Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Check It Out

Stanford football posted this yesterday about former Dartmouth corner Jordan Washington:

How much confidence do you place in a commentator who sees Dartmouth football finishing 6-6 at worst, and 10-2 at best . . . when the Big Green plays a 10-game schedule? And no, he's not figuring in two games in the FCS tournament because 6-6 would mean five wins in the regular season and a 1-1 mark in the playoffs and no five-win team is going to the postseason.
  

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EXTRA POINT

Like most of you, I am neither a genius or an idiot, but I was a little bit of both Sunday when I went to the Travelers golf championship.


Knowing That Certain Nittany Lion ’16 was going to walk my feet off trying to see every player and every hole, I made sure to pack a nice pair of newish, low-cut socks to lessen the chance of blisters. Here’s the idiot part. I couldn’t find 'em when I needed 'em. Somehow, some way, I managed to misplace them, and would have to walk the course all day without socks.


Here’s the genius part. Choosing comfort over style, I had chosen to wear my hiking shoes on the course. Fortunately, they are trail runners, not the sturdy leather boots that may come to mind. Even more fortunately, I have hiked in them nearly every day since I bought them, and they are well worn in.


The bottom line: Although I was determined not to complain and keep walking the course with a smile when blisters started to form, they never did. To the credit of the shoes, despite walking maybe seven or eight hilly miles with the temperature in the mid-90s and high humidity, my feet were no worse for the wear at the end of the day than they would have been if I’d worn socks.


Here’s the kicker. When TCNL’16 and I got back to the park & ride where I’d left my car, I grabbed the bag and cooler and extra hat I’d transferred to his car at 4:45 that morning. I was about to head off when TCNL’16 directed my attention to the ground. There were the missing socks, which had fallen out of my  spare hat. All I could do was laugh.


The hiking shoes were back on my feet this morning when I beat the impending 95-degree heat by going up the mountain at the crack of dawn. As you probably know, I’ve gone up to the peak just about every possible day in the five-plus years we’ve lived here, and today I saw something I’d never seen before. It's a little hard to tell in the photo, but those are wilted flowers whose stalks had been placed into holes drilled in cutoff stumps of small trees. There were a number of them at the peak. I know there have been weddings up there before, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what the flowers were from. Come to think of it, a wedding on a mountaintop sounds kind of . . . familiar. ;-)


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