Mother Cup 2008

The setting was Williamsburg, Michigan at the home of Judy and Dave Crouse for the annual Mother Cup fishing tournament. The reigning champion Class of '85 (Seadogs) were up against some tough competition this year from the Class of ’84 (Son’s of Liberty-SOL) with their switch of one Dan (Mitchell) for another (Harken). Rumor on the street had it that Roger told Mitchell the outing was next week but that was just hearsay.

As had happened last year, the SOL group charged out of the gate on Friday evening with the boat being held by Champion and Tommy making a great showing in leading the SOL's to a commanding four pound lead after the first session. What was most impressive for the two is that they picked up roughly eight pounds of fish while fishing with the pontoon boat. Not one of the most stealth-like fishing machines. The crazy thing is Champion and Tommy are the equivalent to Brandon Inge and Ramon Santiago of the Tigers; any production they get is a bonus for their team. To take it one step further, you could say that Keith, Roger, and Dan are the Miguel Cabrera's of the team in that they are supposed to produce, however, for the most part it was not happening for the trio.

The SOL's held strong in session number two Saturday morning holding on to a eight pound lead after all was said. Tommy and his trained leeches lead the session with close to six pounds for his efforts. I had my first and last experience with the weighing of the fish after the session. I managed to read kilograms instead of pounds so needless to say, a few fish totals had to be converted. Sorry about that one fellas. Too many Hendrix sessions on the morning fish I guess.

After the morning fish, the two teams gathered in peace to break bread and wine (lot's of wine)on the Crouse pontoon boat taking a leisure tour down the Torch River into Torch Lake. A beautiful ride it was.

Something had to give for the Seadogs leading into the third session Saturday evening. Could the reign be over after one year? Boat captain's Al and Greg weren't about to let that happen. What occurred might have been the fishing gods looking down on us but the weather from about six to seven o'clock that evening turned pretty crazy. The winds were making fishing quite difficult for everyone. Greg, Rob, and I weren't sure if our two rock bass were going to win it was so tough to get a hold of anything. However, the front moved out, the lake got calm, and here came the fish! Al managed to bring in 12 pounds and Greg almost nine. The Seadogs now had an eight pound lead, a 16 pound turnaround! The SOL team was down but determined to make a solid showing in the final session Sunday morning. The evening was complete with a nice deep fried dinner of fish and onion rings.

You couldn't ask for a better scene for the final session. The lake was glass and the Seadogs were determined to run away with the cup. And boy did we. Al lead the charge with over eight pounds and Rob caught a nice pair of largemouth bass and brought in a total of seven pounds. With that, the massacre was on.

The final totals:

TEAM

Seadogs 61 1/4 pounds

SOL's 39 1/2 pounds

MOST TOTAL LBS/BIGGEST FISH
Al

The competition and the whole weekend was again a great time. Kudos to Judy and Dave for again putting up with 11 burping, gas passing, musically challenged group of people.

Trail Head

Joe Maples is alive

It had been widely speculated that Joe Maples was being held captive by his wife Tania in the basement of their Brighton home. Friends have made numerous attempts to contact Joe without success. Well, at the Tiger game on Saturday, I'm happy to report that Joe is alive and well. He was there with Tania and their two boys. The boys definitely have Tania's genes with respect to their appearance. I assume they will grow the Maples mustache when they hit 13 or so. The game was a good time. As opposed to the two other games I went to where they got shutout and almost no-hit, it was good to witness a victory.

After the game, Doke and I had some beverages at a local watering hole and attempted to show off our pool shooting prowess. Well, my prowess has left the building. It was quite an ugly display of pool by yours truly. Pool shooting aside, a great day it was.

Trail Head

Milford Trail Challenge

The second annual Milford Trail Challenge was Saturday morning and boy was it a hot one. The "challenge" isn't really a challenge; there were no winners of the event. The main goal was to get some funds to the Michigan Mountain Biking Association. I take it for granted when I ride that there are people out there trying to make my ride enjoyable so giving back is the least I could do. The start/registration for the challenge was at St. George's Cafe in downtown Milford. After registering, riders have the option of riding any or all of the trails surrounding downtown Milford, preferably getting to all locations by bicycle. Within peddling distance of Milford is the Milford Trail, Proud Lake, Island Lake, Hickory Glen and Highland Recreation Area. I chose to just do the Milford Trail and Proud Lake. It's too bad my main riding posse had soccer-dad commitments but they have to do what they have to do. No grudges here.

After the ride I was a bit parched and one of the perks to donating to this event is O'Callahan's Pub in Milford had $1 beers for all riders. While heading up there, I ran into Trig who also rode in the event. He and his group rode out to Island Lake. Trig took a nice spill based on the mud content on his shirt. Unfortunately he bit it not on the dirt trails but on the pavement path from Kensington over to Island Lake. The atmosphere inside of O'Callahan's was a scene where I guess you can only say, "you had to be there" and unfortunately I didn't bring my camera. A bunch of people still in their riding attire (picture bright red spandex times 20), all muddied up, and getting their $1 beer fix. One guy had his riding helmet on while others had their water packs still strapped on. A good event overall I think.

Trail Head

Great Week

Besides a weary head (a large one at that), I honestly can’t complain about much of anything this week. The Wings won the Stanley Cup, I got to hang with some friends who I hadn’t seen in some time, the mountain biking at Maybury on Thursday was great, and I got to see the parade today at work on my lunch (a bit extended) break. And it’s only Friday! Seeing the parade is one of the nice perks of working downtown, although I cringe when I see the Detroit city tax (the Kwame fund) on my paycheck each time. Woodward was jam packed with people coming from all over the area and all I had to do was walk outside my building and…bam, hello parade. The Lidstrom picture was taken by a business contact who works at the Compuware building. Not a bad picture he took there.

Weather permitting, it's off to the Milford Trail Challenge (mountain biking) tomorrow. It's more or less a fund raiser/recreational ride for the Michigan Mountain Biking Association. It should be a fun adventure in hitting the trails in the area and getting some laughs at the spandex-clad riders.

Trail Head

Wings Win! (no overtime thankfully)

What a grueling work week it has been this week. Unfortunately (or fortunately), work has had little impact on the harshness. With the Wings up 3-1 in the Stanley Cup finals and the next game being at home on Monday, everybody and their brother had their victory cigars ready to go, the news stations were announcing their post game victory coverage, fans were practicing their octopi tosses for when Gary Bettman was on the ice, and the cup was being polished up. I was going to go the safe route and watch it in the comfortable confines of my house but Matt B. “shamed” me into watching it with a posse at his house. I’m glad he did because championships in any sport are tough to come by (read: Detroit Lions) and you have to make the most of it when they happen. Well….everybody was ready to party until 34 seconds remaining in the game when Pittsburgh rained on our parade. Three overtime periods later, the game was lost and the Tuesday work day was only about five hours away. Ugh!!!!! There wasn’t much talking in the office that next day but we all somehow go through it.
After my sleep tank was replenished Tuesday night, I was ready to suck it up on Wednesday for game six, as were about ten others. The location for this gathering was Rich P.’s place, also known as “The Mansion.” Rich has my 57 inch TV screen beat by a bit. He has roughly a six foot projection TV screen in his garage. I would post a picture of it here but it won’t do it justice. The players are pretty much life size watching that thing. Crazy. In between periods, Matt (aka Mike Babcock) was putting on a basketball shooting seminar in Rich’s driveway. He was chucking them in from about thirty feet and even made a shot kneeling from the fire pit (see picture). We split in the P-I-G shootout, even though Matt protested because I didn’t “call” my behind the back shot. Those hockey players are always trying to get an edge somewhere. The Wings did pull out the victory, although that last shot as time expired was a bit on the scary side. Matt does get the gold star for calling out that Dallas Drake would be handed the cup after Captain Nicklas Lidstom had his ceremonial skate with it. Drake has the longest league tenure on the team (16 years) without having won a cup. He looked pretty giddy with it in tow. Heck, who wouldn’t?

Trail Head