Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

Finished the first of three scheduled camping trips this year last weekend. It was amazingly humid for early June. We arrived early and did some lake swimming (the water was COLD) and then a little bit of fishing. But after just a few minutes fishing my daughter and I were getting too hot, so we went to the camp site. Luckily, we were able to get on the camp site early and get our tent set up. My daughter took a little nap while I just laid down and did nothing for a while. The rest of the evening and night was a typical camping trip. Luckily, it didn't rain, although it did get too cloudy for us to use the telescope. Everything went well for the first trip of the year. We have one scheduled in July and another in August.

The NCAA championship was played a couple days ago on Monday April 3rd. North Carolina beat Gonzaga in a back and forth game. There were a ton of foul calls in the game, so there wasn't a real flow to the game, especially in the second half. It wasn't a very well-played game overall. I honestly don't know if the best team won the game because neither team looked very good and the refs didn't give either team much of a chance to look good. Overall, I was a bit disappointed in the NCAA tournament this year. Not very many upsets in the early rounds and the most exciting games were in the middle rounds when you want those either in the early rounds or the finals (or both).

This Saturday is the NCAA Final Four. This year is a bit strange in that there is North Carolina (20th Final Four), Oregon (2nd Final Four, but first since the very first one in 1939), Gonzaga (first Final Four), and South Carolina (first Final Four). There's a lot of experience with North Carolina - they were in the national championship game last year, the coach has been to the Final Four multiple times, and so on. There's no experience with the other 3 teams. We'll see if that experience helps at all by the time Monday evening rolls around. Gonzaga plays South Carolina in the first game (Gonzaga is a 6.5 point favorite) and North Carolina (-4.5) plays Oregon in the second game.

The travel for my job has significantly slowed down the last couple of years. More and more customers are fine with doing things remotely. It's nice being able to stay at home, but it also means I miss out on the frequent flier and hotel perks that I used to have. When I do have to travel, it's much more difficult anymore. In 2016, I spent 27 nights away from home, but only 4 of those nights were because of business trips. I flew 3,574 miles and visited 5 airports (BMI, ORD, LGA, ATL, MCO). I spent time in 9 states (IL, NY, GA, FL, WI, IA, NE, SD, MN).

The first weekend of the NCAA tournament has ended and there are 16 teams still playing. Of those 16, there is only 1 from the ACC, which many people said was the best conference in the nation this year. There are 3 each from the SEC and the Big Ten, which many people said were the worse of the major conferences. There are also 3 from the Pac-12, which was very top heavy, and the Big 12. Of the final 3 teams, 2 are from the Big East and the only mid-major team is Gonzaga, which is a big-time program in the West Coast Conference.

We're getting to the conference tournaments in NCAA basketball. 12 conferences have completed their regular seasons and are ready to start the tournaments. There are still 20 conferences that will finish their regular seasons this upcoming week. This is a really exciting time for college basketball fans. The teams that won the regular season championship are not guaranteed anything except an NIT birth. They have to win their conference tournament to get into the NCAA tournament. Even the Ivy League, which hasn't had a conference tournament in the past, has one this year. There is room for at-large births, but many teams know they either won't make it as an at-large team or they don't want to leave it up to a committee to decide their NCAA tournament readiness.

It's been an amazing year (not calendar year, stay with me) in sports. Going back to the 2016 NCAA Men's basketball championship - a buzzer-beater for Villanova to win. Then in the NBA Cleveland rallies from down 3-1 in the series to win. Then in Major League Baseball the Cubs come back from 3-1 in the series to win, with the 7th game going into extra innings. The NCAA Football championship was won by Clemson with 1 second to go in the game. Finally, Super Bowl 51 was last night and New England rallied from 25 points down to force the first overtime in Super Bowl history and New England took the OT kickoff and marched down the field for a touchdown to win.

I posted towards the end of December that I was going to Las Vegas for March Madness. We now have a group of 6 of us going. We have decided that we will go to the Hard Rock Cafe for the action on Thursday. It's $175 that includes buffet (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and drinks (several beer options and low-end alcohol). I'm already looking forward to getting there early and getting a Bloody Mary to start the day. We'll be watching games all day there Thursday. The only "problem" with that location is that there isn't a casino on site. That's not a problem with me and some of the others in my group - we're there to watch basketball. But to appease the masses, we're going to go to a sports book on Friday and fight the crowds. Friday will be probably a lot of standing and we'll have to outlay money for drinks and food, but we'll be close to casino floors and moving around (going to multiple books probably) to get a feel of the excitement of colle...

Alabama and Clemson played for the college football national championship for the second year in a row last night. This time Clemson was able to get the win. Unfortunately, I didn't see any of the game - I would have had to stay up way too late to watch it. But I missed a great game and a great fourth quarter. Clemson took the lead for the first time with 4:38 to go in the game. Then Alabama came back down and took the lead back with 2:07 left. Clemson then scored with 1 second to go to win the game.

I am officially going back to Las Vegas for March Madness in 2017. The flights are purchased and we have the hotel room reserved. 11 weeks from today is the date we will be leaving. In a few weeks we will be deciding on the viewing parties for Thursday and Friday. There are a lot of different options for viewing parties - do we want no frills, food included, drink included, or food and drink included? How much do we want to spend for a reserved seat all day? Do we want to be on the strip or downtown? Do we want to be close to the hotel? A lot of decisions are needed for the viewing parties, and all that will happen after the holidays.

Today I bought the last thing on my Christmas shopping list. I did almost all of my shopping on line this year (yes, bad Matt, "buy local") but it's just far too easy to take 10 minutes out of my day and find gifts on line and buy them and have them delivered for free. I can't even get to most stores in 10 minutes if I drive.

Very late last night, the Cubs won the World Series. The final was 8-7 in 10 innings. Some people are calling it the best closing game ever. It was an awesome game, that's for sure. Cubs were up 5-1 at one point. Cleveland came back to make it 5-3, then another home run made it 6-3 and things were looking pretty good. Cleveland scores 3 runs in the 8th to tie the game. Rain started in the 9th inning. After 9 innings, there was a short rain delay. I was at Buffalo Wild Wings and the full house dropped to about 50% capacity (maybe less) during the rain delay. But the delay was only 15 or 20 minutes, and the Cubs scored 2 runs in the top of the 10th to take an 8-6 lead. Cleveland came back yet again with a run in the bottom of the 10th, but that wasn't enough as the third out was a short grounder to 3rd base. It has been 108 years since the Cubs last won a World Series, which of course was the longest streak in baseball. Now that torch has ironically been passed to Cleveland, wh...

Game 7 between the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians will be tonight. The first two games were in Cleveland. Cleveland won the first game and the Cubs won the second. Then the series moved to Chicago for three games. Cleveland won the first two in Chicago to take a 3-1 lead. Then Chicago won game 5 to send the series back to Cleveland for the last two games. Last night, Chicago won to force the seventh game.

We still have 2 full months to go in 2016, but I've already scheduled 10 days of vacation in 2017. The second half of the school year has some days off (spring break, a couple 4 day weekends, etc) and we've allocated some "daddy-daughter" days on some of those days off. Then I always have my March Madness opening weekend, so there's two days for that. And we have a cruise scheduled later in the year, so I have time off for that. Just seems weird to have all this vacation scheduled already when I can't officially put it on any calendar for work yet.

Tonight is the first night of the World Series. The Chicago Cubs are in there for the first time since 1945. The last time they won it was 1908. They are going up against the Cleveland Indians, who haven't won a World Series since 1948 (although they've been a couple times in fairly recent history). One fan base is going to stop a long drought, and the other will put a stranglehold on the "longest since winning a championship" drought. Tonight and tomorrow are in Cleveland. Then Friday, Saturday, and (if needed) Sunday in Chicago. The final two games (if needed) will be in Cleveland next Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm pretty sure neither team has played a game in November, so if this series goes 6 or 7 games, that will be a first.

The Cubs won the first round of the playoffs over San Francisco last night. The first game was 1-0 with a home run in the bottom of the 8th. The second game was 5-2. The third game was a 13 inning loss (the game finished about 1:45 AM my time). The fourth game was a dramatic win with 4 runs scored in the top of the 9th to win 6-5. Now they will play either Los Angeles or Washington (that series is tied 2-2 with the 5th and final game tomorrow night).

The Cubs won the NL Central division last night. They are one of the fastest to win a division in recent history. Hopefully they can keep the success going throughout the playoffs. They haven't made the World Series in so long (and even longer since they won it) - it would be great to see that happen this year.

I noticed that my passport was expiring next July. According to everything I've read, you want to send the renewal in about 9 months before the expiration date, so I went ahead and sent it in. Well, it took a grand total of 2 weeks to get my passport back. The process was incredibly painless, as a matter of fact. I filled out the on-line application, which you print and send in with your old passport and a new photo. It probably helped that I'm on the TSA Pre Check list, so I've already been screened and all that - no additional checks were needed (if they would have done them - I don't know). But 9 months seems a little excessive now. And the renewal is for 10 years from the date of issuance, so I basically lost almost a year from my old passport. Oh, well. It's renewed now and I don't have to worry about mine for a while. My wife and my daughter will need to renew theirs in a few years.

We just finished our third camping trip of the year. The camping trips themselves were pretty successful, although my wife getting poison ivy and being miserable for three weeks wasn't fun. Trip 1 - Weldon Springs state park for 1 night. This was the only time we went hiking (which is most likely where the poison ivy happened). The campground was decent, but there wasn't a lot of stuff to do there besides hiking. We were at site 69 which was off the main loop a bit and just around the corner from the showers and the playground. The location was pretty good, but there just wasn't enough to do there. Trip 2 - Kickapoo State Park for 2 nights. There was a lot of stuff to do there, which was nice. We went fishing, but I only caught 1 fish and my daughter and wife didn't catch any. The campground wasn't very tent-friendly. We had to put the tent on part of the gravel driveway because that was the only place where it would fit. There's another loop called the Miam...

Last night was the baseball all star game, which the American League won. But it's the unofficial half-way point of the baseball season. The Cubs no longer have the best record in baseball, they are now second to San Francisco. But they still have by far the biggest run differential: +139 (scored 139 more runs than they've given up). They have a 7 game lead in their division, but 5 of the 6 divisions have leaders with big leads (5.5 games, 6 games, 2 at 6.5 games, and the Cubs at 7). Their pace has slowed down quite a bit (they are actually 2-8 in their last 10 games). I was worried about keeping up that early pace for the whole year. Maybe now with a few days off they will be ready for the second half of the season and into the playoffs.