September 2, 2006

We are just over a month away from the first Duck Football game, I wish we could just skip August and get right to September. Four weeks from this coming Saturday I will make my return to Autzen Stadium. Upon arriving at my seat I will be greeted by my football family, these are people that I only see six times a year at Autzen Stadium. To the right of me will be the nice elderly ladies Hariet and Janice (I finally learned their names after sitting next to them for five years) behind me will be the old guy and his son (I still have yet to learn their names) and in front of me will be the family that I have yet to meet. This year is going to be a little different than previous years, I may have to miss a game for the first time in ten years and I'm considering sitting in seat 20 instead of seat 19 for a couple games at least. For at least two games I'm going to have to be on my best behavior because I will be joined my wonderful girlfriend Carrie. This will also be my first football season as a blogger, meaning you will get to read about every single game! Needless to say, I'm excited about Duck football season!

Too Hot? Grab a Slurpee

Much like the rest of the country, the state of Oregon was hit with a heat wave this week. In an effort to beat the heat I made almost daily trips to 7-11 to buy a Slurpee. I know they're loaded with sugar and they turn your tounge weird colors, but they taste so good! When it's 105 degrees out there is nothing more refreshing than a slurpee.

Tour de Fraud?

News broke this morning that this year's Tour de France winner failed a drug test because of that news I have removed all mention of him on my blog. This combined with a scandal that sent many top contenders home before the race even started is a black eye for the sport. It is my hope that he did not do anything wrong and that his name will cleared but at this point it doesn't look good.

The sports media has been raising the question today whether or not today's news should make us more suspicious of seven time winner Lance Armstrong and I say absolutely not. Lance has been tested over 300 times in his career and has never once had a positive test. Many of the allegations against him have been discredited and he has even won court cases against his accusers. While athletes like Barroid Bonds hide behind attornies, Armstrong has fought every single allegation against him and has been cleared of wrong doing every time. This years tour may have been a fraud but I have no reason to believe that the previous seven were.

My New Running Shoes

My new running shoes arrived today, I'm so excited about them that I'm taking a break from work to write about them. I 'm sure most of you will think that they're ugly but I think they're beautiful. I apolgize for the quality of the photo but it's the I could do with my phone.

Biking to Work

Today I decided it was time to get back on my bike. So this morning I got on bike at about 7:50 and headed off to work. Instead of biking in my work clothes I decided to wear shorts and a t-shirt and put my work clothes in my backpack. When I got to work I discovered that I only brought one black sock, so for today I'm wearing black dress pants with black dress shoes and really short white sock that you can't see so it looks like I'm wearing no socks! I have provided a picture of my bike for all of you and unlike Justin's picture this is my actual bike.

Too Hot

So it was 105 degrees in Eugene yesterday and 100 today! It supposed to cool down to the high 80's low 90's tommorrow, I can't wait!

I love Air Conditioning

The temp outside is supposed to reach 102 degrees today which is far too hot for me. I am actually excited about sitting in my cold air conditioned office for the day. After work I have to go to a wedding and since I'm reading a scripture during the wedding I have to put on a tie, I'm not looking forward to that. I feel really bad for the wedding party, I can't imagine wearing a full tux. Did I mention it's an outdoor wedding and it's supposed to be 97 degrees at 6:00 PM?

Because I Can

Since I truly believe that Dennis' Daily Rant will become the worlds best blog, I spent a whopping $2.99 to register www.dennisdailyrant.com for one year. So you can now enter www.dennisdailyrant.com to get the world famous Dennis' Daily Rant. Stay tuned for more exciting additions to Dennis' Daily Rant in the weeks to come.

A Heroic Performance

If you look back in the history of sports you will find several stories of athletes who played through injury or illness to lead their team to victory. There was Willis Reed in game seven of 1970 finals playing with a torn thigh muscle inspiring his team to victory. There was Kirk Gibson who leg was hurt so severely that he could barely walk coming in to pinch hit in the bottom of the ninth in game one of the 1988 World Series and hitting a two run homer to win the game. There was Michael Jordan scoring 38 points in game five of 1997 NBA finals with the flu. Tonight something happened that will be talked about for years, the performance of Dennis Cook in City League Softball.

Bothered by a problem in my right eye all day I considered sitting out this evening's game. After lunch my eye was bothering me so bad that I had to take out my contacts and put on a backup pair of glasses that I keep in my car. At one point in the day I could barely open my eye, as the progressed I was able to open it but my vision was a little blurry and it felt like someone was sticking it with a needle. Knowing that we were playing the feared Micro Stars who are widely considered the best team in the league, I had no choice but to play.

Wearing glasses instead of contacts for the first time in my softball career I took the field at my usual first base. Through six innings I was 2-3 with three RBI (it is RBI not RBI's because runs batted ins makes no sense). We entered the bottom of the seventh trailing 10-7. I lead off the inning with a single. The next batter got a hit and as I was running to second I felt my hamstring pop. Clutching it in pain I asked for a pinch runner. City League rules allow for the last batter out to run for you and you don't have to leave the game. We scored three runs in seventh sending it to extra innings.

Since we had no subs left, I had to take the field in the eighth. I could barely walk but I made out there and prayed that a ball was not hit in my direction. We gave up two runs in the inning so we trailed 12-10. We scored two runs tying the game up. With two outs and a runner on third I limped to the plate. I could have tried to draw a walk and because of some bizzare rule would have been able to take second and the next batter would have automatically taken first thus loading the bases. Taking a walk in slow pitch softball is just a plain wuss move. I knew if I could just get the ball into the outfield I would be able limp into first before the throw and the runner on third would score. On the first pitch I hit a hard shot to the shortstop and I took off towards first, as I hobbled down the line at about 25% of my normal speed, the shortstop rifled it to first but threw it low and the first baseman was unable to grab it (a skilled defensive first baseman like myself would have gotten it). I reached first base base safely and we scored the winning run. Final score PCFCU 13 Micro Stars 12!

Butte to Butte Photo

Here's the one photo taken of me during the Butte to Butte. Hopefully my softball injury doesn't slow me down too much and I can return to running soon.

Year in Review Part I

One of my most popular posts ever on this blog was the two part year in review for 2005. This year I decided to something different, since the year is half over I’ve decided to part I of my 2006 year in review now. Stay tuned for part II in January.

January- It was an uneventful beginning to 2006, I attended a small get together at a friends house, consumed a few alcoholic beverages (not even close to how much I consumed in 2005) and that was about it. I took three days of vacation to begin year and did absolutely nothing, it was wonderful. On the fourth I watched USC choke away that National championship. On January 10, I celebrated my 29th birthday. A few friends took me out for dinner and that was about it. That also the day that I had my official weigh, I hit the scale at 223 pounds thus fulfilling my pledge to be under 225 pounds on my 29th birthday. January ended with a visit from my friends Pablo and Luis from Mexico.

February- This was the month that officially began training for the marathon. On the 5th as I was enjoying the Super Bowl I came down ill and started puking. This began a miserable evening of going between bowing at the porcelain throne and sitting on that same throne. After going to work for an hour to appear in court on behalf of the credit union I went home and slept the rest of the day. After a couple of days I felt much better and resumed my normal schedule. On February 14th my streak of Valentines day’s without a girlfriend extended to 29, I have a feeling that streak is not going to extend to 30. On President’s day I returned to the ski slopes, it was a great day of skiing and honoring dead presidents.

March- Early march was kind of quiet, nothing real exciting happened. Another NCAA tournament began without my beloved ducks and for some reason the coach kept his job. I celebrated ST Patrick’s day with a couple glasses of Irish stout and a cigar. I made my 11th trip to Mexico with First Baptist. It was another great trip it’s amazing to see the work that God is doing down there. I made my triumphant return to the Basketball court in Mexico and had a career high of twenty points one game.

April- I returned from Mexico on the second, I celebrated my return with a Corona. On the third I got sick again with the same thing I had on Super Bowl Sunday. That made for a miserable couple of days. On April 8th my roommate got married. On April 9th I was invited to lunch at a friends house after church, I didn’t think much of the invitation at the time but apparently it was a part of some master plan. I went over to my friend Andrew’s place thinking I was going to have lunch with him and his fiancé Liz, well I did but there was one other person there that I didn’t know was going to be there, her name was Carrie. I had met her a few months earlier but this was the first time I really talked to her. A few days later on the 13th I was invited out for drinks and guess who was there? I talked with her for most of the evening even though there were several others there. On the 15th I got up and ran twenty miles then I moved. That was not a fun day. The sixteenth was Easter, I spotted Carrie in the crowd at church and was going to say hi to her afterwards but I kind of chickened out and just left. On the 20th I was invited out for drinks again, this time there were just four of us and one of them happened to be Carrie.

May- The first couple of days of may were pretty quiet, nothing exciting. On Thursday May 4th I received a text message. I thought that was bizarre because nobody ever sends me text messages. The text message happened to be from Carrie, inviting me to join her and some of her friends for drinks. At this point I was starting to like this girl but was to much of coward to do anything about it. On Tuesday May 9th I was having dinner at my parents when my phone rang, guess who it was? We hung out at Starbucks for about three hours that night. Two days later we hung out at McMenimens for a couple of hours. The next few days were pretty normal marathon training, laundry and eating. May 18th was the first official date, we played miniature golf, loser had to buy ice cream. I won buy two strokes so she had to buy ice cream. After ice cream we ended up at the beach. After hanging out several more times over the next week we finally had our talk. Memorial Day weekend I went up to Portland and helped Justin remodel his kitchen. That was also the weekend that I met Carrie’s parents.

June- On June 3rd I ran my marathon, I finished with a respectable time of 3:25:07. My family and a small group of friends were there to cheer me on at the finish. The rest of June was a pretty quiet month. I hung out with Carrie quite a bit and went to work that’s about it.
Well there’s the first half 2006 stay tuned for part II in January.

The Major League All Star Game

Tommorrow is the annual Major League Baseball All Star Game. Of the three major sports Baseball has the best all star game. That being said I do have some issues with it.

First is the rule that every team has to be represented. This is ridiculous, All Star games are for the best players, if a team does not have someone deserving of All Star appearence they shouldn't be represented. The 31-56 Kansas City Royals have no one worthy of being named to the All Star team however because of this rule a 6-4 pitcher with 5.27 ERA was selected to the All Star game.

My other problem is the fact that home field adavantage for the World Series is awarded to the winning league. An exhibition game in July should have absolutely no impact on the World Series. Home field adavantage should be given to the team with the best record, that's the way Basketball doesn't and it seems to work just fine for them.

If those two small issues could be corrected the Major League Baseball All Star Game would be great but for now it just very good which is more than can be said about the Pro Bowl or the NBA All Star Game.

Soccer: What a Joke!

I am so happy that this joke of a soccer tournament is finally over. Yesterday's final proved what I've been saying all along, "soccer sucks". How is it that a sport can end their biggest game, a game that only happens once every four years, in a shootout? Why not keep playing until someone scores a goal? Was the capri sun getting warm? Were the orange slices starting to dry out? Could you imagine baseball settling game seven of the world series with a home run derby? Maybe the NBA could settle a tie in the finals with a game of horse. A shootout is in no way is a test of skill, it is all about which team gets lucky. Neither team's goalie was able to get a stop yesterday, Italy won because a french player kicked a ball about an inch too high. Fortunately for all of us we don't have to hear about this riduclous sport for four more years, and maybe if we're lucky the US won't qualify for it!

Have I Gone Too Far?

Today I did something that I almost feel ashamed of. I went to lunch with my girlfriend, not having time to go to a sit down place we went to Wendy's. Fast food used to be one of the staples of my diet, I would pound a double cheeseburger, large fries and a big beverage almost daily. I used to laugh and make fun of the people that would walk into a fast food joint and order a salad. Today I became "salad guy"! For the first time in my life I ordered a salad at a fast food place! My lunch consisted of a chicken caesar salad and a diet pepsi. It was actually quite tasty but I'm worried I've gone too far. Two years ago most of my firends would have said there was a better chance of me cheering for the beavers in the civil war than me going to a fast food joint and ordering a salad. I may have to redeem myself tommorrow and go to Carl's JR and order the double western bacon cheeseburger, large fries and a large Pepsi (not diet).

Another Race

It's been one month and one day since I finished my first (of many, hopefully) marathon. Since then I've got a little lazy in my training, taking days off, running shorter distances and loading up on junk food. In order to achieve the goals that I've set for my next marathon, I'm going to have to step it up a notch. Meaning I'm going to have to eat better and train harder. Today I took my first step in that direction. I participated in the 33rd annual Butte to Butte, it's a little 10 k (6.2 miles) that starts at Spencer Butte Middle School and finishes at Skinner's Butte Park. This was the fourth time that I've participated in this Eugene tradition, the last time being 1990. Going into the race my goal was 44 minutes, a very attainable time but difficult, due to my laziness over the last month. I blazed through my first mile in 7 minutes 12 seconds, pretty fast considering that the first mile takes you up the infamous "hill". I ran the second mile which was all downhill in just over 6 minutes. After mile two I settled into the pace that would carry me to mile four. I hit a small wall between miles four and five, but caught a second wind that carried me all the way to the finish. My time was a decent 41 minutes 26 seconds good enough for 103rd place out of 1841 runners. I was happy with the time but a little frustrated that I missed the top 100 by just nine seconds.

2006 Butte to Butte Results

The World's Greatest Athlete?

One the most debated question in all of sports is, "Who's the world's greatest athlete?". I think we can finally end this silly debate, the world's greatest athlete is none other than competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi. Kobayashi is the five time defending champion in in the sport's most prestigious event, the annual "Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest". In 2004 he broke his world record by consuming 53.5 hot dogs in 12 minutes. In addition to hot dogs he also holds world records in cow brains, rice balls and krystal hamburgers. He is currently the number one ranked competitive eater in the world. Tommorrow he will defend his hot dog eating crown against a field that includes upstart American Joey Chestnutt and I believe in the end he will win the title for the sixth consecutive time, further solidifying his status as the "world's greatest athlete".