Saying Goodbye.....

Well only if the world comes to an end in just over 24 hours that is... Thanks for stopping by BEFORE the Mayan calendar ends....

If you stopped by AFTER the 21st....Well I guess we will just see.

It's Hockey Time Again!

So if you've ever read this blog before then you knew at some point this was coming. Yes Its is once again hockey season in our house. Now in all honesty it's never really not hockey season in our house, but this year we've gone OVERBOARD... That logo above is the team Frudoch has FINALLY made. It took a while to happen and then this year it really appeared it wouldn't as he was not picked. That brings us to.....

Ok it was late and I used a short cut but Fru was supposed to play for the Caps. In fact he did take part in one practice with them and went to a team picnic. Then an interesting thing happened and an opportunity opened up and he stepped up and grabbed it. I feel a bit bad about leaving the Capitals but we did it in June and the season games started in late August so....

Of course there was also the decision whether to play high school hockey or continue in travel and after a summer with the the HS team we know he made the right choice. So for 2012-12 Fru is playing in the Tier 1 Elite League and so far the competition has been intense. Just what he wanted.

Moving on to Poppy things get even more crazy. The theme could be let the politics continue... Girls travel hockey is gaining momentum and some organizations don't know when to stay put and when to step up. Unfortunately ours played their cards all wrong before the tryouts and while they bluffed their hand they ultimately tried to play with a bad hand. Poppy was not invited back to play with the group she played with last year and to make a long story short i'm FINE with it. That group has tried to go from 0 to 60 in an instant and unless you're driving a top fuel dragster its impossible. She was left on the side of the road and is now playing on a U16 team instead of the U12 (which folded) or U14 which had some parents with Olympic dreams. The U16 team is Tier 2 and the U14 is Tier 1 and is made up with girls that should be in tier 2.....

So while happy to be playing Poppy wanted more competition so we went and tried out for a spot on the U12 Ohio Flames (which is Tier1) which added some higher level competition to her schedule. This team is based out of the Cleveland which means 2 hour drives each way for practices and games. Its ok though as these girls are GOOD! So practices and games were intermixed for the flames and practices were happening for the CBJ girls team when Poppy suffered a broken arm at a practice and this cut short the best part of the Ohio Flames season along with a month of practices with the CBJ...

Which now brings us to team #3 for Poppy. She's going back to the boys and playing in CAHA to supplement the travel schedules of the CBJ girls and Flames programs. It will make things busier, but all the games are within an hour of our house and laying all the schedules on top of each other it looks like she will only miss 1 game with the boys team. There will be a few games starting with this weekend where she will play a boys game on the way to a travel girls game though....

Ok so yes we're nuts here, but the boys team and league she is playing in has what they call a select team made up of the better players in the league and they go and play about 15-20 games against travel teams and other select teams. Since we have nothing to do on a few of those weekends..... Yeah she's trying out for the North Stars tonight....Oh brother....

2012 Cleveland Air Show

Time....No matter what that damn clock keeps ticking. No matter how much stuff piles up it never stops and as I know all to well time keeps on going no matter what. I'm still trying to blog. I still think about doing it, but well that damn clock.... I'm determined to post at least once a month. Yeah some months are going to slip by, but i'll do my best to make it up. This month I'll go back a few weeks and give a brief review of the 2012 Cleveland National Air Show.

It was awesome as usual.... Seriously Cleveland puts on a great air show and amongst enthusiasts it is a don't miss as they always manage to grab more than you expect. This year they had some extras for the Sunday crowd and the Monday crowd. The downside of course is if you want it all you need to go all 3 days plus practice plus fly ins.....You get it. Well the 2 hour drive from central Ohio was not going to allow it although I was in Cleveland on Sunday as well for hockey... In fact had I not won 4 free tickets via a trivia contest on Facebook (Thanks Fox Sports Net Ohio!)I probably would have skipped this year. Friday I was Chief Instructor for a high performance driving school at Mid Ohio Sports Car Course in 93˚ heat. Saturday was recovery from Friday and I was supposed to be the pace car driver for SCCA club races at Mid-Ohio(too tired). Sunday was Hockey in Cleveland and that left Monday and the photos you see below!

A few of the highlight aircraft: FA-18F Super Hornet FA-18 CF-18 F-22 C-130 "Fat Albert" B-17 P-51 F4U-5 T-6 C-31A/Golden Knights Of course there were many more primarily Air Show legends like Sean Tucker, Jane Wicker Wing-walking, and Michael Goulian, but I tend to focus on the Military and former military aircraft on this blog.

I'd also like to point to a great writeup on flying with the US Army Golden Knights that can be found here: http://www.theclevelandsound.com/?p=14002

I took the kids for Monday because I had recovered and it was another opportunity to see the F-22 Raptor make a brief appearance after finishing up at the Ft. Wayne Air Show. It also had a very rare US stop for the Canadian CF-18 which is of course an FA-18 as seen in the Blue Angels squad. We had hot weather but it was mostly sunny with a breeze off the lake and the normal hour and 40 minute drive was stretched out to over 2 hours not due to traffic, but our *friends* at the Ohio State Highway Patrol and their 16 speed traps... The humidity made the vapor trails pretty spectacular and I missed the best one of all off the FA-18F Super Hornet which formed a huge vapor cone while at transonic speed. Even the CF-18 got a big cone which I caught a part of as seen below. Enjoy the photos. I had camera issues and didn't o to well, but I have plans to fix that for next year. With the end of summer its full on hockey time and I'll have so much to blog about. Tons of stuff has happened with that already!

Dayton Air Show 2012--2 F-4 Phantoms!

Jump back a month to the 2012 Vectren Dayton Air Show and once again we loaded up and headed out for the (shh don't tell anybody) FREE practice day on Friday to watch the performers practice for the weekend show. This has become a tradition for myself and my kids and we expect some heat, but this year was crazy hot with temps around 103 and thankfully low humidity along with just a few clouds. I brought along my EZ-Up canopy and got a small lesson in aerodynamics when you don't secure said canopy to the ground properly.... In any case the Blue Angels were the feature with appearances by an A4 and Harrier as well as a few other brief flybys.The cool factor was not 1, but 2 F-4 Phantom's aking part in the Heritage Flight with a P-51 Mustang. Certainly the cutback on the military displays are hurting as beyond the Blues and Thunderbirds the only other attractions are the F22 and the Golden Knights. No more Strike Eagle and Viper demo's has really hurt. Luckily the upcoming Cleveland Air Show will have an FA-18 Super Hornet demo and F-22 Flyby to go with the Blues and maybe a surprise or 2. I'll never complain about an air show so despite the heat and canopy incident It was a great day. I brought my camera, but tried to enjoy the show more than take photo's but here are a few... Enjoy! Even with the low humidity I did manage to capture a bit of vapor off one of the Blues FA-18B's.

Stepping Up To the Big Time in 2012-13

A bit of good news for early summer! Fru will be playing AAA this season! Its been a crazy start to summer with the Derecho and subsequent loss of power and the simultaneous jump from AA to AAA while we are still trying to sort out where Poppy will play this year.

Writer's Block

Yeah I've got it. I have topics, but for some reason I can't get anything together in my brain in some format that will allow anybody to recognize it as some form of writing. Plus right now its all run-on sentences filled with grammatical errors and poor spelling. I'm also dealing with a million things and I'm finding it hard to actually finish ANY of them. So.... I just need to make up a few lists and start knocking things off. Maybe then I'll write. For now the list starts with prepping the race car and I'm having trouble getting motivated to do that. That should be some insight for how overwhelmed I am.

This New Schedule is Totally Confusing.....

Yeah thats a line from my favorite movie. While not entirely accurate for this post I just want to point out I'm a creature of habit and I hate when things change. Blogger has changed and its thrown me for a loop. I'm still coming to grips with it and I suspect it will take time. I promise I will blog more. Life has thrown me some curve balls lately and I'm trying to figure out the why's and how's at the moment. Much of it doesn't make sense and in time i'll figure it out. bear with me. Oh yeah? Anyone care to guess what movie that line is from?

Is that light?

Yes I am alive.

REALLY

Today is February 29th. Leap Day! Right now I need to take a leap, but have another few weeks before it would mean anything. Yes the month of March means hockey season is almost over. After almost 85 games and more than 195 practices I can see the end approaching. I can't let myself go just yet as there are still at least 10 games and about 6 practices to go. Never mind that OFF SEASON workouts and TRYOUTS are already on the schedule for March and April. All I know is that the end of the 2011-12 season is coming. I hate to say this, but I can't wait....