Vintage Hot Rods at the Winternationals Festival

Click and Clack won’t take my calls on their Car Talk radio show. They think my lack of mechanical know-how has to be an act. Nobody knows that little about cars.

When I was growing up, my Dad introduced me to two of his passions:  sports and engines. Guess which one stuck.

Of course there’s always been an intersection of the two, and motor sports have been wildly popular ever since the first guy said to his buddy, “I’ll bet my Model T can get to the end of that road faster than yours.” But until the advent of the “It’s Game Time Somewhere” Tour, I had never really ventured outside of the stick and ball world to check it out.
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…Continued from the previous post.

Without question, the USA is the finest rugby sevens team on the planet. I mean, just look at what they did to poor Uraguay.

Wait, hold that thought…OK, it’s Japan that’s the premiere team. I mean, Guyana never had a chance to…

Hang on, hang on. Wow! Canada is really putting the hammer down on poor France. These guys are pretty much unbeatable…except by Scotland, who seemed not to have much trouble doing so. Or was that Wales? But didn’t they lose to Kenya? Who lost to New Zealand…and England?

Welcome to the IRB Rugby World Series, and its USA Sevens tournament, in sun-drenched Las Vegas. To become that confused about what countries rule the world of rugby sevens, you’d think I would had to have seen a lot of teams play. And I had.

I mean, I’d been there for over an hour.
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When I began this walkabout, it was not without careful consideration of the risks. Eye strain. Chapped hands from applauding. Being trapped on a Delta Airlines middle seat between two 300-pounders.

But I never contemplated the chances of being victimized by crime. Yet there I was, being robbed. In broad daylight, no less.

She didn’t fit the profile – they never do. She couldn’t have been more than 25 years old. Pleasant-looking. A little on the slight side. I don’t know how tall she was, because she was sitting down at the time. I never saw it coming.
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Breaking news – girls are different from boys.

While I’ve had a few years to familiarize myself with the more obvious differences in the sexes, I had to admit that I’d never considered the question in the context of ice hockey. So when presented with the perfect opportunity to come up to speed on that topic, I jumped on it.

I had spent the previous night at a sold-out TD Garden, home of the tradition-laden Boston Bruins and Boston Celtics…and a pretty popular 59-year-old college hockey get-together they call the Beanpot.

On this night I was headed to Conte Forum, on the campus of Boston College, where I would experience that event’s little sister – the 33^rd annual Women’s Beanpot.
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All cell phone photos courtesy of Martha Mae

First things first.

It’s called the Beanpawt, and it’s held every February at The Gahden. As in “Oh my Gawd, I’m goin’ ovah to The Gahden for the Beanpawt!”

The alert reader will of course recognize that the sporting event du jour takes place in Boston, home of the hypnotic, syrupy sweet accent popularized by postman extraordinaire Cliff Clavin.

I had not been to the Gahden since it was the Boston Garden, i.e. before it became headlined by a series of financial services companies. To get there back in those days, you simply took either the Green or Orange line to North Station and then followed the rats.

If you were attending a game at that time, it was tremendously helpful if you were a “people person”, since you and your fellow fans were all going to be squeezing into seats that conformed to the size of the average Bostonian – the 1928 version. And of course you hoped like hell that it wasn’t an overly warm day, because there was no air conditioning in the building.

People loved this place. No, really – they did.
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