Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

Last weekend was our first camping trip of 2018. It was the second time out with the new travel trailer we bought towards the end of the summer in 2017. I had to do all the de-winterizing and sanitizing of the water system prior to the trip. The camper takes a lot of time, but it's also a lot of fun to go camping. I have seen people say that owning a camper is a money pit, and they are 100% true. I keep finding things that I "need" for the camper. As an example, a step stool for my wife and daughter. We have 3 short step stools at home, but it's a pain to remember to pack those for every trip. So I bought one to keep in the camper. There are tons of examples like this - things that you just keep in the camper and so you have to buy special to have one to keep in the camper. And during the trip last week, I was realizing just how little storage space we have in the camper. We knew it was going to be tight when we bought it, but just spending more time in there it b...

A couple nights ago Villanova beat Michigan for their second championship in 3 years. They were dominating this tournament - winning margins were 26, 23, 12, 12, 16, and 17. The Big Ten yet again failed to win a championship. Since 2000 when Michigan State won, the Big Ten conference has now lost the national championship game 7 times and has 6 other Final Four appearances. (Wisconsin also appeared in the year 2000, so 7 including that year). Starting with the year 2000, here are all the conferences that have appeared in a final four: Conference National Championships Runner-Ups Lost in Semifinals Total Final Four Appearances ACC 7 2 5 14 American 1 0 0 1 Big 12 1 2 6 9 Big East 6 (*) 0 6 (*) 12 Big Ten 1 7 7 15 Colonial 0 0 2 2 C-USA 0 1 (*) 2 3 Horizon 0 2 0 2 MVC 0 0 2 2 Pac-10/Pac-12 0 2 3 5 SEC 3 2 5 10 West Coast 0 1 0 1 (*) = Memphis from 2008 had to vacate their national championship appearance, and Louisville from the Big East had to vacate their 2012 f...

I thought I'd post the future NCAA tournament dates so I have them when I need them. Year Championship/Final Four Dates Championship/Final Four Location Sweet 16/Elite 8 Dates Sweet 16/Elite 8 Locations Rounds of 16/32 Dates Rounds of 16/32 Locations 2019 April 6,8 Minneapolis, MN March 28,29,30,31 Louisville, KY Anaheim, CA Washington, D.C. Kansas City, MO March 21,22,23,24 Salt Lake City, UT Des Moines, IA Jacksonville, FL Tulsa, OK Columbus, OH Columbia, SC Seattle, WA 2020 April 4,6 Atlanta, GA March 26,27,28,29 Indianapolis, IN Los Angeles, CA Houston, TX New York, NY March 19,20,21,22 Albany, NY Spokane, WA St. Louis, MO Tampa, FL Greensboro, NC Omaha, NE Sacramento, CA Cleveland, OH 2021 April 3,5 Indianapolis, IN March 25,26,27,28 Minneapolis, MN Denver, CO Memphis, TN Brooklyn, NY March 18,19,20,21 Providence, RI Boise, ID Detroit, MI Dallas, TX Wichita, KS Lexington, KY Raleigh, NC San Jose, CA 2022 Ap...

The first weekend of the NCAA tournament is over, and there was quite a bit of carnage. For the first time ever, a 16 seed beat a 1 seed as UMBC defeated Virginia 74-54. I figured that a 16 seed would win eventually, but I figured it would be a close game and come down to the last possession. UMBC won by 20. Incredible. Virgina was a 20.5 point favorite in that game, which is the second-biggest favorite to lose an NCAA game since the field expanded to 64+ teams in 1985. (Missouri lost as a 21.5 point favorite in 2012). On Sunday of the round of 32, another 1 seed in Xavier lost. This means that for the first time since 2004 there are 2 top seeds that didn't make the sweet 16. Not only are 2 top seeds out, but Cincinnati and North Carolina (both #2 seeds) also lost in the round of 32. So the top 2 seeds in both the South and West regions are out. From a betting standpoint, favorites were 16-15-1 ATS in the round of 64, with 8 losses straight-up. That's fairly typical of that...

This past weekend I went to see (almost all of) the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament in St Louis. We came in on Thursday for two games and saw a very impressive 22 point, 19 rebound performance by Alize Johnson of Missouri State. Friday was a long day with 4 games, but they were all close games. The first two games were decided by 4 points and 2 points, with the second one being decided on a basket with 1.2 seconds to go in the game. The two evening games were decided by 7 points and 4 points. Saturday's semifinal games were decided by 8 points each, but the second game went to overtime before Illinois State pulled away from Southern Illinois. I wasn't able to stay for the championship game on Sunday, but I didn't miss much as Loyola Chicago beat Illinois State by 16 points. All in all, it was a fun weekend and really interesting to see a lot of tournament games in a short amount of time.

Every year near the end of the year I take a look at my travel stats for the year. I don't anticipate another trip this year, so I can wrap up the numbers. I now have stats on the last 11 years, going back to 2007. The first 7 years and last 4 years look quite different. From 2007 through 2013, I averaged flying 51,166 miles per year and spending 24.3% of the nights (including weekends) away from home. I averaged 25.8% of business nights (nights before working the next day) away from home. Starting in 2014, things changed drastically. Over the last 4 years, I have averaged 7,055 flight miles per year, 8.1% of total nights away from home and only 3.1% of business nights away from home. I've averaged 7 nights per year staying in a hotel room on business trips. This year I had 2 personal airline trips and 2 business airline trips. The number of vacations really hasn't changed over the course of my travels - I averaged 21.2 nights away from home on personal vacations from 2...

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.