k. A friend of mine calls it “The Suck,” and that about sums it up. I think I walked more than I ran. This was nearly noon on Sunday and the rain unleashed again. It was miserable, one of those moments when you’d trade what’s left of your 401k just to make it end. I haven’t done hill training since, well, pretty much ever, so it didn’t go well. Eventually, I got to the top and our van was done. We handed off so the second van could do the final six legs to the strawberry farm.

The farm was not nearly as cool as the beach in Santa Cruz, that’s for sure. The rain pretty much turned the farm into a mud ranch and at least two or three vans got stuck and had to be pulled out by a cute little tractor. When you run a strawberry farm, you can’t very well have enormous John Deere 4-wheel drive tractors. You need cute. I think I ate a few hundred calories worth of jelly samples before the other van and our runner finally got to the farm and as is customary, the entire team ran the last 100 yards together. We got some pictures taken. We wore these flower things on our heads which I still don’t entirely understand, but hey, when you’ve run 15 miles and haven’t really slept in 48 hours, you do pretty much whatever you’re told.

This could be the head contusion talking, but I’m ready to do it again next year. This time without the bridge. My heart can’t take it again.

The relay: Van trouble

mjames — Sat, 02 May 2009 18:57:46 +0000

CALISTOGA, Calif. — We haven’t had a van breakdown, as my headline would imply. The vans themselves are trouble. Let me explain. Each team has two vans, with six runners in each. Today, for instance, before we’d even gotten to the starting line, we missed a turn and went 10 miles the wrong way. That’s how it is for two straight days. You’re basically lost, driving a boat on wheels with six smelly, annoyed people in it. All the while having to stop constantly to provide cheers and water and an appropriately upbeat song for your runner on the course. (Again: No course. Running on side of road.)

The back half of the van is usually car sick. The front half of the van is sick of hearing the back half complain about it. By Sunday, you can feel the tension. Or sometimes people just scream at each other. The Relay usually starts out as the most team-oriented, feel-good event you’ve ever done, and by the end you find yourself punching someone for eating Doritos too loudly. It’s the dynamics of a marriage, condensed into one weekend.

More on the van later, but a quick update on how we’re doing, starting with a shot of the starting line …

They start teams in waves of 20 or so, every half hour starting early this morning. The slow teams go first. The fastest teams won’t leave until this afternoon and will finish way, way ahead of us. The winning teams usually run around five-and-a-half minute miles, which should be against the rules, punishable by forehead thumping, but hey, it’s for charity. We can’t discriminate against cheaters.

Our first runner was Tom Fanelli, from Turlock, Calif. (Pictured below)

Honestly, I have no idea what anyone’s connection to Tom is. He’s someone’s friend. Six months before The Relay, everyone is stoked. Three months out, everyone is likey. Three weeks out, people get flaky. Stuff comes up, and by stuff I mean people start to think, “Wait, we’re going to run 200 miles in a downpour along a highway? I just remembered I have to dismantle my dishwasher and scrub the parts individually with Wet-Naps.” Point being, you take the people you can get, and anyone who will join last minute is your new best friend. Tom will probably be in my wedding someday.

The guy in red is our driver, Robby Lewis, Mr. Energy, and he is without question our fastest runner. So of course we have him driving, not running. Perhaps that wasn’t good planning on our part, but at least we have a back-up plan should anyone’s knee go all Kevin Garnett in the home-stretch.

I’m Runner No. 6, so my first leg is coming up. It’s raining harder. I will be whiny. So you have that to look forward to.

The Relay: Let’s get this party started

mjames — Sat, 02 May 2009 14:33:07 +0000

NAPA, Calif. — I’ve tried on several occasions to explain the Relay for Organ Donation and it always comes out sounding crazy. There could be a reason for that.

It’s a race, of course, but I’m not exactly sure how it raises money or awareness for organ donation, other than each runner pays a mandatory $50 donation. On the awareness side, I’m sure there will be several drivers who over the next two days say, “Holy crap! I about hit a bald guy on the side of the road. Did you see that, Liz? What the hell was that guy doing?! Hope he’s got his things in order.”

It’s at the very least, raising the awareness of death, which is necessary for organ donation. What’s that you say? People give organs all the time without dying? Um, I’m not a doctor, but that sounds impossible.

Anyway, back to the race. The Relay for Organ Donation is a foot race from Calistoga, Calif., to Santa Cruz, Calif., and for you non-Californians, that’s not a distance you’re supposed to run. Or even drive, without supplies and a map. A person in Calistoga has never ever thought, “Hmmm, I need eggs and socks and a typewriter, I should run to Santa Cruz.” No. If a close relative moved that distance, you would wish them luck.

It’s 200 miles, exactly. They’ve somehow added a mile this year, since as you can see by the logo above, the race has always been 199 miles. Here are the basics: Each team has 12 runners. One person starts at the beginning and runs until they get to another teammate and hands them the baton*, and that repeats round the clock until you get to the finish. I guess it’s not that complicated after all. It actually is a bit more planned than that. As you can imagine, it would be chaos to have 200 teams of a couple thousand runners all just runnning willy-nilly through the Bay Area, so there is some structure. There is a set course — though you’ll notice I didn’t use the term “closed course” — and it’s divided into 36 legs. Each person is pre-assigned to three legs. This year I get to run leg that crosses the Golden Gate Bridge. That should happen around midnight tonight, assuming there are no incidents with cars (they get really close sometimes, especially in the hills at night) or animals (the warnings about mountain lions are somewhat discomforting) or people (two years ago, The Relay fell on Cinco de Mayo and a few partiers came out of bars to offer their support; and by that I mean, throw things at runners.)

*[edit] Good comment from Karen at the bottom. Not sure why I forgot this asterisk, but I did. The baton for The Relay is not a baton at all, but one of those rubber bracelets. You would not think a bracelet would be easy to lose, seeing as there’s only one and the entire point is to hand it from one runner to the other, but you would be wrong. They’re like socks

Like childbirth, it’s one of those things that sounds fun in the beginning, then gets tiresome along the way, then ends in joy on a beach with umbrella drinks. At least that’s how I imagine childbirth.

Here’s a map of the course …

The toughest part of the race is actually spending most of two days in a conversion van. I’ve got the computer and a camera, though, so I should have plenty of time to give updates. We’re at a hotel in Napa this morning, headed to the starting line. Wish us luck. We don’t need to win, just to out-run the wildlife.

Frank’s Island tennis report, Part IV

mjames — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:19:08 +0000

This is a sad day. We have arrived at our final Hawaiian WAC Tennis Tournament update from Brett Frank, full-time basketball coach, but more importantly, part-time entertaining blog correspondent. You may or may not have heard the Fresno State women’s team won the title this weekend in a wild, thrilling final. Brett’s back from Hawaii and I can’t wait to hear the full report.

I must admit I am slightly relieved there will be no more updates simply because my Roman numeral counting is somewhat limited, and we were getting close to having to change headlines. It’s a little like Spanish. I count really loud and strong, right up to about ocho, and then I start trailing off and mumbling. Major thanks to Brett for taking time to update us while on vacation. He did a great job. Enough stalling, here is Brett’s final report:

Bulldog Tennis, Spam Jam, and Signing Off Indefinitely

So I can take a hint. Cut the useless crap and entertaining sidebars that only I find humorous and get to the task at hand.

Here goes:

BULLDOG TENNIS:

Today was a very special day. I watched perhaps the most thrilling, edge of your seat, emotionally draining tennis match I’ve ever seen. I have been blessed to witness some unforgettable moments in matches (Pete Sampras’ regurgitation in the US Open, Jana Novotna’s total collapse at Wimbledon, and the stabbing of Monica Seles to name but a few) on television. I’m sure many of you have seen those as well. Additionally, I’ve had the good fortune of traveling to several professional events and seen many of the greats of the game in person. What I can tell you that you will find challenging to believe is that today’s women’s championship match will go down in my book as the one to top. I know, I know, it was only a day or two ago I was painting a picture of the Bulldogs sleepwalking through the WAC Tournament on their way to an eighth consecutive title. What I didn’t account for was a group of gritty and determined fighters from Boise.

The match began with little more than a yawn as Anastasia Petukhova and partner Renata Kucerkova once again breezed through their match to get the Bulldogs rolling. Melanie Gloria and Tinesta Rowe quickly followed suit and the Bulldogs were on the board with what would turn out to be the most critical point of the day for the Dogs.

You see, the Broncos decided it was their turn to carry the hardware home and came out of the gates in singles action like a Diamond Head eruption at its height of its storied destruction. In less than an hour, those unbeatable Bulldogs appeared to be limping to a fate that was unimaginable. The Broncos took first set leads in five of the six singles matches. More importantly, mainstays and nationally ranked players Melanie Gloria and Anastasia Petukhova were among the casualties of the slow start. Boise rolled on to straight set wins at #4 and #6 singles to take a 2-1. The lead was brief as Renata Kucerkova evened the match with a straight set win of her own. Next to finish was the upset of the day and the tournament as top Dog Melanie Gloria fell at the number one spot. The Broncos now had a 3-2 lead and were leading in the third set on both courts still in play. The cheers from the heavily supported Boise State backers.

While it was much closer than expected and both team efforts should be regarded with great respect, once again the Bulldogs proved they are the team to beat and a contender on the national scene.

*Okay, so I can’t resist the sidebar. A note to those who plan on spending seven hours in the sun for an outdoor tennis match. Please realize the sun is a damaging little thing. If there was any doubt which team I was supporting, the color of my follicly challenged scalp proved I was Bulldog RED!

SPAM JAM:

While walking from the team hotel back to mine, I had the great privilege of meandering through the 2009 Spam Jam. While early reports expected crowds of 8,000, this year’s event far exceeded all others to the tune of 10,000+ visitors and 200+ vendors. Live on-stage entertainment was provided at each end of the strip with various booths crammed like sardines (different type of canned meat, but too resisting not to make the association). If you live in a box and have never heard of Spam, I’m told it is a delicacy to the residents of Hawaii. More of the product is consumed here per capita than any other place in the world. I’ve never been big on trying this canned meat product and even though I was minutely tempted while enthralled in the moment, I managed to remain Spam free. I’m hoping that statement will not preclude me from ever becoming considered for a job in the profession.

Since I didn’t have the courage to actually try any of the recipes, I can’t tell you my favorite Spam item. Instead, I have decided to give you my top four that, if forced, I would have selected. They come from four of my favorite restaurants here on the island (granted three of them appear on the mainland as well).

#1: Margaritaville - This Jimmy Buffett restaurant is one of my favorites and the menu item they offered was actually my favorite appetizer, the Volcano Nachos. For the Spam Jam, they substituted their normal chili and made an offering that was created with Spam chili. This was the closest I came to considering a taste.

#2: Duke’s – A favorite of the team and staff when we travel here each year, I’ve always been a huge fan! We annually feast on my favorite breakfast of the entire season when the Bulldogs take on the Wahine. Spam fried rice was the menu choice for this establishment. It actually looked quite tasty although you really couldn’t put your finger on what the brown chunks were supposed to be in the rice.

#3: Cheeseburger in Paradise – This is another mainstay on each trip to Honolulu. It serves as the postgame meal for the Bulldog women’s basketball team yearly. My favorite is the Teriyaki cheeseburger with swiss and cheddar cheeses. Delicious! Spam sliders were served up faster than they could make them. This booth had the largest line while I was there.

#4: PF Chang’s: I’m almost embarrassed to include this one since they are so present on the mainland. I’ve only tried one appetizer at this chain and again, it proved to be the menu item dispersed last night. Spam lettuce wraps were probably the second favorite item of the people I saw.

SIGNING OFF:

So this is it. My last entry. My career as a journalist (let me pretend) is drawing to an end. Here are my final thoughts:

I now realize that my dream of becoming the next Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, or Matt James is beyond my reach. Although I’ve attempted to give a valiant effort . . . my wit, imagination, and keyboard have all failed me miserably.

I would like to thank my boss, Mr. James, my parents, and my family and friends that always believed in me and my abilities. Oklahoma Bud, my Jack Russell terrier, who taught me patience, Fresno State who took a chance on a unknown guy with a big heart, and, of course, the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz who showed me that you don’t necessarily have to have a brain to make it big in Oz.

My favorite song of all-time is a Jimmy Buffett number called “A Pirate Looks at Forty.” My favorite line in that song states, “. . . after all my years I’ve found, my occupational hazard being, my occupation’s just not around.”

So while I don’t know what my occupation truly may be, I can officially eliminate award-winning writer/blogger from the mix. In the meantime, I’ll continue my search for that career which will afford me financial independence and island living!

To remain consistent with previous offerings, I’ll give me global goodbye . . .

Auf Wiedersehen!

BFrank

First off, Brett’s career as a writer is far from finished. We will definitely bleed him for free labor in the future. And no matter what he says, he did a fine job. I would brag him up further, but I’m too distracted by the fact that he almost ate SPAM. Let’s be honest, it tastes the opposite of good. Is there a worst PR job in America than trying to market SPAM? Because of a Monty Python sketch, your product now has the same name as one of the most annoying, hated objects on earth, the unsolicited email. Oh, and there is also the fact that your product tastes awful. There are really two main areas that can ruin a food, taste and texture, and SPAM is one of those rare foods that actually fails both*. Say you were on a deserted island for seven or eight days, tired and cold and soaked. You have cuts on your hands and feet from climbing rocks and searching through the forest for berries or maybe the dead carcass of a bird. You’re drinking rain water from puddles. So my question is, if you came upon a case of SPAM from a shipwreck or maybe a flight crew who decided to lighten the load by tossing out the most disgusting thing onboard, how long would you search the rest of the island before you caved and ate the SPAM. I’m saying at least two extra days.

*Other texture/taste combination failures: cooked spinach, cooked cabbage, seared ahi tuna. I realize there are far more disgusting things eaten in this world than ahi tuna, which a lot of people really like. I probably should have just listed Sashimi, the more generic term for raw fish, but I have an ahi tuna story. Being from Kansas, you probably assume that pork chops with a cream sauce qualifies as exotic, but I like sushi rolls and love all sorts of seafood. I’m just saying, if you have a nice piece of halibut that will be quite tasty cooked, or just somewhat tolerable raw, why choose Door B? As Roy McAvoy asks his therapist in “Tin Cup,” “What would possess the guy standing on the shore to swim for it?” What possesses a person to eat the fish raw? You have a pan and a stove and a couple extra minutes. I’ve lost too much sleep about this already. Oh, yes, the ahi tuna story. The first time I ordered it at a restaurant, I wasn’t aware of the raw factor, so I ate the vegetables and noodles, took the tuna home and cooked it myself. Someone alert Jeff Foxworthy. We may have some material for him.

The official spelling of SPAM is all capital letters, but I’m having trouble finding an official ruling as to whether it’s an acronym or not. I used to live within driving distance of the SPAM museum in Austin, Minn., but could never build up the courage to go. I’ve read a couple places the original name was an acronym based on the main incredients: “Shoulder of Pork and Ham.” The ones people make up are much more fun: ”Something Posing As Meat.” “Spare Parts Animal Meat.”

Let’s try a couple of our own …

- Some People Accept as Meat

- Served Proudly Alongside Meds

- Slimy Parts Are Memorable

That’s all I can come with on short notice. Another thanks to Brett. And thank you to you for coming along on his trip. Do not try the in-flight meal.

Frank’s Island tennis report, Part III

mjames — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:37:26 +0000

I’m starting to think this won’t end well. I feel like I just invited a guy in a ski mask to escort me to the ATM, or Tom Brady to tag along on my honeymoon. You know how this turns out. Later I’m probably going to be sobbing and wondering why I didn’t see it coming.

Brett Frank, our Fresno State tennis correspondent in Hawaii, is now reporting on food. And TV shows. He’s whiplashing from one subject to another. He’s using asterisks to insert useless information. In short, he’s stealing my act.

TV shows and food and useless information are the foundation of this web site, which was built all those dozens and dozens of hours ago. ‘Frank’ly, pun intended, it looks like a hostile takeover. But, he’s darn entertaining, so I think we should see how it plays out. If you come back in a week and the site re-routes you to BrettFrankBlog.com, you’ll know what happened.

Here’s his latest post, with a little art (see, I’ve already been relegated to guy-who-finds-pictures-on-the-web) …

Puka Dogs, Survivor, NBA Playoffs,

and Bulldog Tennis Aloha!

Day 3 is officially here and well, hmmm . . . Where to begin? I think today we’ll try a different format. Let’s do topics.

1. PUKA DOGS: These amazing little concoctions are a food lover’s dream! I’m told by the locals that the word puka means “hole.” Basically, these heaven sent delicacies are hot dogs that are placed into a bun that has a hole in the middle. For lack of a better visual, close your eyes and imagine giant sized “pigs-in-blankets” with one end still enclosed. Unfortunately, there is no adequate description for the way they electrify my taste buds. You see, these are not your typical dogs. There are basically four different decisions you will need to make while ordering your first puka dog. You will need to decide your favorite type of dog, condiment, relish type, and sauce. Trust me, this is not as easy as it seems. To the best of my knowledge, there is no basic mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup or relish on site. Instead, they have poured tastes of the island in the puka before inserting that all too familiar hot dog. For instance, I ordered the lilikoi mustard, sweet onion relish, ja lapeño dog. If it seems confusing, let me elaborate. Here’s how the process works: Step 1: Would you like a polish sausage or veggie dog? Step 2: Which garlic lemon sauce do you prefer? The options are mild, spicy (jalapeño),chili pepper, or habanero. Step 3: Which tropical relish floats your boat? Mango, coconut, pineapple, banana, papaya, star fruit, or sweet onion teriyaki. Finally, we come to Step 4: What kind of condiment do you prefer? The basics are lilikoi mustard or guava. You add all these together and you get an incomparable taste! For all you doubters out there please refer to Anthony Bourdain (Travel Channel) or Susie Brown (Food Network) who have seen this establishment showcased on their respective networks. I swear on all things holy, you must give it a whirl!

*this is not a note from Matt: While I know the new standard rule for Matt inserting his own footnotes for the blog was the symbol I just used, I will go on to say that Spicy, Lilikoi mustard with papaya is the current all-time most ordered favorite of Puka Dog. Both employee’s agreed that Spicy & Lilikoi were the way to go although the argument perused between sweet onion or star fruit. After sampling all options, I’m not willing to change my order.

2. SURVIVOR: So let’s call a spade a spade. I am a “Survivor” geek. I’ve somehow managed to follow every season of this so called reality television show. While some of my more memorable favorites (Johnny Dangerous, Rob and Amber, Sue Hawk, the bus driver, old man Rudy, Rupert, and Parvati) have provided hours of entertainment, I now have a new character that is amazingly memorable and uncontrollably irritable. He goes by the name “Coach” and his stories of escaping pygmy tribes, self proclaiming himself as the Dragon-Slayer and morning meditations have my nerves on edge. Can someone please get rid of this guy! He actually suggested to Sierra, a fellow contestant, that she dive on her own Samurai sword to leave the game in a noble fashion. Seriously, who is this guy??? It did bring a smile to my face to see a vital member of his “Warrior Alliance” blind-sided at last night’s tribal council. At some point in time, I’m hoping they take a page from the American Idol playbook and decide to let America have a say in who gets knocked off.

3. NBA PLAYOFFS: I’ve got to give some love to my Dallas Mavericks. What a great win after an embarrassing Monday night performance. I’m still hopeful Dirk and the boys have some magic left in them for one more playoff run. Let’s face it, they’re not getting any younger (if ever referred to again, this series will officially be referred to as the “Geriatric Games”) and it seems as if this may be their last hurrah.

4. BULLDOG TENNIS: So the clouds were heavy and the rain was falling sporadically throughout the day. That said, in roughly the same amount of time it took me to walk to Puka Dog, enjoy my meal, and then return to my point of origin, the Bulldogs disposed of San Jose State. With rain as the theme of the day, the Bulldog play on the court reminded me of a cumulus cloud. Those are the ones that seem to completely cover the sky in a thick rolling fashion. They closely resembled those spread out blankets in the from above when they first entered the UH Tennis Complex. The reaction from the other seven remaining teams was the same as you would expect to see a from a tourist who traveled to Hawaii expecting to enjoy the sun on an extended weekend vacation for the WAC Tournament. I say that partly in jest, but I figure it’s a way to get my point across. Consecutive 8-0 wins in doubles action combined with 6-0, 6-0 wins by Melanie Gloria and Renata Kucerkova and a 6-1,6-0 exclamation mark by Laura Pola had the Bulldogs off the courts in right at 75 minutes. The men team will take the court tomorrow for their initial appearance as quarterfinal action begins for the second seeded Bulldogs.

In hopes to remain consistently new and refreshing, and to irritate my new boss Mr. James, I’ll sign off with a simple “Do svi danya”

BFrank

This is a good reminder that I need to catch up on “Survivor.” It’s been too long since I cared about that show. I honestly haven’t watched since Rob and Amber got married, and speaking of, is it just me or have they already blown right through the over-under on how long those nuptials would last.

Seriously, if you buy a gift for a wedding whose participants met on a reality show, you might as well staple the receipt to the box. So kudos to Rob and Amber. I’m just imagining they opened a lot of gifts that cost less than $20.

Puka Dogs apprently inspired Brett to swear on all things holy, and that’s big. Lots of stuff is holy. Not to overstate it, but it looks like a food that could change your life. Or at least your afternoon.

Frank’s Island tennis report, Part II

mjames — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:03:37 +0000

I’m always confused about standard time versus daylight savings time, but especially when it concerns Hawaii. The state of Hawaii, and pretty much the entire Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone, ignores daylight savings time altogether. Doesn’t even recognize it. If Hawaii and daily savings time got on an elevator together, it would be awkward. Historically, it’s thought to be because of a long-standing Island guideline that, roughly-translated, states: “What do we care what time it is? We’re in Hawaii!”

But seriously, Hawaiian standard time is based on – as well all know – the mean solar time of the 150th meridian west of the Greenwich Observatory. As you can see, I’ve gotten really good at copying and pasting. If I had to guess, I’d say the problem is offshore ripples in the space time continuum. Frankly, I think this is what happened to Amelia Earhart. Whatever the reason, there is no daylight savings time in Hawaii, so during the winter, it’s two hours earlier in Hawaii than in California. And from March to November, it’s three hours earlier.

To clarify, it’s now 3:14 p.m. in Fresno and 12:14 p.m. in Honolulu, where the WAC Tennis Tournament was supposed to begin this morning. To explain what’s going on, here’s our second installment from action reporter Brett Frank, who so far has been worth every penny this blog is paying him …

Aloha!

So maybe the karma gods were paying attention to my smugness as I typed away last night. With a combination smirk and smile, I patted at my keyboard basking in the thought of all those jealous people who may be reading my entries. A touch of jet-lag set in (my arrival in Hawaii accounted for 12,726 airline miles since April 3rd) and after a quiet evening (notice “quiet” as opposed to “quite” which would have an entire other meaning), I rested my head on my pillow and prepared for a full day of fun and sun.

BAM!!! (or any other Batman TV series word you would like to insert . . . i.e. Smack! Pow! Zikes!*, etc.)

The day of fun and sun has been delayed. Rainfall has taken over the island and left this guy about as anxious to get out of the cage as a bull at the Clovis Rodeo. By the way, we Okies put the emphasis on the first “o,” something that I haven’t quite become accustomed to in California dialect.

As the first match has been delayed, I’m now forced to wait until early match play gets started to report on the tennis action. Fresno State will play the winner of the opening match-up featuring San Jose State and Louisiana Tech. In the meantime, I’m planning a trip to Puka Dog. It’s an out of the way hole in the wall joint that will knock your socks off! Be sure and read my future updates as I feel this eating establishment merits its own entry. I hate to leave any of the intricacies out, so I will conduct hands-on research and post a detailed report later.

Ciao for now,

B Frank

If I’m not mistaken, B. Frank went a little Italian on us there. He’s versatile. What can I say, the blog only hires the best. And I, for one, am far more excited about a hands-on report from a restaurant known as the “Puka Dog” than I am about tennis. Until then, it’s all rain, all the time. Isn’t that always the way? Plan a Hawaii trip and it pours the entire time and then that’s all you can talk about for the next six weeks after you get back, until your friends finally clench their fists and mutter, “Hey, scumbag. Talk about how dreadful Hawaii was one more time and see what happens.”

*I’m not exactly sure how to enter asterisks into Brett’s reports because it could be confusing, but I’m going to do it anyway. From here on out, all asterisks are going to be footnotes to my comments. My favorite one-word exclamation from a TV show will always be “Zoinks!” That’s of course what Shaggy used to say all the time on “Scooby-Doo,” right before he ran from a ghost or monster or baby mama. Just kidding about that last one. (Added bonus information: Shaggy’s full name was Norville Rogers.) No one’s claiming to be Vin Scully here, but we’re doing what the great ones have always done, filling a rain delay with extra tidbits.

Embedded reporter braves Hawaiian Islands

mjames — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:22:30 +0000

Already, this blog is more successful than anyone could have imagined. The internet hasn’t crashed. The F.C.C. is still not involved. I haven’t been fired from the job that actually pays money. It’s pretty much Jelly-of-the-month bonus time from here on out.

With that in mind, the blog proudly presents something completely fun and unexpected: We have a correspondent! I was as schocked as you are. His name is Brett Frank, an assistant coach for the Fresno State women’s basketball team. More importanly, one of the 10 coolest people you’ll ever get to meet. OK, chances are you won’t get to meet him, but I have, and you should be jealous. He’s single-handedly changed my thoughts about people from Oklahoma.

I should probably tell you that Brett is the lead assistant for the Fresno State women’s basketball team, one of those facts you probably didn’t need to know, and one he would certainly never mention. Ever. But that’s who he is. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, unlike 95 percent of college coaches and Skip Bayless*. Brett once held a little gathering at his house and announced that everyone should watch out for his sliding glass door. And later in the evening, he walked right into it.

*Never actually spoken to Skip, but even by sports-columnist-turned-ESPN-talking-heads standards go, he seems pretty pompous. On a semi-related note, I met Woody Paige at a press box in Albuquerque, N.M. OK, I didn’t meet him. As I passed by, he tried to hand me his ballot for New Mexico Bowl MVP. When he realized I was a fellow columnist, he came by my seat to apologize. Very nice of him. That’s the end of the Woody Paige story.

So you’re probably wondering, What will this Brett Frank be corresponding? Good question. Before this site meets its inevitable demise, hopefully lots of stuff. He’ll be our roving correspondent. For now, he’s at the Western Athletic Conference tennis tournament in Hawaii. For those of you who are unaware of the WAC, the schools are Fresno State, Hawaii, San Jose State, Boise State, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico State, Idaho, Utah State and Nevada. Since the home office of this blog is in Fresno and its written by a sports columnist, we’re going to have more than our share of Fresno State sports news. Bear with us.

The tournament starts this afternoon (Thursday) in Hawaii. This is Brett’s initial report. He was polite enough not to rub it in by mentioning umbrella drinks. Before his next post, I’ll try to find a picture of Brett and figure out the time difference on the Islands. Here ya go:

Aloha!

After an early morning trek which afforded me the opportunity to appreciate Fresno rush hour traffic (or lack thereof), I arrived at LAX around 8:30 a.m. Surprisingly, the lines proved to be sparse and security was a breeze at this usually packed airport. I made my way to gate 46A and off I went.

If the introductory greeting has not yet sunk in, I’m currently typing this while pool side in Honolulu, HI. I have the great fortune of being able to soak in the rays while attending a historic event. No, not the Spam Jam scheduled to attract over 8000 visitors to Waikiki this weekend, but rather the 2009 WAC Tennis Tournament being held at the UH Tennis Complex. Why historic? One of the greatest successes within the Fresno State Athletic Department will be attempting to defend their title and add to a legacy of greatness. You read correctly. Tennis. While we are all aware of the great successes of many of our sports, this sometimes undervalued, unappreciated sport has been making a name for the Bulldogs on the national scene for quite sometime.

To simply call the Fresno State Women’s Tennis team a dynasty is like referring to Barack Obama merely as a politician. This amazing group of young ladies will be attempting to bring the championship trophy back to Fresno State for the 8th consecutive year. They have dominated their competition in a manner that is unparalleled. As impressive as it may seem fielding the current nationally #1 ranked doubles tandem of Anastasia Petukhova and Renata Kucerkova and defending national runners-up and currently ranked #13 duo of Melanie Gloria and Tinesta Rowe, their stellar singles play throughout the conference season is beyond remarkable! The previous 4 mentioned along with Freshman sensation Laura Pola have swept through the conference season without a blemish on their singles record!

For those not particularly familiar with the college tennis scoring system, a match consists of a possible 7 points. Each team fields 3 doubles pairs. A sweep or a victory margin of 2 to 1 grants an overall “point” to the winning team. Following doubles, each team fields 6 singles players with the victor of each match earning an additional “point” to the overall score. It takes 4 points to earn an overall team victory for the match. How did the Bulldogs fare? They managed to impose their will on WAC opponents to the tune of a 54-2 discrepancy out of 56 possible “points.”

If you have not had an opportunity to see them in action, I truly feel you are missing out on something very special! Coach Simon Thibodeau and his assistant Laura Gordon are simply remarkable and may be two of the most dynamic young coaches in all the NCAA. Bulldog Women’s Tennis is something we should all be very proud of and consider ourselves fortunate to have in our community. I hope all you Red Wave faithful out there will continue to follow the action throughout the weekend as I will be updating the tournament as it goes. Take care and have a BULLDOG day!

Brett Frank

OK, so there ya go. More than you’d ever need to know about WAC tennis. And some bonus information on “Spam Jam,” which I had never heard of. Must be cool if 8,000 people are going. Brett got a little heavy on the Fresno State rhetoric there toward the end. You can have a ”Bulldog Day” if you feel like it. The blog* doesn’t care either way.

*The opinions expressed by Brett Frank in his correspondent reporting are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions MattJamesBlog.com and its subsidiaries. OK, there are no subsidiaries, but there could be someday.

Brett’s right though, the Fresno State women’s tennis team has been beating the rest of the WAC like it was the side of a blurry TV for years now. If it weren’t for one of its players leaving the team at winter break and returning to South Africa, the Bulldogs would be a serious national title contender. They’re still a long shot.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned. Scores and first-hand reporting from today’s action are coming soon. Now when someone asks you what you did today you can say, “Great question! I learned the intricacies of the Western Athletic Conference’s tennis scoring system.” Hey, this blog only promised to be informative. No one ever said you’d actually want the information.

Super important NBA playoff info.

mjames — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:56:12 +0000

YOUR DAILY PROOF THAT PEOPLE HAVE TOO MUCH FREE TIME

My only question here, well, besides the robot reading the Bible on a park bench, is … Sports logo bloggers? Really? Talk about your specialty professions.

“What do you do for a living?”

“Logo blogger for the Central Division of the NBA’s Eastern Conference. Mostly specializing in teams that play games in cities next to Lake Michigan.”

“Um …”

“I stared at the Bulls’ logo for five years trying to find something. Looked at it from every angle. Tried relaxing my eyes and waiting for something to appear, the way you do with those magic pictures. Then one day it falls off my desk and lands upside down on the floor. Changed my life.”

“Um … congratulations?

That gets you laughed out of any class reunion in America … not taking place in West Virginia.

(NBA playoff update: Celtics and Bulls series tied 1-1. Next NBA playoff update scheduled for May 3, 2016. Stay tuned.)

De La Hoya and his dad

mjames — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:46:35 +0000

Oscar De La Hoya retired this week, his dad on stage with him in Los Angeles as he made the announcement. He took months making the decision. It is tough, as he said, for the great ones to know when to quit. I suspect it is the same in other professions as it is for athletes. Architects. Supreme court judges. Columnists. A lot of us hold on a little too long*. The skills slip with age, at least for everyone who isn’t Clint Eastwood. We notice it most in sports, though, probably because we care so much and the end comes so quickly.

*Remind me sometime to do an entire blog about my hometown dentist, an aging man who died while still practicing. My family had to switch dentists, obviously, and on the first visit, the new guy said I had 10 cavities that needed to be filled. It might have been 12. I can’t remember. It was not a fun two weeks. Point being, Willie Mays wasn’t the only one who hung on to long. It’s hard for all of us to move on from what we love and what we know.

De La Hoya’s career is an interesting one, and not just because he is a future hall of famer who had 10 world titles and was one of the most popular boxers of his era. It’s also that his greatness is so questionable, or at least questioned. It’s that you can’t talk about him without someone mentioning that boxing was weak during his era. It’s that you can’t help wondering how a Mexican-American boxer from Los Angeles could remain so unpopular and disconnected from the Mexican-American community.

There was a constant struggle in De La Hoya’s career. He just wasn’t the warrior some people wanted him to be, that so many Mexican fighters had been. It wasn’t in him. He danced. He dodged fists. He threw a punch, then moved, then threw another, then moved again. He was the ”Golden Boy.” He posed for magazine covers and milk moustache ads. He released a CD. He was mainstream. There was that famous fight in 1999 against Felix Trinidad where De La Hoya had the fight all but won, and then didn’t finish him. Not that he couldn’t finish it. He chose not to. He played prevent defense. He stopped attacking. In the final rounds, he dodged and ran and avoided and just generally stayed away from Trinidad. That’s not the way men are supposed to win fistfights. And as it turned out, he didn’t win it, and not too many people felt sorry for him.

De La Hoya was a great boxer, but ultimately bound to the image of a pretty boy. He didn’t seem to mind. Hard to blame a man for being born attractive. But you never saw him out-slug anyone. You never saw him in the 12th round, eye swollen shut, lip split open, throwing punches with nothing but guts. To some extent, you suppose a man is who a man is, and we should just be grateful to have seen such a talented boxer. But there was this unavoidable feeling that after De La Hoya won that gold medal in the Olympics and became a household name that the sport wasn’t the most important thing. It was the fame and money and business that seemed to drive De La Hoya. Maybe it always was. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that.

At the press conference, though, it wasn’t his retirement that brought De La Hoya to tears – not that a boxing retirement is ever binding – and it wasn’t the memories of his 45 professional fights or his wins against 17 world champions or that gold medal from the 1992 Games. It was his dad.

Joel De La Hoya Sr. was a boxer. So was his father. Oscar’s brother, Joel Jr., was a boxer, too. Boxing was woven into the family tree, like old Christmas lights, but Oscar just wasn’t drawn to it at first. He played baseball and skateboarded. He never got in street fights. He hated violence. Part of the sadness at De La Hoya’s press conference had to be for his mom, a woman who wanted her son to be a champion and died all those years ago, before he won the gold medal, but I imagine a lot of it was for that relationship with his father. He must have experienced a lot of the same emotions most sons do with tough dads. There must have been times when he felt pressured. There must have been times when he felt trapped in the gym, hitting the speedbag again and again, hour after hour, when his friends were playing catch and eating ice cream.

I’m not sure when you stop wanting to please your father. Probably never. Is there any song more true than that country tune by Rodney Atkins, “Watching You?” As kids, we want to be our dads. We talk like our fathers, act like them, say the same things they say. As we get older, we are drawn to our dad’s profession. We want to take over the family business, work side by side, sweat and triumph and ache together. My dad is a farmer, and if I hadn’t accidentally found writing in my early 20s, I’m 99% sure I’d be raising corn with him in southwest Kansas. Not that he needs my help, but I picture it a lot, coming in together after a 12-hour day, covered in dust and sweat, father and son, like some sort of Ford truck commercial. There would be exchanged looks of contentment, pride. We would be working the land together, tilling the soil, growing crops, feeding families the way fathers and sons did in the ’50s. Heck, the way they did in the 1830s and the 1530s, the way they’ve done forever. OK, we’d have GPS and XM radio in our tractors, but still, there would be nobility in it.

Of course it wouldn’t really be like that. Not all the time anyway. Father-son relationships are complicated. In the beginning, there are rules and discipline and in the end there is friendship, and you spend your lives trying to make the transition. The struggle is what makes the moments, and you never forget those, the hugs and the times your dad looked at you with his eyes filled to the corners.

In boxing, there’s a pretty sharp line between the victories and defeats. No one else takes blame. It is absolute joy or crushing defeat, and you can imagine what a 36-year-old boxer and his father have been through in a long career. I’m just guessing here, but those were probably the things that went through Oscar De La Hoya’s mind when he thanked his dad. When his voice cracked. When he seemed a lot less like a celebrity, and a lot more like a common man.