Snow Angels

Toward the end of Duquesne's 51-6 loss to South Dakota State in the FCS playoffs during a winter storm yesterday, the beleaguered Dukes defense finally made a play and recovered a fumble. With no hope for victory, a couple of senior defensive linemen said "what the hell" and did snow angels to celebrate the fumble recovery and the end of their college careers. The refs threw a flag. Of course they did.

I really hate the choreographed NFL end zone dances, which are rehearsed and tiresome. This was different. It was spontaneous and harmless and fun. No fun allowed, 15 yards.

The great thing about FCS football is everyone who has a remote chance gets into the 24-team playoff field. Thankfully no Herbstreit droning on and on and on. And on and on and on. If we did have an FBS-style "debate," the Jacks would have been pleading with the committee to ignore its stinko loss at Northern Iowa and give it a top 3 seed. Instead they were seeded #5 and will have to win two road games, likely including one in Fargo, to reach the final. (Lesson to SDSU: Don't lose to UNI. Lesson to Georgia: Don't lose to LSU and Alabama.) Not ideal, but the Jackrabbits will decide their own fate on the field, which next week in Kennesaw, Georgia will probably not be snow angel-ready.

We are doomed

I had an oversized letter to mail today so I went to the nearest postal station which happens to be at the customer service counter in a grocery store. When I got to the counter there was a sign that said the system was down. I had this delusion that they could still weigh it and figure out the postage manually. No such luck.

"The system is down and we can't do anything." "Can't you just weigh it?" "They told us not to trust it."

It is believed the Earth was hit by a massive coronal mass ejection from the Sun in 1859, frying telegraph lines across the U.S. and Europe. Scientists warn that if our modern world gets hit by a solar event of comparable magnitude, it would fry all of our electronics and send us back to the stone age. No more GPS satellites, no computers, perhaps not even any functional vehicles made after 1975. Since our economy is now almost entirely dependent on electronic technology to function, mass starvation seems to be the unavoidable result. We don't have an analog backup for most of our digital world. It's not like we can seamlessly revert to using 1859 steam locomotives.

I took the letter home, weighed it on my analog food prep scale, slapped two Forever stamps on it and stuck it in the mailbox. Disaster averted, for now.

I have found it!

The greatest stuntwoman in history, Kitty O'Neil, died last week at age 72. That caught my eye, not only because we shared the same last name, but because the place of her demise was Eureka, South Dakota.

In addition to being acknowledged as the greatest stuntwoman, Kitty also holds the world land speed record for women of nearly 513 mph. She had her own Mattel action figure and a biopic movie. Stockard Channing played her in the movie, but she did her own stunts. She overcame much adversity in her life, including deafness from a childhood illness, meningitis which ended a promising Olympic diving career, a couple bouts of cancer, and various injuries from her risky profession. She retired from that lifestyle in 1982, and in 1993 moved to Eureka. She was a native Texan, but apparently she moved there with a fellow named Ray Wald who had some ties to the area.

[In a side note, South Dakota native Jessi Combs (Rapid City), has tried to put together an attempt to break the land speed record, which Kitty set in a three-wheel vehicle. Combs already holds the women's record for a four-wheel vehicle, 399 mph. Combs is best known, at least to me, for one season on Mythbusters while Kari Byron was on maternity leave. Kitty publicly supported Jessi's plans.]

Some of the news coverage of Kitty's passing included bewilderment how a famous Hollywood figure could end up in a tiny little town deep in flyover country. According to the Hollywood Reporter, "I got tired of living in L.A.," she said. "I don't like the big city, too many people. So I moved here and fell in love with it. The people are so friendly."

According to the Washington Post, “How and why they (her and Wald) settled in Eu­reka probably still has a lot of people scratching their heads and a bit baffled,” said Barry Lapp, president of the Eureka Pioneer Museum, which features an exhibit on Ms. O’Neil’s life.

In my former life as a bank examiner, I never went to Eureka per se, but drove just south of there heading to towns further west such as McLaughlin. My understanding is Eureka is a nice little town, maybe even an oasis in the vast expanse of prairie, but it is only 868 people. Aberdeen, population 28,000, is 73 miles away. In McLaughlin, which is near the Missouri River, we asked a single 20-something junior bank officer what he did for fun. He thought about it for a while before responding, "It helps if you like fishing."

When I retired and moved from Massachusetts back to South Dakota, my co-workers thought I was going to the wild frontier. And I'm in a city that has a Costco and Paul McCartney concerts. Eureka is 280 miles deeper into the wilderness. For the last 25 years of her life, Kitty had the blue skies of uncrowded Eureka rather than LA's congestion and brown smog cloud, but I'm sure the writer for the Hollywood Reporter still doesn't get it.

Update: Sadly, Jessi Combs died in 2019 while trying to set the land speed record for a female driver. Guinness recognized that she broke Kitty O'Neil's 513 mph record with a 522+ mph run just before the fatal crash.

Side effect

At my annual eye exam two years ago, I first noticed that the corrective lenses prescribed for my extreme, life-long nearsightedness no longer brought the world into focus. Last year, the eye doctor acknowledged that I was developing cataracts but didn't think it was necessary to pursue treatment at that time. After the past few months when one stoplight became three and I thought perhaps I was becoming a road hazard, I asked my regular doctor what he thought. He shined a light in my eyes, said "cataracts," and immediately referred me to an eye surgeon.

Ten days ago the surgeon removed the cloudy lens from my right eye and replaced it with an artificial lens. Four days ago, the procedure was performed on my left eye. In the six days in between, I was able to compare what the world looked like through a cataract versus a clear lens. Even though I knew the cloud had been reducing the amount of light that passed into my eye, I was surprised at how much brighter everything was. Even more surprising was the color, which I had not noticed was shifting toward the murky. Have you ever seen a piece of aged plastic that used to be clear? It turns yellowish brown, and that was what had happened to the lenses in my eyes.

The audience for network evening news is old people, so the commercials often are for the multitude of medicines that old people need. The sales pitch is followed by the list of side effects, some of which are quite horrendous and alarming. While there are potential negative side effects to cataract surgery, there was one positive side effect I hadn't thought of: I am no longer nearsighted. The implanted lenses fixed it. I've been wearing glasses every waking moment since age 7, but now I don't need glasses for distance vision. I still need reading glasses, but as I'm at my computer typing this I'm not wearing them.

This image of bighorns in the Badlands approximates the difference in my eyes without glasses between the surgeries. Most (but not all) of the blurriness is due to my nearsightedness, so not everyone with cataracts will be this blurry. This actually understates the problem because it doesn't show the triple vision I was experiencing. Click on the image to see a larger version, and welcome to my (former) world.

I started driving again a couple days ago. As I settled into my truck, I noticed with relief that I was able to see the dashboard without the reading glasses. I also noticed the MPG number on my dashboard. I thought Ford was stupid for using a small blue number on a black background which nobody could possibly see, particularly during the day. After the operations, it is crystal clear even during the day. So maybe it was me.

I probably should have started gathering information in late 2016 after I first started noticing that my glasses weren't doing the job. Certainly after my eye exam in late 2017, I should have been more insistent that I needed something other than a new glasses prescription. My suggestion is if your eye doctor ever says it looks like you are developing cataracts, ask about the surgery. It is a relatively safe procedure and I'm unaware of any benefit of putting it off until you see three stoplights where there should be one.

One week later: I used to have a superpower. I used to be able to read the tiniest print by holding it four inches from my face. Now that I'm no longer extremely nearsighted, those days are gone. I suppose now having 95% of the world in focus makes up for it.

Five weeks later: After waiting for my eyes to stabilize and for delivery, I finally got my new glasses today. I'm slightly nearsighted in my right eye, which was planned (monovision), but I primarily need glasses for reading. The new lenses are one-third the thickness of the old lenses. If high index lenses had not been invented, the difference would be more dramatic. Maybe this sounds mundane to anyone who has always been able to see, but for me it still feels like a miracle.

30 seconds of fame

I am a regular listener of the Tony Kornheiser Show, which is a daily podcast that evolved from a radio show on ESPN 980, WTEM in Washington. I have followed Mr. Tony throughout his career from the Washington Post to Monday Night Football to his current role on Pardon the Interruption on ESPN. I know he is an acquired taste and many people can't stand him, but as an old fart I appreciate his humor and I listen to his show every day.

I found an old MP3 player that I thought might be useful at the gym because, compared to my current phone, it is tiny. On there I found a download of the Tony Kornheiser show from February 2013. I sent an email to the show telling what I found, and that email was read on the show today. For me, this is the equivalent of mugging for the camera after spotting myself on the Jumbotron at a sporting event (which I would never do).

Follow this link, download the show from 1/18/17 "The Socialite is in the house" and fast forward to 1:12:04. The clip lasts for about 30 seconds.

http://www.tonykornheisershow.com/archives/#

This is the email:

"I was cleaning up an old MP3 player and found a copy of the Podcast in its former incarnation from February 2013. Feeling nostalgic about a bygone era, I listened to it, and it happened to feature the first in-studio appearance of one Mr. Chris Cillizza. The topic was whether the abrasive Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel would run for President in 2016 if Hillary decided not to, and Mr. Cillizza offered this insightful peek into the soul of America that we have come to except:

"Gary: Can you think of a President that has had that sort of an edge to him?
"Tony: No.
"Chris: His reputation is he loves to swear and is very confrontational. I'm not sure that's what people are looking for in a President."

Today the response to this was,
Chris: Nailed it!
Tony: Yeah.
Gary: Funny.
Chris: Is Rahm president? Thank you. You're welcome.

Validation for life.

Beer

After extensive research covering the past 45 years, I have come to the following conclusions about beer:

• Best beer: Samuel Adams Boston Lager. I've decided the best beer style is Vienna Lager, and Sam is the best of this style. It is the perfect balance of hops and malt, creamy head, and it is available everywhere. Whenever I'm in New York I get Brooklyn Lager on draft when possible, but my recent side-by-side comparison of bottles from Brooklyn and Boston came out in favor of Boston. I've been consulting BeerAdvocate.com to find beers to try, and even though regional brewers such as Great Lakes and New Glarus have higher-rated entries, I still prefer Sam.
• Best amber: Colorado Native Amber Lager. Hoppy but not a hop bomb like an IPA. Unfortunately only available in Colorado. Alaskan Amber isn't bad, and on a related note:
• Best local (South Dakota) beer: Red Water Ale from Crow Peak Brewery in Spearfish. I think this is a spring seasonal so not always available.
• Best IPA: 7,000 varieties tied for first place. Bell's Two-Hearted is my most recent try, not too bad. I actually prefer an IPL such as Colorado Native IPL or even Leinenkugel IPL.
• Best wheat beer: Like IPA, I don't think it makes much difference which you choose. 312 is ok, Blue Moon usually available, whatever.
• Best stout: Guinness Draft. I've decided I don't like most stouts but the Nitro creaminess of Guinness sets it apart.
• Best pilsner: Small sample size but I'm going with Brooklyn Pilsner. Wish I could get it more often. Sierra Nevada Nooner is often but not always available in my area. Eastern Europe imports often available and usually good.
• Best cheap crap: Pabst Blue Ribbon. The purpose of yellow fizzy beer is to quench your thirst on a hot day. PBR fills this niche. Other mainstream beers suffer in comparison, but I have been known to suck down the occasional Coors (but NOT Coors Light).

Generally speaking, I don't want fruit or spices in my beer, which is why I detest most seasonal beers. With that in mind:

• Best shandy: Seriously? Shandy sucks. I hate that it steals shelf space from real beer. I can't find the aforementioned Leinenkugel IPL because of all that shandy crap they sell.
• Best hard cider: Don't know, don't care.
• Best lite beer: Does not exist. Beer-flavored fizzy water.

Just speculating here, but I think the term "Pre-Prohibition" some brewers use (e.g. Brooklyn Lager) came into existence to emphasize that 100 years ago brewers didn't use cheap ingredients like corn and rice in place of barley. These cheap ingredients are called adjuncts, so crap like Bud and Miller are categorized as Adjunct Lagers. They really do have inferior flavor, and the reason is the ingredients. PBR makes the best of this disadvantage and has its place as I described above, but it is still inferior. The beer revolution is not some marketing gimmick as Bud might want you to believe. It's an ongoing revolution against the pale imitation beers that somehow became popular in this country in the 20th century.

Some beer snobs turn up their nose at Boston Lager because it has become a national brand over the past 25 years. But as far as I can tell they still aren't cutting corners, and there's something to be said for being able to go into a restaurant anywhere in the country and being sure there is at least one good beer on the menu.

I don't consider myself a beer snob. I don't really care about Belgian brews that almost taste like wine, and are bottled (and priced) accordingly. Even Boston Beer Company dabbles in this stuff. As long as they don't screw up Boston Lager, I don't care.

All of the above is my opinion. You are welcome to your own opinion, but I'm probably not interested in hearing it.

Its Own Glory

After yesterday's dreadful Final Four semifinals, Jon Morse wrote this morning, "The best game yesterday was the one you didn't watch."

Morse writes a blog called "Bring on the Cats," which is essentially a Kansas State Wildcats fan site. However, Morse also provides the public service of tracking all of the "other" college basketball tournaments that are going on this time of year. The "best game" to which he refers was the University of South Dakota's 71-65 win over Florida Gulf Coast for the championship of the Women's National Invitational Tournament. The game was available nationally on cable channel CBS Sports Network, and those who bothered to watch saw a competitive contest played before an enthusiastic DakotaDome crowd of 7,400. I'm a USD alum, so yes, I was watching.

Summit League regular-season champ USD was relegated to the WNIT with a loss to South Dakota State in the league championship game on March 8. SDSU went on to play well in the NCAA tournament but bowed out in the 2nd round. After yesterday's win, USD Coach Amy Williams was asked the inevitable question of whether it was better to play a game or two in the NCAA tournament or win the WNIT. As with most situations that have arisen in the past four years at USD, Williams was prepared, answering, "Every accomplishment has its own glory." Despite chants from the student section of "Bring on UConn," this 32-6 WNIT winner isn't ready to take on the undefeated Huskies. But after the Summit League disappointment it did string together six wins over good teams, including dominating performances against so-called Power 5 teams from Minnesota and Oregon.

The men's Final Four yesterday did nothing for me. The only interesting figure, Buddy Hield, had a bad game as Oklahoma got trounced. I used to sort of like Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim, but he has turned into something of a detestable figure in his old age. North Carolina is in the middle of an academic scandal that goes well beyond the athletic department. Unlike Syracuse and UNC, Villanova hasn't gotten caught cheating lately (1971), but there's nothing there that draws my interest. I'll probably watch UNC-Villanova Monday night out of habit, but I really don't care about the outcome.

This year I've found local college basketball much more interesting than that played by these corrupted national brands. Last week, the men's team from Augustana University of Sioux Falls completed a 34-2 season by winning the NCAA Division 2 championship in Frisco, TX. The campus is five miles from my house, so yes, I watched that championship game, also on CBS Sports Network. So what happens to the players who actually attended class for four years and will not get drafted by the NBA? Augustana seniors Dan Jansen and Casey Schilling, both D2 All-Americans, are student teaching for the remainder of the semester. USD senior Tia Hemiller, who carried her team with 22 points yesterday, also will be busy with student teaching. Any bets on whether projected high NBA draft pick Ben Simmons has attended any classes since the end of his one-and-done season at LSU?

The mythos of the "student/athlete" and the view that there is considerable hypocrisy in college sports are not mutually exclusive. Both have elements of truth. The NCAA loves its $10.8 billion (with a "b") March Madness TV contract, no doubt about it, and there is plenty of speculation that bigger schools are trying to figure out how to share less of that with the smaller schools. But even smaller schools have to invest considerable funds in facilities and coaches. For those who think we spend too much on college sports at the expense of more worthy constituents, sorry but that's just the way it is and you are going to have to deal with it. Right or wrong, colleges see their sports programs as important marketing tools for fundraising and attracting prospective students. USD is completing a $74 million building project that includes a new basketball/volleyball arena. Alas, unlike buildings, coaches cannot be affixed to the ground. One of the plights of being a so-called mid-major institution is serving as a stepping stone to Power 5 jobs for talented young coaches.

In discussing the candidates to be the next coach of the Arizona Wildcat women, Arizona Star columnist Greg Hansen wrote, "Some big-school AD will soon hire Williams, 40, who led the Coyotes to a win in Saturday’s Women’s NIT championship game." He cited her salary as $180,000 a year, which sounds like a lot to your typical South Dakotan but is well below what a Big 10 or Pac 12 coach gets and is probably the lowest of the six football and basketball head coaches at USD and SDSU. Until now, all state employees were limited to a one-year contract, which is far from the norm in Division 1 sports. This has not been a problem at SDSU for whatever reason, but it became a problem at USD when it hired a new football coach recently. The South Dakota Board of Regents passed a resolution this week to allow four-year contracts for D1 coaches, athletic directors, and university presidents.

As Hansen pointed out, many of the top coaches in women's basketball are men (including all four in the women's Final Four), but Arizona has never hired a man for its top spot. SDSU's Aaron Johnston may have been the victim of gender discrimination when the Minnesota job was open a couple years ago, so it appears there are at least some schools that want a woman to coach the women. Being a hero in her home state may have its own glory for the Spearfish native Williams, but it seems likely that a young, successful mid-major coach who also happens to be female will be offered Power 5 opportunities that will be difficult to pass up. Last Wednesday, Williams' team obliterated Oregon of the Pac 12 by 34 points. Is that something you would be interested in, Arizona of the Pac 12? USD probably will be unable to hang onto Williams forever, but in my view it would be a good idea to act quickly on an enhanced contract offer and make it at least slightly less tempting for her to move on and seek greater glory elsewhere.

Update: Just a few hours after I wrote this, it was reported that SDSU men's coach Scott Nagy was leaving for Wright State in Dayton. While this doesn't sound like an upgrade, apparently Wright is going to nearly double Nagy's salary to $400K. I don't think the two South Dakota schools are willing yet to compete with that. Time to go find a young ambitious (relatively inexpensive) coach and hope for the best.

And eventually, Williams went to Nebraska of the Big 10 for a huge pay raise.

Sturgis at 75

I am compelled to comment on the 75th edition of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which is wrapping up this weekend. I drove through the Black Hills a couple weeks ago and already significant motorcycle traffic was evident, lending credence to the expectation that this year's rally would be a monster with attendance approaching 1 million bikers.

Many of the articles leading up to the 75th rally mentioned its start in 1938, giving credit to J.C. "Pappy" Hoel as the founder. I claim a unique perspective on the rally because, although I have never driven a motorcycle in my life, I was a reporter for the Sturgis weekly newspaper 1978-84, and I met with Clarence (as locals called him) and his wife Pearl at their home soon after I started at the paper. I remember him as a cordial but sort of deaf old gent. He talked about working as a young man in the family business, which was cutting and storing ice in the winter and delivering it in the summer. In 1936 when refrigeration was making ice delivery obsolete, he bought an Indian motorcycle franchise. Clarence founded the Jackpine Gypsies motorcycle club in 1936 and helped start the rally in 1938. I got the impression that he didn't want to take personal credit for founding the rally, but whether that was due to modesty or embarrassment about the crazier aspects of it, I'm not sure. Whenever I dealt with him after that initial interview, it didn't have to do with "the Rally," but with the White Plate Flat Trackers, an organization he helped found in 1979-80 that was devoted to preserving the history of motorcycle racing. ("White Plate" refers to the white numbered plate awarded to expert riders, and "Flat Track" was the dirt track upon which they raced.)

Part of my beat was city and county government, so I covered countless meetings where rally proponents and opponents came to debate whether the town should continue hosting this insane event. A near-riot by campers in the city park one year led to a series of meetings and a public vote. I wrote an opinion column in the paper advocating that the rally should continue because it was the thing that made the town unique. Without it, Sturgis would be just another ranch town like Belle Fourche. (No offense.) Proponents narrowly won the vote, but there were changes – camping was banned in the park and much of the partying moved, out of sight and out of mind, to new private campgrounds outside of city limits, such as the Buffalo Chip.

In 1989, nearby Deadwood embraced part of its dark history. Gambling was legalized, revitalizing that little town. Today there are dozens of casinos and hotels in Deadwood. Without Deadwood gambling and the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, there still would be tourists in the Black Hills, but not nearly as many. Whatever judgments you want to make, moral or otherwise, those two decisions made back in the 1980's bring millions of dollars to the northern Black Hills each year.

Being in the middle of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was part of my job, not something I would do on my own time. These days I live 375 miles to the east and usually visit the Black Hills in the spring and fall when the roads aren't clogged with bikers and RVs. But the rally is a unique event and I'm always interested to see (on TV, not in person) what is going on.

A t-shirt from 1981, one of my few Sturgis souvenirs. The event has gone by various names over the years.

GOG

Every once in a while I have a hankering to watch a silly sci-fi movie, and this week I found GOG on Amazon Prime. It has its share of silly movie "science," but the premise is quite interesting: The story centers around a computer that, among other things, controls two robots, Gog and Magog. (Wiki says these names show up in the Old Testament in many different contexts, including the End of Days.) An unfriendly foreign government installed a Trojan Horse when the computer was being assembled by outside contractors, and are able to hack into the computer and control the robots and other systems. Several "accidents" and attacks occur before the intrusion is detected and stopped.

Have I mentioned this movie came out in 1954? In other words, more than 60 years after this movie was released the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is still too stupid to figure out that it might not be a good idea to trust outside contractors with access to confidential records. Although I have not received notice that my information has been compromised, as a former federal employee whose records were transferred to OPM upon my retirement, it appears I am at risk. Thanks Obama (and Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and Eisenhower).

High (Price) Line

It's my last weekend in New York so I'm snapping the last few pictures from here EVER, but I can't post until next weekend because I'm without my photo editing computer. My hotel is in Chelsea these two weeks, so I headed west down 23rd today and found the High Line.

The High Line was an elevated rail that has been transformed into a city park. It's nice. But it's not $154 million nice, and it's still only two-thirds done. I can't believe they sunk that much money into such an inconsequential swatch of acreage. Where I come from, they could build a park about the same size for $2,000. But I'm from a state with plenty of bare land and only 11 people per square mile.

After 21 weeks here the past three years, I'm New Yorked-out, in case you can't tell.

Scan this

My Old House

During my trip east I drove by my old house in Massachusetts. New siding and a new roof. The 15 statues of bunnies, cherubs and saints are also new. Click on the image for a bigger version.

Face Time

The NCAA Division 1 Summit League men's and women's basketball tournaments were in Sioux Falls this week. I've been pondering my new role as a graduate of what is now a Division 1 school, South Dakota State.

Jackrabbit women at the Summit

SDSU embarked on the long transition process to Division 1 in 2003-04. At the time I thought the brain trust in the Jackrabbit athletic department was suffering from delusions of grandeur and I foresaw permanent irrelevance as a Division 1 competitor in basketball and football.

Teams in the transition process have to endure a Twilight Zone existence for five years, no longer Division 2 but not yet Division 1. The Zone is populated by the likes of New Jersey Tech and Utah Valley State, schools that have to schedule anyone anywhere in the country to get the opportunity to call themselves "Division 1."

Despite my earlier misgivings, I have to say the transition worked out as well as could be expected for SDSU. The primary reason for this is the Jackrabbits were able to join decent conferences, the Missouri Valley in football and the Summit League in everything else.

Now that I'm a Division 1 guy, I'm starting to get what being Division 1 is all about -- appearing on national television. Since that is the primary goal of all Division 1 basketball programs, I'm learning to resent all the butt-smooching ESPN and CBS bestow on the major conferences in the Eastern time zone while neglecting the Summit Leagues of the world. The predictions of the four men's #1 seeds have been changing from hour to hour as the favorites lose in their meaningless conference tournaments. Meanwhile, I set my DVR to 6:00 CDT Monday to catch the women's bracket announcement and see where my Jackrabbits, Summit League champions and ranked #14 nationally, are seeded. A #5 seed and a first-round game in Iowa City would be good; any lower or further away and as a Division 1 fan I would be obliged to come up with a conspiracy theory regarding the prejudices of the selection committee.

Update: A #7 seed and playing against Texas teams in Lubbock represents a snub. The ladies took it out on TCU with a tournament record-tying three-point barrage and coasted 90-55 in the first round. Fear the rabbit.

The Final Frontier

Back in 2004 I toured the Southwest, part of which included a TravelQuest International bus tour of sites related to outer space (astronomy, space exploration, UFO's). If there's a solar eclipse coming up, no doubt TQ has tours to areas where it can be seen. For the Aug. 1 eclipse they have four different tours: Russia, China, North Pole by icebreaker, and North Pole by aircraft.

If icebreaking to the North Pole is not daring enough for you, I just got an email from TQ announcing flights into outer space starting in 2010 for a mere $200,000. Considering the Russians have been offering flights to the space stations for about $20 million, this seems like a bargain. But they are only suborbital flights. Alan Shepard's first Mercury flight lasted only 15 minutes, enough time to experience weightlessness for a few minutes.

Of course TQ is just the travel agency. The spaceline is called Virgin Galactic run by, of course, Richard Branson. Rather than plunk down the $200K, I'll wait and see if discount tickets become available.

Catch All

Up until August of last year my expeditions could be neatly defined. Every few months I would fly somewhere, rent a car, shoot some photos, and do a little writeup. But now I can get in the car and drive around a large area for several weeks, snapping along the way. I wasn't sure how to present the results in a logical form.

With that in mind I finally decided just to call it Autumn 2007, which includes images from old favorites Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico and Squaw Creek NWR in Missouri, as well as a few from a park a few miles from my house.

If the weather holds, next week I'll drive east to the Mississippi River to see how thick the eagles are around Lock and Dam 17.

Too Many of Something

Tom Stienstra, Outdoors columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote on the SF Gate blog about a mountain lion eating a pet cat near Eureka, CA, "This is another loud, clear warning that there are too many mountain lions out there."

His conclusion: Time to manage (kill) mountain lions. My conclusion: The ramblings of a deranged mind.

How many humans are there in California? About 37 million. The state Department of Fish and Game estimates there are about 5,000 mountain lions.

House cats are an invasive species. They kill millions of wild birds each year. Maybe it's time to manage house cats. Maybe it's time for humans to manage their own population. Instead we have "sportsmen" who want to kill everything that interferes with their pathetic existence.

Voice in the Wilderness

I just saw the Boston Herald's coverage of the NCAA championship game. There were four AP photos in the section: two of Florida celebrating, one of Greg Oden congratulating the Gators, and one of Oden being interviewed. No game action.

I did sports photography for a newspaper 25 years ago, and I've dabbled in its since then. I know it is easier to get a good reaction shot than a good action shot. With basketball, you have to make an effort to avoid coming out of a game with nothing but armpit shots. But I think it is lazy and wrong to depend exclusively on reaction shots.

The game is not Dickey-V, Billy Donovan's next job, Oden's plans for next year, Hall-of-Fame coaches, the pom-poms, the ceremonies, or the interviews. The game is 10 guys on the court competing. Does anyone cover that any more?

Hoosiers

The spirit of Hoosiers will be alive in Brookings, S.D. tomorrow night during a Women's NIT game.

The visiting team in red will be real live Hoosiers, the women's team from the University of Indiana, members of the Big 10. The home team in white, gold and blue will resemble the small-town team from the movie Hoosiers. Playing the role of the Hickory High Huskers will be the South Dakota State Jackrabbits, comprised entirely of players from fairly small towns in the Upper Midwest. The team was in Division II as recently as 2004, and since embarking on the move to Division I has been a transitional independent.

But working against the Hoosiers storyline is the fact that this Jackrabbit team has a more impressive resume than its Big 10 opponent. If there are degenerate gamblers who wager on WNIT games, no doubt they will be asking for points to take South Dakota State. Gene Hackman, er, Coach Aaron Johnston has a career mark with the Jackrabbits of 169-54, including 32-3 and a Division II championship in 2003. This year, his team played a strong Division I schedule and went 24-5, beating teams from the Big 10 (Minnesota), Big 12 (Kansas, Colorado), ACC (Virginia), SEC (Alabama) and Pac 10 (Southern Cal), along with NCAA tournament qualifier Middle Tennessee State. The Jackrabbits probably would have been selected for the NCAA tournament, but are not eligible until 2009 due to the transition rules. Their resume and the ability to sell out Frost Arena for women's basketball are the reasons they got the WNIT home game. A crowd of 5,719 turned out Saturday for their win over Illinois State, a school record for a women's game and the most by far in the WNIT this year. That's a few hundred short of the stated capacity, but tomorrow's game already has been announced as a sellout.

(The arena record is 9,456 for men's game against Augustana in 1989. For some reason a group of us drove up from Sioux Falls to attend that game. I can personally attest that it is impossible to see both baskets from a lot of the upper bleacher seating, and I'm fairly sure the Brookings Fire Marshall had a heart attack that night when he saw how people were jammed in. So for the game against Indiana they'll sell tickets for the 6,000 seats with a good view of the court and call it a sellout.)

Megan Vogel is the team leader and the only senior on the team. Her freshman year was the final year the team played in Division II. She is in 2nd place on the school career scoring list by 70 points, so if the team plays four more games she would need to average 17.5 points per game to tie the record. Her season average is 17.6, so it could be close. Vogel also is moving up the charts of legendary South Dakota sports figures. She's no Adam Vinatieri (SDSU, Super Bowl Hero), but I'm pegging her well past Lyle Alzado (Yankton College, Broncos/Raiders, death famously attributed to steroid abuse) and closing in on Mike Miller (Mitchell High, University of Florida, Memphis Grizzlies, video of him getting hit in the throat by Kobe Bryant last year has been replayed a lot recently). And unlike those guys, her greatest exploits have been accomplished while wearing the local uniform.

I was skeptical when South Dakota State announced it was embarking on the transition to Division I starting with the 2004-2005 school year. I don't know whether the men's basketball team (6-24 this year) can be competitive with the 330 other teams chasing March Madness recognition, so in regard to that program I'm still skeptical. I doubt the Jacks could stay within 50 of Syracuse, which is a men's NIT qualifier this year. But the South Dakota State women probably could have gone Division I 25 years ago. No doubt women's basketball isn't nearly as deep as men's basketball, so it's possible for a plucky band of small-town girls to rise up from Division II and live out their Hoosiers dream.

March 22: The Jacks battle from behind to beat Indiana 60-53. Now it gets tough as the team hits the road at Wyoming. Wyoming has a bigger arena and very good crowd support, and the WNIT sponsor is a profit-seeking business. Some folks care even if ESPN's Bill Simmons doesn't.

March 25: The Jackrabbits fall to Wyoming this afternoon 70-59. I can flip back to the Georgetown-Carolina game now, with the sound down of course so I don't have to listen to condescending Billy Packer or the blaring commercials.

15 years later: South Dakota State, now considered a mid-major power, dominated Seton Hall 82-50 to win the 2022 WNIT, also beating Minnesota, Alabama and UCLA along the way. Ever since becoming eligible in 2009, the Jackrabbits have qualified for the NCAA or WNIT every year except COVID, and Johnston now has well over 500 career wins. The 2019 team beat Syracuse in Syracuse to make the NCAA Sweet 16.

Kansas City is Strange

Word comes that a new piece of art called Strange Attractor for Kansas City has been installed at Kansas City International Airport. The sculpture is described as a 50-foot-tall structure made of aluminum, wire mesh and neon lighting and is meant to suggest future travel through wormholes or time machines. As shown in this photo from USA Today, it looks like two tubas jammed together.

In the five minutes of research I did, I didn't find the price tag for this masterpiece, but I'm guessing that it wasn't free. I haven't been there since last year and the web site claims there have been significant renovations recently, but I didn't seen any mention of restroom upgrades in the terminals.

Whether traveling by car, airplane or wormhole, I take the precaution of visiting the little boys room before I embark. But because KCI was designed back before anyone thought we would need security at airports, there is nowhere to pee (at least not without the risk of arrest) or get any refreshments after you go through the security checkpoint. What other airport of any size is similarly deficient? Before installing any more futuristic tubas, perhaps it would be a good idea to put in a few more old-fashioned porcelain fixtures.

The Rolen Exception

With the NFL conference championship games about to start, I've been thinking about the people who attend these games and what they wear. I'm known as something of a fashion trendsetter so I've come up with a few fashion rules about wearing player jerseys.

• General Rule: Don't look foolish by wearing the jersey of a player who is younger than you. I don't own any jerseys, but as an old fart this would limit me to old timers such as Bart Starr and Reggie Jackson. A man of my age wearing an Uhrlacher jersey to today's Bears game should be forced to exchange it for a Butkus jersey. The Retired Player Addendum: If you have a Butkus jersey, only wear it to football games. Otherwise don't wear it out in public.
• The Brady Exception: Women are given five years leeway. In the case of Tom Brady (29), this qualifies women up to the age of 34 to wear his jersey and have impure thoughts.
• The Scott Rolen Exception: The five-year rule is waived for women whose ideal evening with the subject player would be to have his family over for dinner and send them home with a tin of cookies fresh from the oven. Also known as the "The St. Louis Grandmother Exception." It is recognized that this exception is subject to abuse, so the jersey wearer's true motivation should be determined through pointed questioning.

What I'm saying is middle-aged guys shouldn't go around wearing Kobe Bryant jerseys. You look ridiculous. His father Joe "Jellybean" is two years older than me so even I can wear one of his jerseys, if such a thing exists, but for Kobe you have to be 29 or less.