My Yellow NotePad: The Notepad Abides..

Forgot about this one, but the original incarnation of the yellow notepad came in handy during my trip back to the islands. As I think I mentioned before I got delayed quite a bit and had to get pretty creative to make it back to Maui in just one day so each time I was on the phone with an airline representative (The first three or four times this was with United and then finally with Hawaiian to make sure I'd be able to hop the “shuttle” over...or jettle, maybe? Jet-shuttle, get it? Catchy, methinks..) I needed to remember flight times and flight numbers and various other factoids and the yellow notepad came through in the clutch. As did the houndstooth hip pouch. You haters out there can zip it about my bootleg look because as everyone in line was scrambling though their carry ons in hope of coming up with writing implements and paper I had paper, pencils and pens for miles right close by. I was even kind enough to give out two sheets and let someone borrow a pen, too. Good travel karma, right there. A couple people had the iPhones and blackberrys (that's correct pluralization, right? As it's a proper name, not the delicious fruit. I think I'm correct..) but it looked miserable having to hold the phone, say, “Yep, hold on,” take the phone away from their ears, type a couple of letters or numbers or words or whatever, then say “OK, go,” and do it again and again and again. I plopped that phone on in between my shoulder and ear and just wrote away. No delay, no pause. “Yep, yep, yep.” I kick ass. Do not hate on my travel ability. I hate airline travel but I'm skillfully adapting to it. Any travel with windows up is pretty lame, if you ask me.

Speaking of old business pertaining to my flight from east to west, while in Chicago awaiting my flight to LAX I had a chance to talk to Clay Matthews' parents for a minute. Actually, Clay Matthews III's parents, as Clay Matthews' father is Clay Matthews Jr. Clay Matthews III is a helluva player for the Packers and former USC stud, and his pops was a linebacker in the league for many, many years in the 70's, 80's, & 90's. Clay Jr.'s brother, Bruce played tackle for nineteen seasons in the league and started close to 300 games in his career. Never missed a start, either. First ballot hall of famer, you know, just your average career. As I look at Clay Jr's wiki page is tells me he played in the 16th most games all time. Bruce never missed a start in his career and, until BrettFave passes him this season, played in the most games ever by a non kicker/punter. This family has nothing to sneeze at when it comes to football. The third Matthews son is a linebacker at Oregon now and they're, oh, #2 in the country right now. Ho hum.

I knew a a lot more about Bruce than I did about Clay Jr. I knew Clay Jr. was in the league but I didn't know he had played as long as he did until today. I guess you learn something new(-ish..) every day.

Speaking of the league: the TV show The League on FX sucks big donkey balls. I watched the first season and it was kind of funny but the one episode I saw of season 2 was awful. They had commissioner issues but these issues were decided upon by 5 people. WHERE THE HELL WAS THE INPUT FROM THE OTHER THREE PEOPLE WHO SUPPOSEDLY PICKED VIA TELEPHONE IN SEASON ONE?! Trash, if you ask me. Talk about a plot hole. Clearly these writers have very little knowledge of the seriousness most long time gamers take their fantasy football. This shit pisses me off. If you've only got one good season of ideas don't come back for season 2 and just fill it with fear boners and shit like that. The fear boner storyline began pretty humorously but lost all steam when the competition for new commissioner came down to a running race watched by the three other people who live close by without any input from the remainder of the league. Poppycock. Five-team leagues don't fucking happen. See?! I'm swearing over the ridiculousness of this show. GET IT OFF THE AIR ASAP. I'd like to burn Craig right now with what he used to do in high school (Hell, may still do, I'll have to ask Nick..) but that's a league-eyes-only matter and not fit for discussion here. You're lucky I respect the sanctity of our league, Mr. Cormier, Jr. AS ANY TRUE FANTASY FOOTBALLER WOULD, UNLIKE THE SHMUCKS WHO WRITE FOR THAT BABY TURD EXCUSE FOR A TV SHOW.

But at any rate I was at O'Hare waiting for my connection to LAX having already bumped my LAX-Maui flight to LAX-Honolulu via telephone when I saw this big middle aged dude milling about. Not out of the ordinary by any stretch at a big airport, I know. He happened to be standing relatively close to where I was sitting down when the woman he was with turned around and she was wearing a "ROSE BOWL GAME" backpack with "MATTHEWS" embroidered on it. I had to go over and say hello and demonstrate my knowledge of the Matthews' family. They were super nice folks. Still pumped up after Green Bay's dismantling of the BrettFavre disaster a couple of days beforehand.

They flew economy plus, not first class. I respected that, too.

As I was boarding, long after the Matthews' had boarded as they sprung for middle class, a woman came up and asked who it was I was talking to. I told her and she was super excited because her son played D-line at U Idaho so she knew her son would love to hear about who she was on the plane with. I envisioned him saying, "Cool, mom..." in a brush off way but knowing deep down he would have liked to have been there. 20-something sons are jerks. Her son is a high school football coach, so we talked high school fooseball coaching in general for a brief minute, too. The jet bridge was long, I'm not making it up. That day was easily more than I had ever spoken in airports in my life, combined, including trips I traveled with other people. I guess I was in a good mood.

For the past couple of days it's been raining intermittently here. And by intermittently I mean 90% of the time it is showering, 5% of the time it is raining, and the other 5% the sun is out. More or less all this means is I get SOAKED on my bike rides. I need to keep a towel on my bike at all times so when I get to wherever I'm going I can towel off before proceeding inside. It's not really that bad, I suppose, as it's still 75 out when this is going on. But I didn't move away from Vacationland to live on a vacation island for it to rain all of the time. This has got to stop ASAP.

People look at me like I'm crazy, too, when I ride around in the rain. It hardly rains like this here, well, ever, so I'll take 350 days of sunny bike riding and fifteen or so lousy ones all the way to the bank. All the way to the bank in the rain today, actually, as I need to order checks today. Life doesn't stop because of showers, unless you're the Wicked Witch of the West. My clever wit doesn't stop, either. Cheers.