We Had a GREAT Weekend!

Please see: http://www.lightthelamp.com
Quick update from my favorite CBJ blog. Of course I'll have much more to add about the weekend.

So as I said the update was quick. It also was pretty vague. I'll add a bit more here before blogging on. During the weekend of Hockey Day in America. The Columbus North Stars headed up to Detroit for another tournament in search of glory. As before they found it! Once again playing in the AA Squirt Travel division the North Stars (who are not a AA team and who are not a travel team) were able to beat all comers and win in AA. The team is exceptional for their unselfish play and teamwork. This group of Rec level players again stepped it up to take it to Travel teams from the CSHL and the Little Caesars league among others. They did encounter a first on the year though. In their 2nd game they never had the lead. They did come back late though an get a tie. Following the championship game they pushed their overall record to 14-0-2. We did lose a player for the rest of the season with a broken leg. He sucked it up and PLAYED in the championship game after taking a couple ibuprofen and one serious tape job. No kidding--he really broke his leg and we learned later it was a serious fracture to his tibia and a fracture in his ankle. Talk about tough! Here are a few shots of my favorite player--CHEETO!

I Flew on an Airbus A319.... and Lived to Tell

For those of you who have visited this blog or know me at all it should come as no surprise that I love flying and anything airplane related. However I am somewhat partial to Boeing and will go way out of my way to fly on any model of their jets. I generally fly airlines that have either all Boeing or mostly Boeing fleets. My airline of choice for the last several yeas has been Delta. This was great as they operated a mostly Boeing fleet since the MD-88's they had were now considered part of Boeing after McDonnell Douglas was taken over by Boeing. I have never mined the Embraer jets that Delta's regional partners have operated either and while not a huge fan of the Bombardier CRJ's have gotten used to them as well. When Delta bought Northwest the all Boeing fleet went away as Northwest had a mixed fleet including many Airbus jets. These are now all repainted in Delta colors and the A319's are replacing many of the older less efficient MD-88's throughout the network. Delta is also using the Airbus A330 on overseas routes and also on long haul flights to Hawaii thru Atlanta. For many years I have not had any interest on flying in an Airbus. In fact the last one I flew on was an America West A321 many years back when CMH was a hub for America West. I took that flight to Las Vegas and was happy to not need the services of the Euro plane ever since. Well unfortunately this year my trip to the SCCA National Convention meant I would either have to hang out in the Atlanta airport for an extra 4 hours or swallow my pride and fly home on an Airbus A319. I did the latter....... and lived! My trip out had me on an MD-88 and then a 767-300. Returning from LAS to ATL I was jam packed into an OLD 757-200 without the video system. (yeah it had CRT monitors in the ceiling with color so washed out that skin color was green) Since I chose to fly Delta from CMH to LAS I had to give up the option of non-stop as only Southwest flies that route non-stop. If you know me then you know I will only fly SWA if they are the ONLY airline to go to the place I need to go. I refuse to fly them and happily pay much more to avoid flying with them. An interesting side note is that the non-stop flight on SWA cost more than the 1 stop on DAL. Several others went with me to the convention and all paid more. Those that bought their tickets a couple days before me paid about $15 more each way. Those that purchased on the same day as I did paid about $50 more each way, and those that purchased about 3 weeks after paid a whopping $175 more. The bonus to me was the skymiles as I'm now at 100K and am planning a trip to Hawaii. Only when researching that trip I discovered if I wanted to go thru Atlanta I'd have to fly on an........................Airbus.... Oh dear.

Quick Post: Live From Las Vegas

Well I'm on my annual trip to Las Vegas for the SCCA National Convention and it came at the perfect time. This morning I left a snowy andbiterly cold Columbus Ohio for the sun and warmth of Nevada. Today was 57 degrees with temps forecast near 70 by the end of the week. Wow what a difference. Last week we had an ice storm with nearly one inch of ice covering everything and bringing down trees across my property.Today I ate In-N-Out Burger in a sweatshirt. Will I win anything? Probably not, but I feel like I beat the winter blues and not a moment to son. Forecast for home this week: highs in the teens with lows in the single digits to negatives...