Post Basketball Hall Of Fame Blues

Our  Ohio University Basketball Hall Of Fame Team This Past Saturday- Photo courtesy of Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame/Grant Martin Photography.

6:00

It's an early morning, 5:55 and I am back at the lake, slowly coming down from the highs this past weekend, alas.  The gray skies and rain match my mood after a great weekend.  Everything comes to an end, I guess so I should be grateful for what was, a memorable weekend with teammates and their wives.  As I finish this, it's almost 9:00, the lake has settled down, the sun struggles to come out.  I should have gone for a kayak paddle but I was too lazy. My answer, always, tomorrow.

7:05 

8:21

8:41

Many of my teammates hung around the Hampton Inn breakfast room Sunday morning not wanting to leave but by11:00,  most headed home, some by plane, most be car.  It was sad saying goodbye but we all were grateful for our induction into the Basketball Hall Of Fame, mostly because it gave us a reason to gather for a weekend.

Evie and I left in the rain around 11:00 and drove the five plus hours to Chautauqua Lake in rain, often torrential most of the way.  We took our time but it was hard to see at times because of the spray from the trucks.  We did stop at our favorite store, Trader Joe's on Chagrin Blvd and walked out with a couple of cases of Two Buck Chuck, some great cheeses, granola, and our favorite simmer sauces. It was not a cheap stop.  We gassed up at the Love Station, the last stop in Ohio because gas is 35 cents cheaper than in New York State, the tax capital of the world after California.  When we pulled into our driveway, it was drizzling but we never did get the heavy rains we faced on our drive home.

Back To A Stormy Lake On A Sunday Afternoon

We were happy to be home, of course, and we quickly unpacked and put away all our goodies from Trader Joe's.  We were tired from our weekend, the drive, so it was nice to just relax, listen to Sonos and I watched the first half of the Cavs game from Friday night when they destroyed the Celtics, supposedly one of the basketball halfs in Cavs history.  They were pretty awesome.

We had an easy dinner, no fuss, as we had picked up subs at Subway in Ohio, so we watched some TV leading up to the Cavs game.  Evie went to bed early, around 9:00 but I stayed up to watch the Cavs through half time.  I was uneasy, however,  at the way they were handling every three point shot that dropped, jumping off the bench and exulting, as if the game was over.  Games are not always won by three pointers but by good defense and toughness.  And to my surprise, I found out this morning that the Cavs lost on a last second three pointer.  Either that's a good sign, a wake up call, or a sign that the team is not as good as they thought.  I hope it's the former.

A Night To Remember: 1963-65 Bobcats Inducted Into Ohio Basketball Hall Of Fame

1963-64

1964-65

Up early enough, at 7:30, after a fun night and came down to breakfast at the Hamtpton and some of my teammates were already up.  It's a gray morning here in Columbus and rainy, not the kind of weather we would want for a trip.  I am finishing up my blog as ten of us are down already for breakfast because many have to be off to the airport for a plane ride home.

Doc, My Highs School Coach And His Wife June

Yesterday turned out to be pretty nice, some sun, a little rain and warm.  We all met for breakfast at the Hampton Inn, some of us up as early as 7:00 like me.  Slowly others meandered down and a teammate from California, Scott and Maryanne, walked in having gotten in late Friday.

Scott, Lakewood High School Rival And Bobcat Teammate

Maryann, Scott's Wife, And Vi

Coach Doc And My Teammates

Just Bobcats

Scott and I played against each other in high school, so we have been friends for quite awhile.  And my high school basketball coach and his wife stopped down.  He is also a Ohio University grad and knows all of our team.  Around 10:00, all of us went over to the vast Greater Columbus Convention Center across the street which was hosting a volleyball tournament of at least 100 girls teams.  We helped set up the tables for the banquet at the one of end of the Center, putting on tablecloths, flower pots and table numbers.  If we had not helped, Doc, the co chair of the Hall of Fame would have had to do it with Shelia, Executive Director of the OBHOF.  It took us all of a half hour and was a big help.

Setting Up For The Banquet

The Good Wives

We then agreed to meet for lunch around 12:30 and walked over to the North Market, a block away. The Market, like our hotel and the Convention Center, is set in an area of Columbus called Short North and is filled with restaurants, hotels, and shops.  The Market reminds us of Cleveland's West Side Market but it's all inside and is mostly made up of ethic food stands, just about anything you could want, along with cooking, spices, card and jewelry shops.

It was packed with locals and visitors like us and after taking a tour, we agreed to meet upstairs at a table and went our way to buy our lunch.  Evie and I shared a bowl of Vietnamese Pho soup and egg rolls, others got various kinds of sandwiches and we sat down, ate our lunch, and talked about the good old days as well as our present lives, kids and grandchildren, like the typical grandparents we all are.  We left about 2:30, deciding to go back and rest or in my case nap and ran into two more teammates who had just arrived, Jerry and Lash and their wives.  Just as we were going to leave, Joe ran into the colorful Bob Huggins, head coach of West Virginia's basketball team and introduced us and like any successful college coach, he had a couple of fun stories to tell us.

Ready For Bear

We met at 5:30 and went over to the Banquet Hall for cocktail hour, from 5:30 to 6:15.  The rest of our teammates showed up, the craziest one was also a high school friend from San Diego, Berke.

Berke And The Homecoming Queen

Charlie And Jerry, Friends Since High School, And Their Wives, Joanie and Anita 

It was a busy evening on Short North, streets and restaurants full.  Before the banquet, they had a happy hour, with close to 600 basketball aficionados milling around, waiting in line for wine.  The rest of our teammates showed up, 18 of us from the years 1963-65.  We had an average dinner first and for the next four hours, individuals were inducted into the Hall Of Fame, including two officials, and two teams.

Milt And Jean

Gary And Gloria from Naples, FL

Russ And Martha, From Huntsville, Al

Kenny, Our Trainer, Abby, and Pat

We had the joy of going last and each of us went up on stage, introduced ourselves after a brief summary of our team's successes, then our captain, Paul, gave a short speech about our team, its run to the Elite Eight back in 1964.  It was nice to have our team recognized, a surprise to all of us really, and it was amazing to see so many basketball fans, coaches, players, officials and families attend the ceremony.  We are a fortunate few.  The most fun, however, was to see  our teammates from 50 some years ago, some of whom I haven't seen since 1965.    We were each given a framed certificate from the Basketball Hall Of Fame with our name, recognizing our team.

Vi And Her Daughter, Kelly

Vi And Lloyd's Grandchildren, Kathryn and Nate

Mary And Scott, Indigo, CA

We stayed up till 12:30 at the Hampton Inn Lounge, sipping wine, eating Lays chips, and catching up on our lives.  We all commented on how we have become better friends since our basketball days. When we played, we were teammates but not necessarily good friends, the kind you would hang around with but when we started gathering as a team around ten years ago, we renewed our friendships and they have deepened over the years.  We hope to have many more gatherings ahead of us.

Nice Certificate

A Day In Columbus With OU Teammates And Their Families

Ohio University Teammates, Wives, Kids, And Photobombers

Walk For The Cure Outside Our Hampton

Well, it's 8:20 and I have been up for an hour, sitting in the breakfast area of the Hampton Inn, with some of my teammates from Ohio University.  My old high school coach, also a Ohio graduate is here as well with his wife. Good times.  And as I finish this, we heard music outside out Hampton window and to our surprise, a parade was marching by, no doubt about breast cancer awareness.

Relaxing At Hampton

Good Friends,  Oxford Joe and Lou

We left for Painesville, to pick up our friend Vi around 10:30 and then we fought our way to Columbus through heavy rains midway.  We are staying in the downtown Hampton Inn, on High Street,  right across the street from the Convention Center, so we are centrally located.  We settled in our room and I ran to a take out store to pick up a 12 pack of beer, some chips, for appetizers in the Hampton Lounge.  There were nine of us, including wives, even daughters who got to Columbus Friday even though  Basketball Hall Of Fame dinner is not until tonight.  The nine of us are kind of the core, missing a couple, who have gotten together over the years and keep in touch, even visiting each other at times.  So we are good friends, perhaps even better friends now, 50 some years later.

Xenia's Paul And His Daughters

Enjoying Dinner At Martinis'

We had reservations at a restaurant called Martini's one block away, a good choice, Northern Italian food and very good.  We had an excellent waitress, everyone enjoyed their meals, mine especially was superb, a lamb dish with a savory sauce and pasta.  We stayed until about 9:00 then went back to the Hampton Inn Lounge to enjoy a glass of wine and continue our stories about what a great players we were, how good our team was.  Of course, we get better each year and after 50, we are 'tremendous,' 'great.'

Vi, Evie, And Joanie

Paul And Vi

We went to bed around 11:00, tired from the drive, our evening but we are looking forward to today as a number of teammates which we have not seen in 50 years will be coming in to celebrate our team's induction into the Ohio Basketball Hall Of Fame.  Well deserved, I might add!

A Good Day For A Road Trip

6:24

6:25

I slept in some, until 6:20 and came downstairs to a gray morning but one that's beginning to cool off although 72º may not seem that cool.  We are driving to Columbus later today for the weekend because my Ohio University basketball team, 1963-65, is being inducted into the Ohio Basketball Hall Of Fame.  It looks like hot and humid weather, with a strong possibility of rain, alas, but it will be fun to see my teammates.

s

Swimming In May

We spent much of yesterday like always on the day before a road trip, thinking and organizing about what we want to take with us for a weekend.  We know we always over pack so we are trying to be more frugal with our clothes.  It's much easier for guys as we don't have as much of a choice, jeans and a shirt for casual wear, a coat and tie for formal.  Not so for Evie so she had our bedroom covered with possible outfits before finally deciding, with my help, on two, one for Friday, one for Saturday night.  It's always relaxing to have finally made up your mind and stop worrying about what to take, what to wear. 

I did get in a yoga class, which was not as crowded as usual. Clearly, the 90º weather takes its toll on class size.  For me, yoga loses its appeal on sunny and hot days, like most of the summer.  I stopped at Ryder's Cup and was congratulated by the barrista on my team's induction into the Basketball Hall Of Fame.  It surprised me until she mentioned one of my friends had been in earlier in the morning, knew that I would be in for a coffee and told her.  Funny.

When I got home, Evie was finishing up cutting the lawn and asked me to do some trimming. So I got out my old weed wacker, plugged it in and started trimming around trees and our lake wall.  As I was finishing, I began to smell something burning and realized it was the weed wacker.  I set it aside for an hour, hoping that I had overdone it but when I tried it later, it would not start up.  So now I have to get a new one or continue to hand shears.

Afterwards, I changed shirts because I had worked up a sweat weed wacking, not exactly an arduous task and then had lunch, pizza and a banana with peanut butter for dessert.  The rest of the afternoon we both took it easy, getting things organized for our trip, the car, our devices, what shoes we needed, things like that.  Around 5:00, we took a couple of  beers out to the dock to enjoy the late afternoon. It was uncomfortably warm at times, with a warm, even hot southeasterly wind,

We had leftovers for dinner, chicken and noodles, and finished up the German movie we had started on Wednesday, Toni Erdmann.   I can't say we liked it much but stayed with it to the end, if only to see how it ended.  It didn't, just stopped.  We finished the night with FARGO, a series we are losing interest in and ended the night with a comedy, Keifer Sutherland in DESIGNATED SURVIVOR.

It's Like Summer

6:21 

6:37

6:38

Up once again, just before 6:00, to a 70º morning and a overcast sky.  No sunrise to rave about because of the cloud cover and no action on the lake other than martins flitting back and forth between houses.  And I have been listening as Morning Joe has been playing one Republican lie after another, not that the Democrats are any different.  It's reinforces I.F. Stone's dictum: "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." This reminds me of Marx's quotation that 'religion is the opium of the people,' or the graffiti we saw on a wall in Greece: 'Soccer is the opium of the people."  All three quotations have a ring of truth.

Yesterday began for me at 10:00 with yoga.  Strangely, I could not lose myself in class and could only think of what I had to do which wasn't much.  One of the joys of yoga is that you leave the world of worry and anxiety behind, not so yesterday.  So what was so pressing that it wouldn't leave my mind? Cutting the lawn and fixing the ropes on my boat.  How stupid can I be to worry or think about them?

6:57

6:58

Well, I raced home to an empty house because Evie had a hair appointment and she was also going to a lab in Lakewood for a blood draw.  I decided to cut half of the lawn before lunch because it was so warm, in the 80's. The heat got to me as I finished half and I didn't even feel like having lunch, so I just couched it until Evie got home around 1:00.  She made me an omelet because I hadn't eaten, the good wife.  And she laughed about going for the first time to Indulge Salon And Spa, in Lakewood.  She really liked the owner, Jaret, a guy who has lived in the area all his life.  As they were  talking about the area, he said there were many neighborhoods he would love to live in around the lake, but Woodlawn was by far his favorite place.  Evie, of course, could not wait to tell him that she lived in Woodlawn.  They soon bonded and I think she will go back.

After a brief nap, I went to finish our neighbor's lawn but Evie had already started to finish it so I happily let her.  We also walked down to our neighbors, Jeff and Ken, who were putting in their dock. Both are from Ohio and we have know them ever since we bought our place in 1981 when Jeff was still a bachelor.  He's now a grandfather.  While Evie finished the lawn, I put on my bathing suit and waded out in the water and worked on fixing the ropes that anchor my boat, making sure they are tight so that the boat will not hit the dock.  By the time I finished, I was up to my neck in water, cold water, so I thought I might as well swim, so I dunked my head, took a few strokes, went under again and quickly climbed up the ladder, to lie on the dock and dry in the sun.  The water was very cold, most likely in the mid 50's, but dunking under felt enervating, even good, if only for a second or two.

 Meanwhile, Evie finished the lawn and since it was so warm, we decided to go for our first booze cruise of the spring.  Evie put two beers in a cooler, picked up a bag of pretzels and we cruised for about forty five minutes, along Wells Bay to Tom's Point, across to Bemus, then back to Long Point and home.  It was smooth going, choppy coming home as the wind in Bemus Bay was fairly strong.

As I put the cover back on the boat, Evie prepped dinner, pre cooking some chicken thighs which I then put on the grill with barbecue sauce.  So we had our favorite summer family dinner, barbecued chicken, with noodles cooked in the chicken broth and coleslaw.  We watched last night's breaking news, the appointment of Robert Muller as Special Consul who will look into Russian influence on our election, including any collusion between Russians and the Trump team.  We happened to watch Chris Matthews on MSNBC and he had a fast paced show, with guests and panels lined up without one commercial on his one hour program.  Needless to say, all the news stations were going crazy, repeating infinitum, the same story.

Two Fishing Boats And Me

6:05

6:08

6:09

8:30

I was up in time to see the sunrise, yippee.  I walked out on the dock to see its leisurely rise over Long Point on a clear, warm morning.  It's 63º already and will get up to 80º later in the day.  The lake is smooth, hardly a ripple and I cannot pass up a paddle as soon as I finish some of this blog.   Just got back from a 45 minute paddle, across to Long Point, back to Sandy Bottom and home, a lovely, quiet morning on the lake.

Long Point

Sandy Bottom

Yesterday morning was overcast, with a chance of rain which we needed.  Alas, it hardly got things wet.  I went to a good yoga class at 9:30, seven of us, a perfect class size and I finally got my OM back!  Since it was Senior Tuesday at Wegman's,  I went and picked up a few things for the rest of the week.  When I got home, it was starting to drizzle and Evie had already planted more dahlias,  cut our lawn and was working on scraping the paint off of two of our benches.  We moved the benches into the garage, then went upstairs and hung one more set of drapes in the orange room.  I then had lunch, by heating up the leftover chicken and veggie curry sauce and watched another episode of Spiral.

Evie then went outside and moved the benches back outside and continued to work on scraping and sanding them, getting them ready to paint, most likely next week.  We both then putzed around both outside and inside, getting a few things done, after my nap of course.  It started to clear up nicely around 3:30 and I left Evie to continue sanding to go for a kayak paddle, something I haven't done in a week of so because of the inclement weather.  As I paddled off, a warm breeze hit me and all I needed was a tee shirt, a reminder of the warm weather to come.  Around 6:00, we were both excited to have a beer on the dock, to relax, and enjoy the sun, the warm breeze, the action of the lake, both martins, swallows, ducks and fishing boats.

A Male Purple Martin Guards His Gal

We had spaghetti for dinner, with mushrooms and Italian sausage, a good choice because it was easy and tasty.  We watched a quirky German movie which was nominated for Best Foreign Film called Toni Erdmann.  It was not our favorite though we stuck with it for over two hours although it almost three hours long.  We will finish it tonight but two hours was enough for one night.  We then watched some of the 'Nightly Breaking News', as the Comey notes suggest Trump asked him to stop the investigation of General Flynn.  Of course,  MSNBC and CNN were all in a tither while Fox News remained mostly disinterested except for Hannity, the madman of Fox News.

An Early Morning Invasion Of The Clouds

6:16

6:30

7:02

I woke up at 6:10 to light in our bedroom and I knew I missed  the sunrise by a few minutes.  C'est la vie.  I made coffee, turned on Morning Joe and watched the sky change from sunny and clear to masses of clouds move in, creating a more interesting photograph.  It's 45º at the moment, a quiet morning on the lake, no boats, a smooth lake, only the sounds of martins happily building their nests.
Yesterday, especially yesterday afternoon, was a wasted day, alas.  It began well, with a crowded yoga class in Lakewood and I walked outside to a sunny, cool morning.  I then stopped at Home Depot and picked up screws and anchors because we are putting up light blocking curtains in one of our back bedrooms.  When I got home, we decided to see what the curtains looked like, so we put one up and decided to wait for the other to see how well it blocked out the light.  Evie, then, made me a quick lunch, an avocado/tomato sandwich, and I heated up some ramen.

We left for Buffalo at 1:00, hit a detour on our way to Stockton and wasted about ten minutes getting around it.  Evie had a tmj appointment for a check up and to get a mold made for a mouth guard to keep her from clenching her teeth at night.  So we decided to make an afternoon of it.  I made an appointment at the Apple Store Genius Bar because I was having a few problems with my Mac Air.  We parked at the Galleria Mall and while I had my computer diagnosed for problems by the Apple genius, Evie walked around the mall.  And although I still have minor problems with my computer, the diagnosis showed there was nothing wrong.  It sounds like when I go to the doctor's office with a problem, but the tests show nothing is wrong.  So that was a wasted half hour.  We then fought Buffalo traffic for 20 minutes trying to find a Bed, Bath and Beyond.  Neither of us are used to traffic so it was nail biting much of the way, jumping on and off freeways backed up with late afternoon traffic.  We finally ended up at the dentist office in a tree lined neighborhood.  We think his office is appended to his home.  Evie was there for about a half hour and we will be back in three weeks to pick up the guard.

We then hit the crowded highways once again and did not breathe easily until we got off of Rt 90 in Fredonia and hit the back roads.  We decided we deserved a treat, so we were going to stop at the Stockton Inn for a beer and a burger.  It was closed, alas, even though we had talked to the bartender two weeks ago and he said they were open on Mondays.  So we drove home and Evie pulled some frozen pizza out of the freezer, heated it up for a half hour and made a great salad, with tomatoes, eggs, and blue cheese.  We watched some of the breaking news, always about another Trump lie or faux pas, then returned to our 8 hour documentary on O. J.  We watched it for about an hour and a half but had enough by 9:30, so we watched Vice News before bed.  It was not the best of days but we did get something done.