My body has traveled a long way and some of the roads weren't paved

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Scenes from a storm

Here's a few shots from yesterday.
Some digging out yesterday until more began this morning.
We've gotten four inches of fine snow this morning since I got to work.
Here's the official NWS announcement just out " A LONG DURATION SNOW EVENT IS SHAPING UP FOR THE REGION. PERIODS OF SNOW ARE EXPECTED...WHICH COULD BE HEAVY AT TIMES. SNOWFALL RATES OF AN INCH PER HOUR WILL BE POSSIBLE. ACCUMULATIONS TODAY OF 3 TO 5 INCHES ARE FORECASTED. BY THE TIME THE SNOW ENDS WEDNESDAY EVENING STORM TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS OF AROUND A FOOT ARE POSSIBLE. THERE COULD BE A BREAK IN THE SNOWFALL TONIGHT...BUT THE SNOW WILL REDEVELOP WEDNESDAY MORNING."
Crossing my fingers that it doesn't all melt before Jan 1 when the snowmobile trails open for the season locally. Such awesome powder I can taste it.























Sunday, December 21, 2008

Winter Storm part 1 and part 2

We're in the midst of the 2nd 1/2 of the current winter storm. Before I could even get the pics taken and downloaded the 2nd phase came in this morning.
Friday started around 3-4 AM at around 1" per hour. Pretty much every school in the area was closed even those that don't. Thankfully that decreased significantly the number of vehicles on the road for my commute. That still didn't stop some idiot in a Pontiac sunfire from pulling out in front of me. I did push out a guy in a Ford Explored just stuck right in the middle of my road spinning. Strange.
Of course by 3PM the snow had stopped and even though it hadn't been plowed all the fools seemed to think they needed to be out shopping then. Or I should say spinning in parking lots and getting stuck in intersections. People, the reason they cancel school is it's not safe for your kids on the roads. That doesn't make it any safer for you to take your kids to the mall personally.

Mostly it was just a lot of snow coming down in a short period. No big deal once we shovelled out the elderly neighbor's long driveway.


Yesterday was fine and I managed to complete gifts for Mushtaq and Chris for today.
Well they'll have to wait a bit longer and you'll have to wait for pics.
Snow started again around 11PM and this morning dawned with heavy snow and even heavier blowing this morning. Not the brightest thing to be driving to GR. (maybe I should go to the mall!)



Made for and interesting design on the screen door.

I'll just sit here and look out remembering why we call this Snowglobe acres and smelling the venison chili Cole is cooking. Maybe I'll even watch the Lions loose again.




Thursday, December 18, 2008

Astig Lameco - Roger Agbulos

Got off the phone with my good friend Roger Agbulos in LA last night and realized I’ve been remiss in never writing about Roger here.
I did post a pic back in Feb after nationals when he hosted us at his house but he really deserves more. http://pokingthetiger.blogspot.com/2008/02/and-hits-keep-rolling.html

Roger is original student of the late Edgar Sulite. Roger was part of Edgar’s private backyard group of students referred to as Lameco Orihinal.
You’ll probably never hear it from Roger but from what I can gather he was one of the main fighters in Edgar’s group.

Roger’s done a lot of things since Edgar’s sad passing and has turned into a fantastic teacher who eventually named what he evolved into as Astig Lameco.

I met Roger back several years ago when I was trying to find out about some Bakbakan tournaments, might have been 2005, I’m not sure.
It’s just one of those things, we see eye to eye on a lot of important topics and any that we don’t really aren’t important.
When I was getting into the smakstick blade sparring Roger was the one who provided me with a lot of guidance and a goodly portion of the theories and techniques we use for it can be directly attributed to him.
So, a good portion of Cole’s success belongs to Roger as well.

Roger’s got a few clips up on Youtube now so take a look or google him. He's in several FMA books including Master's of the Blade by Rey Galang as well as holding seminars consistently up and down the west coast.


Here's a few more I couldn't get to embed
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-978143625006458418&pr=goog-sl
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7478401108309964557&hl=en


If he comes in your area for a seminar, or if you’re looking to bring someone in, hook up.
You will get more than your money’s worth.
Besides being a great practitioner of FMA and a really nice guy, he’s hilarious.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

sweet lock and throw

Back from Cole's first varsity tournament.
Pretty nice lock up and throw here at 1:08 when the guy tried too hard with a setup and Cole used it against him to get the headlock. Not bad for three weeks of wrestling. Just needs more experience now. Most of these guys have been wrestling for years. His MMA coach Gery Weichman showed up to watch too which was pretty nice of him.

Even got his picture in the local paper's sports write up, go figure

http://www.hollandsentinel.com/sports/x415867780/PREP-ROUNDUP-Hawkeyes-place-second-at-wrestling-invitational?view=pop&photo=1

story link http://www.hollandsentinel.com/sports/x415867780/PREP-ROUNDUP-Hawkeyes-place-second-at-wrestling-invitational

Digging out

Just a touch of lake effect snow yesterday. Sun's coming back out now but more is expected to move in tonight.


Makes for awesome snowmobiling though! Pretty fun driving too (if you drive a Hummer).



Friday, December 5, 2008

Wrasslin kudos

Cole had his first wrestling meet last night. Went pretty well. Lost one (was up on point till getting caught in a bad position) and won the 2nd one something like 14 to 1. The first opponent was from a powerhouse school that pretty much decimated the varsity team.

When Cole announced 4 weeks ago he was going out for Wrestling we were pretty surprised. He tried wrestling in elementary school and had a very bad experience with it.
To go out now as a sophomore when a lot of the other wrestlers have been doing it for years and years takes guts. Well, I should know by now to never underestimate Cole but I still gotta give him major props for joining the team, taking the usual jock crap and sticking it out. The conditioning for MMA is pretty intense so the training is no problem for him.
He has been doing MMA for over a year now and thoroughly enjoying that. Most of his opponents in MMA are much older, experienced and way bigger so he's not intimidated any more.
Problem is he really doesn't know the complicated rules and maneuvers of wrestling.
But it seems he picks it up pretty quickly. Pay no attention to the guy yelling, I don't know who that was.






In fact, he's being pulled up to varsity for the Saturday meet due to the senior being unavailable. They're also going to eventually have that wrestler move down in weight and move Cole up permanently at some point.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Torn

Still one of the funniest, orginal bit's I've seen. Chuckle every time






And later with Natalie