Category Archives: Sports

Washington Hockey Trip

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This past weekend I ventured into the heart of Snowmageddon for the Capitals – Penguins game on Sunday morning. This trip was planned this past spring with no intenion of there being anything near 2 feet of snow on the ground. Early in the week we started to get word that the weather was going to be bad and then like clockwork my Saturday morning flight was canceled on Wednesday afternoon.  I looked into a couple different options, Train from Chicago to DC which sold out and earlier flights were already booked or canceled.  I ended up booking a train from Penn Station in New York to Washington on Saturday morning (6:45am).  Then I got a flight to New York for Friday night.  I got in around 10pm and proceeded with the following schedule:

10pm – Blondies
Midnight – McAleer’s Pub (ie the Krull bar)
1am – The Dead Poet
3am – The Dublin House
4am – The Green Kitchen
5am – Back to Jim’s Apartment to Shower
6am – Penn Station
7am – The Northeast Regional heading to Washington
11:30am – Union Station

To say the above was challenging is the understatement of the decade but this was just the beginning of a Epic Journey. Once we got into Washington Jim and I made our way to the Metro system and took the train out to Depont Circle where we came upon this seen:

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The Escalator of Doom was not running and was covered in snow.  To say this was a large escalator is an understatement.  This has to be at least one of the largest and steepest escalators in the Western hemisphere.  It’s 188 feet of pure burning pain but who’s counting. Needless to say it took every once of will power and agility to summit. Once we got to the top we were greeted with our first taste of Snowmageddon.  From this point we began our march to the hotel down the middle of the snow covered streets.

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As fate would have we actually had a relatively easy journey into the city. Meanwhile after a failed attempt to get their truck out Josh and Tom began their journey from Alexandria, VA to Washington on foot.  On the Road:

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All told I’m think they walked over 6 miles and there were only minor incidents of cannibalism.  I think when Jim and I made it in to Washington the ball was clearly in their court.  Would I have walked 6 miles in two feet of snow on the open road to see the Caps – Pens game?  There  is no way to ever know but they did.

The game was about as intense as a regular season game could be.  The Pens gave up a 4-1 lead to fall in overtime when a questionable high sticking was called.  At least they walked away with a point.  Below are my pictures from the the rest of our expedition in the Nation’s capital:

*Side Notes:
*My Snowmageddon pictures are here.
** Caps – Pens pictures are here.

Ryan Field: Northwestern – Penn State.

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Yesterday I headed up to Evanston for the Northwestern – Penn State game at Ryan Field.  If you’ve never seen a game at Northwestern I recommend it.  It is by far the smallest stadium in the BIG TEN which means you’re going to get much closer to the actual game than in any other stadium.  Not to mention tickets to Northwestern games are by far the cheapest and easiest to get.

It was a pretty solid game until the fourth quarter when Penn State’s offense finally clicked with Daryll Clark throwing a 53-yard touchdown pass and Evan Royster breaking a 69-yard touchdown run.

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* Side Note:
* Being that it was Halloween Dan went as a Blind Referee:

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** The other two College Football games I attended this year:  Ohio State – USC and Illinois – Penn State.
*** The rest of my photographs from the game are on Flickr.

Clowndown: Grifted & Scallywagged.

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Comsmopolitan Warrior was back at Clowndown this year to defend their honor. There was a falling out after last year where our Camera Crew were under the belief that they could have beaten us if they were running the race.  We’ve spent the last 12 months hearing how badly we were going to lose this year against the newly formed team Deutsche Schnitzelhunt.  Clearly they underestimated the effects of my training regiment:

A single 1 Mile run over the course of 12 months.

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We made one tactical mistake but it was early enough in the race for us to recover.  If you check the photos above you will see the seriousness in which team Deutsche Schnitzelhunt took the compitition.  Seriously, look into their eyes.

Now check the fourth picture.  That’s about halfway through they race when the realized that we came to play.  Literally at that moment they knew it was over. They were helpless against our geographical knowledge and our natural athletic ability.

  • Team Cosmopolitan Warrion finished in 8th place (3 spots better than last year).
  • Team Deutsche Schnitzelhunt finished 12th (4 spots worse than if they were our camera crew).

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Side Note:

As mentioned before we made a rather large tactical mistake early on in the race.  We tried to take the Brown Line at Diversy south but the all southbound service was closed.  This led us to take a train north to Belmont where we came across the guy below.  Not sure what was going on but he was complaining about his sweater.

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When he finally got his clothes back on he stood up asked us about the blue line then declared to the entire train the following:

I’ve been grifted and scallywagged.