The AHL’s 2009-10 season kicked off last night but our team had to start in San Antonio (they lost). This evening both teams returned so we could have our inaugural game before the Stars leave to play elsewhere for a week; they’ll be back to play Grand Rapids (surrogate for Detroit) in Mid-October. It was great to finally see them playing in a game that meant something after the two pre-season losses I’ve attended, the Rampage (SA) and the Dallas Stars. Jeremy and I did receive our money’s worth as it ended in overtime with the GWG happening in the remaining 15 seconds. The audio has those annoying pops or clicks because the camera must be picking up interference or it’s the memory card not recording fast enough.
Oct. 4, 2009 Update: It was very late and the rain didn’t help when I wanted to band out this story plus post the only goal I scored on camera, again, I’m grateful it the GWG one. I wanted to add some other nice elements of the experience. After the national anthem, the announcer and crowd gave the lady behind me a big welcome home because she just completed a tour in Iraq so she was there to see the game with her nephews (or nephew and his friends). It was wonderful to see another person return from that mess in one piece. I have supported the conflict yet I want all of America’s soldiers to return alive and intact. Moving back to hockey and apolitical matters, I scored a puck! During the warm-up exercises, one of the Rampage’s popped up over the glass and into the seats behind the glass. It sat for about 30 seconds with nobody else acting so I ran down to get it while it was still cold. I tried to make beer come out of Jeremy’s nose by saying, “Dude! This is the worst Ding Dong I’ve ever eaten!” Finally, I ran into my old hockey game friend Mark, the music professor at UT and Penn, he’s a huge Flyers fan AND he had season tickets to the IceBats. We caught up over the last couple years because Austin had no hockey for a year so I hadn’t seen him since the IceBats’ final playoff game. Mark said he recognized me from his seat because I was wearing my red Austin jersey while he had the cool UT one. The best news was he’d be around more often since UT was offering him tenure! I hope this goes through, today I saw a story in the local paper about layoffs across the board to keep the bigger “name” talent; aka all the jerks who are involved in the Men’s sports. My fingers are crossed for Mark since I would like to give him a tour of Apple and introduce him to the ProApps guys; he teaches music technology and owns a studio in Philly.