Sportsman's Weekend

This is going to be a great Sportsman's weekend. We have the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals Saturday night...which features our beloved Flyers....followed by the Indy 500 on Sunday...the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing."
My wife is taking my daughters down to Florida to see her Mom and visit the new Harry Potter Disney creation. My son will be in Baltimore for the NCAA Lacrosse Finals and I will be home alone with the dogs and my Samsung HD T.V. Sports look absolutely amazing on the HD channels on this box.
I will sneak in some Skeet shooting on Saturday as it will not be too hot and then maybe some Squash or Tennis at the Club in late afternoon...and hope to do some Deep Sea fishing on Monday morning. So, some of my Bachelor buddies over for steaks and hockey Saturday night. Perhaps household projects will be neglected...
Parentetically, the Flyers playoff ride has been astonishing and I cannot believe they did it....now 4 more wins and a Parade down Broad street...we can hope!

Indianapolis 500

With Memorial day weekend coming up...I am fixated on the greatest spectacle in racing: The annual running of the Indy 500. As a sportsman, I am intrigued by the physical and mental stamina exhibited by the drivers. They drive 200 Laps at speeds in excess of 210 m.p.h. in serious traffic..they have to engage in strategy regarding pit stops, fuel,tires and lap position...and perhaps more than anything...they have to deal with the fact that their chosen sport could easily take their lives...a nasty death in a twisted flaming spiral of racing gas and sheared metal.
In 1989 I went to my first Indy 500 with 10 of my Lehigh buddies. 2 guys flew out on Thursday before race day and rented a huge R.V. and 2 minivans. They secured a spot in a field along the outside of the track which would be our campsite and headquarters for a tremendous guy's weekend of beer swilling buffoonery and serious racing.
The advance team also purchased a Weber Grill, a ping pong table ( for marathon beer pong games..the real kind..not this candy-assed Beruit ball tossing nonense)and chairs, tarps, charcoal, Wiffle Ball gear,about 40 cases of beer, ice, coolers,four 1/2 gallons of bourbon and enough burgers, buns, PB&J and related items to feed a bunch of beer soaked knuckleheads from Friday night thru race day.
The rest of the crew arrived Friday night and with shuttle trips in the minivans to get everyone from the AIRPORT..we were ready for action. Generally, Friday involved a trip to the Speedway, Indiana ballet for some cultural activity involving one dollar bills and morally casual brass pole artistes.One year a few of the Lehigh guys that were kicking ass on Wall Street brought several huge,fresh, bank wrapped stacks of 1000 singles and slapped them down on the bar...it created a feeding frenzy amongst the G-Stringed performance artists in residence and pissed off the local mullet and cut off T-shirt crowd as they received ZERO attention for the balance of the evening.
Saturday featured beer and burgers for breakfast..perhaps the odd funnel cake or turky leg from the Midway vendors. Then we played beer pong and wiffle ball until mid afternoon when we would go to the Indy Museum at the track and after the tour go to the Georgetown Rd. intersection that served as a Commodity market for race day tickets. Once we had secured our tickets it was back to the R.V. for more beer swilling,Bourbon Shots, poker, beer-pong and a bonfire. The party atmosphere in this giant field of race fans was captivating and hilarious. As the poker and beer pong wore down, we would get set for a group stroll down the midway along Georgetown road. Here were the locals cruising, liquored up wenches raising their shirts at the request of nearly every Skoal chomping, Old Milwaukee slurping Corn-Belt half wit on the sidewalk , hucksters selling everything from Indy car coolers to Indy Undies for the ladies in a nifty spark plug shaped carton,the ubiquitous corn dogs and lemonade stands. Beer was toted along in a 40 gallon trash can with ice bungee corded to a Radio Flyer wagon...procured for that purpose by the advance team.
Then Sunday...Race Day!!...a huge progression of nearly 400,000 fans stream into the track for an exciting day of motor sports and more Herculean beer consumption. With the Jet Fly-overs and the singing of Back Home Again in Indiana and the flags and anthems and tributes to our Armed Services...it is and was a truly stirring American event.
After we had enjoyed the race..we returned to the RV, packed up and headed to Indianapolis proper to drop off the rented vehicle and seek showers and civilized comforts in a down-town Hotel. We would all meet up for a bit of fine dining and then watch the race on T.V. when the recorded broadcast was shown that evening. Incidentally, every year we would auction off ,burn, or give away the grill and Ping Pong table and lawn chairs. Somewhere in 2 bedroom ranchers in Speedway, Indiana backyards near the track there are Families cooking on our old Weber and sitting on our chairs telling stories about the crazy drunken College boys who gave them this stuff after the Race.
Monday..off to the Airport to fly home in time for back yard cook-outs and the like.
We did this same routine until 1996 when the CART/IRL split screwed up the race and when the boys started to get married and have kids. The stories are legion and legend and too numerous and tawdry for this post or my typing stamina. There are highlights like when Teddy G. drove a race-team golf cart right off of gasoline alley..out of the track and back to our camp. There was even a cold six pack on board. Or the time Wighty left the boarding line at the Airport and went to the E.R. for treatment of the colossal and debiltating hangover caused by 3 days of drinking...legend has it they hung 4 bags of saline on him before declaring that he was no longer dehydrated. Our lexicon now includes gradations of hangovers such as "a 4 bagger"
Or the time Jimmy H. went missing for a while Saturday night... until he was spotted on the Bed of a 2 story high Monster truck with his shorts at 1/2 mast, a beer in each hand... and loudly inquiring of any girl in the crowd of thousands...whether they would apply certain oral ministrations...the excrement in Derek's hat or Kipper with the under- seat inflatable Mae West style Flotation device from the plane around his neck all weekend...I could go on and on...but these guys now have respectable jobs and kids who may read this....
So...this coming Sunday..Start your engines.

Visitors

The lovely blogger Mrs. Arscott had a gadget on her site called revolver maps...I wanted it...asked her about it and then figured out how to install it. This gadget is fairly cool in that it shows how many visitors your site has had and where the visit was from geographically. Recently I have had visitors from Bogota, Columbia...Zurich, Switzerland, Cairo, Egypt, Ho Chi Mihn City, Viet Nam...not to mention various domestic hits. Perhaps it is juvenile to be intrigued by these exotic hits...and I do not get nearly the amount of comments on my posts as some others (maybe my posts are vapid and uninteresting to the blogging masses??)but nevertheless it amuses me to know that some dude in Indo-China is possibly reading my semi-literate babblings and admiring pictures of guns,dogs ,dead birds, horses and hockey and other nonsense. Then again...maybe that is what this blogging gig is all about.

College reunion, cocktails and lacrosse this weekend...and GO FLYERS!!

Explanation

Blogger/wordsmith KS Anthony referenced the poem which has the line "Hunter home from the hill" in a comment on my hunting dog post. It reminded me of a favorite old movie of the same name and I thank him for the cerebral cage rattling which led me to post these clips. I had never posted a clip before and even if the few readers who stop by think they are representative of weak old movie offal...I still learned a new blog-skill...for what it is worth.
Nevertheless, I have always loved this film and particularly liked Mitchum's character, Wade Hunnicut. He is a man's man and a true sportsman. He is however deeply flawed. To wit: he cannot seem to keep it in his pants and cats around his small town to the embarrasment of his tortured wife and naiive son. He has a bastard son who he tolerates on one level but shuns on another. All of these fairly sleazy facts help weave the fabric of this MGM melodrama and it's plot.
This movie is also notable for it's early performances by 2 Georges...Hamilton and Peppard.
"Home from the Hill" is certainly worth a slot in a Netflix line-up or an after-thought rainy Sunday afternoon grab at Blockbuster.

A Sportsman's Goose Hunt Goes Bad.

Home From The Hill -1960 MGM Classic about a Sportsman(Who Has Issues)

Hunting Dogs 2

The Flyers go up 2 games to nil over the hated Habs. This is a wonderful development. Sadly, in this corner of the Sporting World there is a a development that is not so wonderful.
My hunting buddy Ned lost his Black Lab recently. Puddy was one fine waterfowl dog and damn fine in field pursuits as well. After a recent trip to the Vet, Ned was advised that Puddy was terminally ill. Puddy was pictured in one of my early posts about hunting dogs and the special bond we hunters form with these loving, good natured and skillful companions. Puddy is pictured above in his camo vest in a snowy field at our Hunting Club. That is how I remember the "Pudster" as I called him. I hunted over this chap many times...and while my sorrow is exponentially less then Ned's, I still empathize and feel the loss.
I have posted 2 pictures of my hunting dog Archie. One is when he is on point during a pheasant hunt and another is Archie posing with the days bag from a hunt in the following season. Archie is a tremendous bird dog possesed of a great nose and an artful point, a great household pet and a stalwart companion to this writer...he is already 10 years old and the loss of Ned's dog is a harbringer of the inevitable loss I will experience some bleak and sorrowful day hence.
The other shot is of a beautiful Irish Setter owned by another hunting buddy. The last shot is a print of a Lab on the porch of a duck hunter's cabin. The dog seems eminently sad at being outside and seperated from his master. I hope Puddy,wherever his canine soul may reside, does not feel as the Lab in the painting. Here's to you Puddy...hunt 'em up.