Birge Named Chief Marketing Officer at IMG

Rob Birge '92, who made 27 tackles as a 6-1, 185 defensive back in his senior season, has joined IMG Sports & Entertainment as Chief Marketing Officer as reported in Business Week. IMG bills itself as the world's leading sports, entertainment and media company. Birge came to Dartmouth from Overland High School in Aurora, Colo.. Birge helped Dartmouth go 7-2-1 overall and win its second consecutive Ivy title in 1991.

Bo Hurley Set for Texas All-Star Game

Incoming lineman Bob Hurley is one of two Ivy Leaguers on the south roster for the Texas High School Coaches Association All-Star game tomorrow night at Darryl Royal Stadium on the University of Texas Campus. The other is Harvard-bound linebacker Alexander Johnson. Find the roster here. ... While a number of I-A standouts are bypassing the game, anytime anyone makes a Texas all-star football roster it's quite an honor.

NFL Commissioner; Webcasting

I suppose the group of candidates for the NFL commissioner job was winnowed while I was on vacation, but if you missed that (as I did) former Dartmouth and Cincinnati Bengals standout Reggie Williams did not make the cut. Find the "final five" in this story. ... Williams gets a mention as an early candidate in this Boston Globe story.

I received an email over the weekend from someone wondering about webcasting of Dartmouth football games this fall. I'd heard earlier this summer that an alum (or several alumni) have helped out with the technology to do that and that the hope is to webcast not just football but a number of sports this year. A word of caution: It's early in the process and there are all kinds of landmines to negotiate involved in getting the games up on the 'Net. I'll be up on campus today and will see what more I can learn.

Still Working on biggreenalert.com

I met again Friday with my web guru, who believes he'll have the "new and improved" www.biggreenalert.com site up and running within a week. The goals of the new site include better navigation, better integration of photographs, fewer password problems and the ability to use a credit card to pay for a subscription. (I'll be accepting checks as I did last year, but a lot of you asked about paying by credit card or PayPal, so I'll be offering those options as well this year.)

The charge once again will be $50 for a full year's coverage of Dartmouth football. (Last year's coverage included at least one newspaper-length story every day from the first day of camp through the postseason banquet plus bonus coverage through the recruiting season. On Fridays and Saturdays alone during the season there were as many as five stories.)

Signup and renewals will begin once the new site is up. For those of you who have already renewed for the coming season, I'll have you ready to go the day the site goes live.

I'll keep you posted here as the new site gets closer to coming online.

This blog will continue with links and limited commentary. Game previews, game stories, features, Q&A's and analysis will all be premium content available only on www.biggreenalert.com. Please share a link with those who might be interested in subscribing because the only way I can continue to dedicate the time I do to Dartmouth football is by building my subscriber base.

Now on to a few links on a quiet Sunday ...

It took a little time, but the Patriot League presidents showed they understand something the Ivy League presidents don't when they gave football teams the OK to go to the I-AA playoffs in 1997. Here's what they understood: What's fair for one is fair for another. From an anniversary column about the Patriot League:

"Football coaches lobbied their ADs and the league for years, trying to convince them to break the shackles with the Ivy League and permit the champion to be eligible for the NCAA Division I-AA playoffs. After all, they argued, every other varsity sport was allowed to send teams to postseason play."

Not allowing an athlete to turn pro in one sport and maintain Ivy eligibility in a second sport is yet another outdated and unfair Ivy League policy. Athletes such as talented wide receiver B. J. Szymanski, who gave up Princeton football to play minor league baseball, Texas Rangers' infielder Mark DeRosa, who gave up the starting quarterback position at Penn to play baseball and San Diego Padres' pitcher Chris Young, who had to give up Princeton basketball to play baseball, should never have been put in the position to have to choose. The Ivy League is the only conference in the nation that forbids athletes from turning professional in a second sport as this New York Times article on Notre Dame wide receiver/minor league pitcher Jeff Samardzija reminds us.

And one more article on Jay Fiedler as he works his way back from shoulder problems to play with the Tampa Bay Bucs.

Saturday Bits and Pieces

Some interesting stuff out there today. ... Sports Illustrated delves into the case of Harvard football captain-elect Matthew Thomas' legal woes with an indepth story that notes, "Thomas is the fifth Harvard player involved recently in off-field problems." ... From Friday's Harvard Crimson:

Suspended football captain Matthew C. Thomas ’06-’07, the first-team all-Ivy League linebacker facing criminal charges for assault and battery, has been replaced as team captain and is no longer listed on the squad’s roster, according to the 2006 football media guide, which was released yesterday.

A story out of the WAC notes: "Since 1990, only the Pac 10 and the Ivy League have the same membership, while the 29 other conferences have changed." ... I wouldn't anticipate any changes in the Pac 10, but I'll bet the farm that it makes a change before the Ivy League does. The Big 10 has been relatively stable as well, with the exception of the addition of Penn State. I would like to see one change in the Big 10 and that would be the addition of Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish (and I'm not a fan) would be a great addition. But frankly, the Ivy League may expand before the Irish join a conference. ...

There was an interesting ESPN column out of Auburn, where SEC Commissioner Mike Slive, a Dartmouth alum, referenced the Ancient Eight with regard to Auburn athletes (and football players in particular) taking "self-directed" courses. A newspaper story noted that (Slive) "this week defended Auburn by saying that directed-study courses also are offered at Ivy League schools." Of course, the football players at Auburn had a 3.31 GPA in the self-directed classes given by one professor and a 2.14 GPA in their other courses at Auburn.

Tampa Bay has put quarterback Jay Fiedler on the Unable to Perform list, but he's not expected to spend much time on it, judging by this story. Said Fieldler: "It's basically day to day. There are no instructions on what I'm cleared to do. It's as much as I can handle, as much as the arm can handle."

Finally, Dartmouth's Memorial Field has long been the home of the Vermont-New Hampshire Shrine Game, one of the oldest and biggest such games in the country. With all the work going on at Memorial Field, the game has been shifted for this one year to Plymouth State University, a Division III school made famous when tailback Joe Dudek was Sports Illustrated's pick to win the Heisman one year. Plymouth State seats only about 2,000 and the Shrine Game has historically drawn upwards of 10,000 people. They don't expect that many this year, given that Plymouth State is a lot harder to get to and less central to the two states than Dartmouth. Still, one story suggests it's a better place to watch a game that might draw 4,000 people. The story says a "nice feature of having the game at Plymouth State is a better atmosphere. The fans are fairly far removed from the field at Dartmouth, owing to a track that circles the playing surface. The stands will also be much fuller. Much of the bleacher space at 20,000-seat Memorial Stadium was empty. It will be a more intimate atmosphere," (Plymouth State University Director of Events Peter) Cofran said. "I think it will be very festive. Now, when a photographer takes a photo, it will have people in the background, not empty bleachers." ... Now, recognizing the Director of Events' built-in bias, he makes a couple of valid points. A smaller venue (as will be the case in the "new" Memorial Field) really does work better when crowds are smaller, which is why the reduction in seating a Memorial Field isn't a bad thing. And the track at Dartmouth really does remove fans a bit from the action. Too bad Dartmouth didn't have the room or the inclination to build a new track elsewhere and close the stands in at Memorial Field.

Football Bios Posted

Updated bios have been posted on the Dartmouth roster. Click on a name to learn more. Freshman bios are up as well ... This morning's paper reports that the FieldTurf installation at Memorial Field should be completed in two weeks, in plenty of time for the start of practice. Although coach Buddy Teevens hasn't discussed it, expect some of the preseason to be held on Memorial Field so the team will be accustomed to the surface prior to the first home game against UNH.

The Harvard media guide is available for download if you'd like. Find it here. ... Find the Colgate media guide and download it here. ... You might want to avoid watching the last game (against Dartmouth), but the Princeton highlight video is available here. ...

It was back when the Internet was about to hit the mainstream that I suggested to someone from the Ivy League office that instead of having newspaper, radio and TV people drive to New Haven for the annual media day event (a trip few bother to take) that the conference employ this new technology to do something different. My idea was that the eight schools, which by rights should have been ahead of the technology curve, invite their local media on campus to view a "remote" of the press conference delivered by computer. Today, that would hardly be news. But if the Ivies had run their media day that way years ago, when most ink-stained wretches of the Fourth Estate had never heard of the 'Net, it might have attracted some attention. Alas, my idea went for naught.

I bring the idea up only because the Patriot League has taken a step ahead of the Ivies with regard to using the Internet. I don't know how it will turn out, but the Ivy's sister league will be holding an online "chat" with one player from each of its schools as part of its media day. Good idea. You can read more about it here.

Finally, Jay Fiedler talks about his shoulder and his prospects for being ready to go with Tampa Bay in this story.

Updates on breaking news might take a little longer for the next three days as I've been hired to do PR for another golf tournament. This time it's the Tommy Keane Invitational, the premier amateur four ball tournament in New Hampshire, which just happens to take place at Hanover Country Club.

Casey Cramer On the Bubble ... Again

Panthers Huddle gives Dartmouth tight end-turned-NFL fullback Casey Cramer a pat on the back and a kick in the seat in the same sentence while reviewing the team's offensive options.

While Cramer has been an impressive addition to the team over the past few seasons during training and mini camps this just might be a situation where there’s no room for the man to wear a panthers uniform.

Ivy to Ivy Transfer Can Be Tricky

Imagine for a second that Buddy Teevens left Dartmouth to coach at, say, Harvard. Now imagine that right about the same time his best player decided to transfer to, say, Harvard. What would happen and how would it look?

If you are wondering, read this story in the Daily Pennsylvanian along with this column. No, it's not about Teevens and Dartmouth. Nothing to worry about there, folks. It's about the best men's basketball player at Brown, who wanted to transfer to Penn, where former Brown coach Glen Miller is the new head coach. The whole thing smelled kind of bad when I first heard about it through channels, but now that the kid's transfer application has been denied and the "adults" are trying to explain what happened, it smells even worse.

Former Dartmouth longsnapper and lacrosse player Ryan Danehy '06 is finding a welcome home playing major league lax and coaching the game in Chicago according to this story.

Dartmouth gets a mention in this USA Today story for helping test out helmet sensing technology along with Oklahoma and Virginia Tech. It helps, of course, that the company which developed the Head Impact Telemetry System is located in Lebanon.

He's called the most powerful man in college football and he's a Dartmouth alum. Who is he? Find out here.

Down in Philly the Daily P is blaming the lack of preseason award nominees on last year's "underachieving" season. Read about it here. (The story includes a mention of quarterback Josh Cohen being out of Dartmouth for two terms.)

Those of you with some institutional memory will laugh or cry at the news that the Chariot Races are making a return to Dartmouth as part of Fieldstock, a dry-land substitute for Tubestock. Here's a guess: If the weather is hot on Fieldstock day, there might be more people in the Connecticut that on the Green and the Bema that afternoon. Just a guess, of course.

Panorama of Field Work

If I had an idea that I could get into the usually-locked stadium this morning, I would have brought a tripod and done this the right way. Unfortunately, I shot five photos "freehand" before using a program to sew them together. This is a little sloppy -- I promise the field doesn't curve and the lines are straight -- but at least it gives you an idea of how work is progressing. (Click on the photo to supersize it.)

2 Games With Ivies Slated for CSTV

From a future subscriber: "There are two Ivy football games slated for CSTV (well, one league game, and one non-league with an Ivy team): Yale's visit to Lafayette on 9/30, and Brown's trip to Penn on 10/28."

The full CSTV schedule can be found here.

Unfortunately, neither YES nor CSTV does any good up here on Moose Mountain. We do have DirectTV (cable isn't available on our dirt road) but we have a skeleton package that doesn't include any of the sports channels.

Presidents Considered Playoffs ... Or Did They?

The Daily Pennysylvanian reports that Ivy presidents have acted on several non-football issues but that the push to allow league football teams to go to the I-AA playoffs went nowhere. Gee, what a surprise.

Here's an excerpt from the DP story built around a quote from Jeff Orleans, executive director of the Ivies:

They "view this as an education decision," Orleans said. "They're looking to find the best way to fit this sport into the education experience that football athletes will have."

Green Alert Take: That's the kind of answer I would give to a question when I was in college when I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. It says nothing. But I don't mean to be critical of Orleans for giving a hollow answer. He's just the front man for the presidents and is in the impossible position of trying defend the indefensible.

Green Alert Take II: Football players, other student-athletes, alumni and school newspapers can't just keep the heat on, they have to turn it up in response. Otherwise all the momentum of the past year will be lost and it will be several more years before another group comes along to put the playoff issue back on the front burner. ...

Colgate's new monster scoreboard is, well, interesting. For a few pictures, visit the Colgate13 blog. While the abundance of advertising surrounding the board might make Ivy traditionalists shudder, Dartmouth will have some decisions to make regarding its new board before the '07 season. Seeing what a school like Colgate is doing might give a few ideas about what Dartmouth wants to do ... or what it might want to avoid. ...

In case you missed it, the YES Network has cut its Ivy football schedule back to three broadcasts, none including Dartmouth.

July 25th Photos

The new varsity house takes shape behind the reduced visiting stands. (Green Alert photo)
As of early Tuesday afternoon, nearly 50 yards of FieldTurf were down. (Green Alert photo)
Suddenly, Memorial Field looks like a football field again. (Dartmouth Sports Information photo)

The Quarterback Quandary - Analysis

By Bruce Wood
www.biggreenalert.com

Hanover -- First things first. For as much as losing quarterback Josh Cohen to academics was a blow to the Dartmouth football program, it is more of a blow to Josh, to his family and to his friends.
Josh is a bright and talented kid who I enjoyed getting to know last year. Hopefully a little time away will give him perspective on what he wants in life and how to achieve it. If, as has been written, he wants to return to Dartmouth and Dartmouth football in another year, I have no doubt he’ll be back and find success both on the football field and in the classroom.

When news broke during my cross country trip that Cohen was an academic casualty it wasn’t a great surprise. I’d heard murmurings to that effect before I left, but nothing had been confirmed and nothing was official, so I kept quiet out of respect for him and his family.
My first reaction when I heard it was a possibility that Cohen would be lost was that the Dartmouth football program was going to be Nancy Kerriganed -- that it would be taking a shot where it could least afford it at a juncture when it absolutely could not afford it. Josh was one of the few bright spots last fall and having a big, strong-armed quarterback with starting experience was going to be a real plus for the Big Green this season. There aren’t many veteran quarterbacks this year in a league where they often make a huge difference.
But the reality is that Josh did not have a particularly good spring practice. Given what we now know he had on his plate, that probably shouldn’t be a surprise. He even lost the No. 1 position for a spell during the spring to Tom Bennewitz.
While he didn’t get a whole lot of snaps during the Green-White scrimmage at the end of spring ball, Cohen hardly looked like a cinch to start this fall until the final minutes of each half. Then, with the clock running down, he got to work and showed exactly what he could do, smoothly and confidently driving his team for two scores. He finished a very efficient 9-of-12 for 124 yards with the two TD passes.
It would have been interesting to see what Cohen could do this fall with a year’s experience behind him and an improved line in front of him.
But I’ll admit, I am intrigued by Bennewitz. (That’s not to disparage Mike Fritz, who will battle Bennewitz for the starting job, or any of the freshmen QB’s. Fritz has been hurt most of his career and the freshmen haven’t been on the field yet, so I can’t offer informed opinions about them.)
Watching Charlie Rittgers and then Cohen get swarmed under when the protection broke down last year, I found myself increasingly wondering what would have happened if Dartmouth had a quarterback who was more adept at avoiding the rush.
Bennewitz isn’t nearly as big as Cohen, but he showed three things that caught my eye during junior varsity games against some very good competition:

• He’s elusive and can make things happen with his feet;
• He can hit the long ball;
• He has a knack for making plays and improvising.

The knock on Bennewitz has been that he’s not a practice player. The sense I have is that’s been changing and he’s come to understand that every snap during the week has to be approached like it is Saturday afternoon.
Who to compare Bennewitz to? He has an almost uncanny resemblance to Brian Mann on the field. He holds the ball the same way. He whips it with the same motion. He even runs like BMann.
And, having watched Bennewitz for a couple of years, he’s got a bit of swagger on the field. Lke Brian, he'll make some mistakes that will make you pull your hair out, but he’ll also take some chances and make some plays out of nothing. Pending improvement by the line and the development of a running game, the rising junior’s improvisational ability might be the best weapon Dartmouth has.
No Bennewitz doesn’t have varsity starting experience. But he’s played a lot of football and thrown a lot of passes. I remember when he was recruited hearing a couple members of the former staff talking about how “we might have stolen one,” and they might have been right.
Of course, there’s no guarantee Bennewitz will win the starting job this fall. Buddy Teevens is the kind of coach who is going to give everyone a shot and Tom will have to perform well during the week to get on the field on Saturday. But don’t be surprised if Bennewitz does win the job and makes some magic happen on the field. He absolutely has the ability.

As for Fritz, he showed a lot of the same qualities as Bennewitz during the spring. He, too, can make things happen with his legs. At 6-2, 195, he's bigger than Bennewitz but it's hard for me to judge how he’ll do against outside competition because he’s been sidelined two seasons by hand injuries. But whether Bennewitz or Fritz starts, it probably doesn’t hurt to have two quarterbacks who play roughly the same style battling each other.

As for the freshmen, Max Heiges garnered a lot of recruiting attention. Like Cohen, he’s a pro-style quarterback with the kind of size Teevens seems to favor. (UPDATE: I was just on campus and met Heiges, who is here early and raring to go. That won't hurt his chances.) But don’t discount classmates Jordan Kling and Alex Jenny. Both performed well in their all-star games and both are gritty playmakers who will now come to camp knowing they will get a good look. It is going to be interesting, for sure.

Previews are Coming ... Promise

The Ivy League football media day is set for Aug. 8 at Yale. Previews of each Ivy team will begin the next day on the regular Green Alert site. I'm holding off on the previews until hearing from each coach and being able to ask a few questions because the dichotomy between what is written in the press guide and what the coach has to say can be stark. ... In the meantime, if you want to get a look at the first of the Ivy press guides, Cornell has posted its 2006 guide for downloading here. ... The Big Red, by the way, has hired Bret Colbert as an assistant coach. Bret's father, Bob, was a Dartmouth assistant in 1990. ... The UNH football team has local media excited as this column in the Rutland Herald notes. After making your way through the high school and other notes at the top, writer Tom Haley waxes on about the "Vermont Wildcats," a reminder that several of the best UNH players, most notably WR David Ball, are from the state with the Green Mountains not the White Mountains. ...

I've brought this up before, but the Colgate team Dartmouth upset last fall hadn't yet taken the wraps off phenom running back Jordan Scott who ran for 1,364 yards in 2005. He set Colgate and Patriot League rushing records despite not starting until after the loss to the Big Green. In this story coach Dick Biddle says Scott reminds him a little of Jamaal Branch. Uh oh. ...

Player rankings at any level and any position are always suspect ... and always fun to discuss. The rankings are even more suspect in I-AA football where TV games are rare and few people have seen games in different regions. One of the few who does get around a bit is former Dartmouth sports information intern Matt Dougherty, director of I-AA football for The Sports Network. While ranking offensive linemen and defensive players is a challenge, Matt does his homework and so you may want to check these rankings out. Matt has Yale's Ed McCarthy (6-5, 302) as the nation's top offensive tackle in I-AA, Harvard's Mike Berg (6-2, 260) as the No. 6 defensive tackle, Brown's Steve DeOssie (6-4, 240) as the No. 8 linebacker and Columbia's Tad Crawford (6-3, 195) as the No. 10 safety.

And bear with me. My thoughts about the Dartmouth quarterback situation are coming. I spent six tough hours yesterday cutting about five weeks worth of very green, very long grass and then helped coach a summer baseball team, so I didn't get to the my analysis yesterday. I'm working on it as soon as I hit "publish" on this post.

I'll also have some pictures of Memorial Field construction on the site later today.

Kicking off the '06 Green Alert Blog

I'm a couple of days later than expected getting the blog up and going again. Four weeks on the road and getting a couple of kids off to overnight camp will do that to you. But today kicks off the '06 blog -- and there will be posts every day from now until at least the end of the season.

NOTE: The revamped subscription Green Alert site (which will feature complete daily practice coverage, premium newspaper length features, previews, game stories and analysis) will be up and running shortly. Watch the blog for subscription information.

There was a nice story in yesterday's Boston Globe about Dartmouth football-baseball player Jason Blydell North Shore Baseball League and how he's been faring this summer. It mentions that he is switching from strong safety to cornerback this year. Blydell missed all of last season with a leg injury.

Catching up on a couple of incoming freshmen who played quarterback in recent all-star games: Alex Jenny of Wayland, Mass., completed 8-of-8 throws for 91 yards and ran for another 13 yards in the eastern Massachusetts Shriners Football Classic. Jenny, by the way, was named the 2005-2006 academic year Wayland Town Crier Male Athlete of the Year. The story about the honor opened this way:

How to begin describing Alex Jenny is a very difficult task.
Do you start with the autumn night during his senior year when the Wayland High quarterback defined the word warrior; playing on a broken ankle and doing everything he could to beat the unbeatable Acton-Boxboro Colonials?
Perhaps, but then again he played on a broken leg his junior year.

Out in Illinois, meanwhile, Jordan Kling stepped up and helped his team win the Eastern Star All-Star Game. The story about the game and Jordan's clutch play begin this way:

When Tuscola football coach Stan Wienke knew he had to rely on one player, the call was easy. It was Jordan Kling.

It was just last fall that Kling was quarterbacking the Warriors to the Class 1A semifinals and coming up big the entire way. And Kling did it again at Saturday's Eastern Star All-Star Game at Millikin's Frank M. Lindsay Field.

Much like last year's game, the game came down to the final moments before the East team pulled out the 12-7 win when Kling repeated the success he found early.

What else? While I was gone Jay Fiedler signed with Tampa Bay. That was just about a done deal before I left and I ate a little crow on that one. I thought for sure he was headed to the Giants. Jay's made very few missteps in his career and after looking over the Tampa Bay roster I suspect this is another wise choice. ... After heavy rains delayed work at Memorial Field, the workers have just about caught up to the schedule and I've been told the first turf sections could be put down this week. We'll see. ... The first girders for the new varsity building have risen behind the reduced visiting stands. It looks a little strange right now, but I'm sure once a little more of the framework is in place it will make a big difference.

Finally, the big news during my vacation was the loss of incumbent starting quarterback Josh Cohen for a year to academics. I didn't mean to leave this to last, but I'm going to pull together my analysis during the day today. If I get it finished today, I'll post it some time tonight. If not, I'll have it for you tomorrow. Normally, it would go on the subscription site, but because that isn't ready yet, I'll post it here.


As threatened, a picture from our vacation. This shot of the kids was taken at our Grand Canyon campground the night before we hiked to the bottom to camp at Phantom Ranch. Kudos to the kids and my wife for surviving the hike and to the '84 VW camper for getting us safely out West and back with barely a hiccup in more than 7,500 miles of driving.

On the Road - July 19 Final Update

Hi Folks:

We're camped tonight (camped being a relative term given where we are) at the KOA "compound" at Niagara Falls, Ont.. We'll be back in Hanover (VW bus be willing) late Thursday night. I'll restart the blog at some point Friday -- after clearing up some of the detritus from a month on the road.

Subscription information: Several of you have written recently about subscribing for the coming year so I thought I'd address that issue ASAP. The "new and improved" Green Alert site will be up and running (hopefully) not long after I get back. It will have an automated sign-up process that will allow payment either by credit card or check. Be sure to return in coming days for more details.

Thanks for your patience while I enjoyed this time with my family. After posting information on the blog every day since last July it was hard to step away from Green Alert, but it's been a wonderful time. I'll be posting a few (promise: just a few) pictures and a recap of our adventure in coming days.

I'll catch you soon.

All the best,
-bw-

On the Road - July 16 Update

We had a great time at Yellowstone seeing tons (literally) of bison and elk. Leaving the park we saw our first bear. No attacks by wild turkeys, thankfully. Tonight we're in Spearfish, SD, and tomorrow we'll hit Mt. Rushmore and Wall Drug. (Stop laughing.) ... We had planned to camp at Devil's Tower tonight, but there are 14,000 acres of wildfire in that area and we figured it was best to keep on driving rather than get awakened in the middle of the night and told to head for higher ground. ... We're looking at maps and trying to figure out if we can work in a tour of Lambeau Field for the kids. But please, don't tell them. It's a secret. More later.

On the Road - July 10 Update

We survived our hike to the bottom of Grand Canyon quite nicely, thank you. We set off down the Canyon at 5:30 a.m., and arrived almost a mile deep a little before noon. Then it was two nights camping at Phantom Ranch and the long slog back up. Temperatures weren't the 110 degrees they can be and, better, yet, we had a little rain on the way down and gully-washers both days at the bottom. Today we're at Bryce Canyon then it's on to Yellowstone and a few more stops before turning east. So far so good for the '84 VW Westfalia camper except that one headlight is out. We just had the oil changed after driving 4,000 miles. (Please don't tell our mechanic that we drove it that far before changing the oil, but there aren't a lot of Jiffy Lubes in the desert.). Back July 21 (or maybe the 22nd). Then Green Alert blog will fire up again and I'll have the regular site hopping.

-bw-

On the Road - July 3 Update

A quick note from the KOA Campground in Durango, Calif.. ...

We have driven more than 3,000 miles so far and are having a tremendous time. So far, so great with the '84 Volkswagen camper. We'll be at Mesa Verde National Park tomorrow to explore the cliff dwellings. Then it's on to Grand Canyon and a hike to Phantom Ranch campground for two overnights. From there: Bryce Canyon National Park, Yellowstone and we'll see what else ;-)

I hope your Fourth of July is enjoyable and safe.

All the best,
-bw-