May 2014 - Special Heart's Ride

Our friends Sean and Beth lost their 18 year old son to a heart defect in January 2014.  On Saturday, May 31st, they hosted a ride in honor of him called the Joe Gillis Special Heart's Ride benefiting Camp Odayin, a camp for kids with heart disease. Joe went to the camp each year for many years and was looking forward to becoming a camp counselor in the year he passed but didn't get the chance.

The ride started at Bennett's in St. Paul which included a breakfast buffet.  M was one of the road captains for the day, which Sean graciously does for us each year on the Cherry Ride and we headed south through Hastings, getting a scheduled police escort through the city and reaching our first destination Dan's Bar and Grill in Hampton, where M one of one the raffles. We then rode to Steel Horse Saloon in Ellsworth, WI where I ended up winning the big pot of money in one of the raffles. We finished at Tavern on the Avenue where the fundraising continued with silent auctions, raffles and a band.  

The ride/benefit raised $7,500 for the Joe Gillis Memorial Fund at Camp Odayin and was an incredibly successful inaugural year.  Thank you Sean and Beth for including us for this special event.    

May 2014 - Walk for Animals

As I've done every year since 2004, I participated in the Animal Humane Society's Walk for Animals on May 3, 2014.  It was AHS's 40th annual walk!  I can't remember how much I raised but I know it was over $500 since I was able to check in in the special area but I know I did not break my 2013 record of $865.  I wish AHS allowed you to keep a personal history of what each year's donations raised were.

They changed the walk this year where instead of 5 miles, it was half the distance.  They wanted to encourage people to take their time and focus on the interaction with people and animals and other events rather than the actual walking time.  I walked with Michael, Tanya, Chris, Asher and their dog Cosmo as I've done for multiple years and the walk was completed very fast this year, obviously.  I'm not sure if we really interacted more than we normally do so I'm unsure if the reduction of the distance of the walk was successful.  I hear they're mixing things up again for 2015 so we'll see how that turns out.

Thank you all that donated to the cause in 2014.  I appreciated your support each year.

  

 

I think I really want a bunny.  M always tells me that I do not.  I think I do.

FRI HH

One thing that the Alphabet Gang has never done is have a happy hour on a Friday night, until February 7th. We met at Mac's Industrial in Northeast Minneapolis after work. One of our members got lost and didn't make it and one of our members completely forgot so she had to venture out from home. We got to meet the newest addition to Catha's family, Dahlia, who was just about 10 weeks at the time, skinny and long. Despite being a Friday night, I think we all enjoy our weekend time and we only met for as long as we normally would on a week night. A few in this group don't like getting their pictures taken so it can be a chore getting one of these guys but somehow we get all of us in there for an "ussie".

 

 

 

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Winterfest

We went to Winterfest on Friday, January 31st and met our friend John there. It was held at a new venue this year, the Union Depot in St. Paul. Winterfest is the coveted beer fest for the serious beer peeps and the first of three for the year put on by the Minnesota Craft Brewer's Guild. This was the third one we've been to and I preferred this venue but M liked it better when it was at the Minnesota History Center. The beer booths were a lot closer to each other and that was what I liked however it did get crowded in the area it was held. I don't partake much but I had some fun ingredients in my beer like coconut, raspberry, blueberry and blackberry. The food was pretty decent as well serving roast beef, cold roasted veggies and potatoes. I would have liked to have seen HammerHeart Brewing there but there's not enough room for all the good brewers. Of the three of us, each of us ran into someone that we went to school with. I guess everyone does like beer.

 

Jeremy and I--We haven't seen each other since we were 19

M and Dangerous Man Brewing's found Rob Miller

Photobombed!

 

 

 

 

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Blurry HH

I met several current and former coworkers (and friends!) for happy hour at Cowboy Jack's in Bloomington on Thursday, January 23rd. You spend so much time with your coworkers as a whole so I always appreciate getting out and hang out with them on a casual and friendly basis as well, which doesn't happen often. We had a couple of drinks, some appetizers and some fun conversations before calling it a night.

 

This is what happens when you hand your phone off to someone else to take a picture. Blurry!

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NYE

New Year's Eve was very low-key and they way it probably should be for people our age. Our friends Chris and Tanya came over with their son Asher and we had food and some drinks while listening to music and watching some TV. Despite being low-key, we all stayed up late with them leaving at 2:40 am. How'd you spend your New Year's Eve?

 

 

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7th Annual Cherrie Jones Tailgate Party

It was the latest it could possibly be to have this party, Week 17, the very last game of the year.  The 7th Annual Cherrie Jones Tailgate Party was held on Sunday, December 29th.  The weather the day before was in the 40's and on the of the party, not so much.

We woke up to around zero degrees and it would continue to get colder throughout the morning.  It was the wind chill that was really bad.  Good thing I had long underwear on under my jeans and wind pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweatshirt and my jacket, two scarves, two pairs of gloves and two hats because I needed it all.  If we weren't all true Minnesotans already, we sure were after Sunday. Too bad the feet heaters in my boots didn't work very well.  That's what you get when you ruin your feet ice skating as a kid when it was too cold or you stayed out too long.  

I kind of laugh at the temperature now thinking about what we just experienced in the last several days

We got out to the lot right at 8 am and fortunately we had a couple of tents that we put together and tied sides on them to block the wind out as best as we could.  The tent attempted to leave the ground numerous times but our group is smart enough and parked a truck next to the tent and tied them down to it.

With the weather as cold as it was and the fact that this was the last game we'd be tailgating for at the Metrodome and it was a hard ticket to get, we just wasn't sure how many people would actually show up for our party.  Turns out, a lot considering the circumstances.  To my best guess, we had about 50 people come out. We did our best to stay warm with our tents, multiple sunflower heaters, layers and drinks.

Cherrie's siblings - minus one

Double the hat, double the scarf

Our Lions crew representin'

Our last tailgate and our last Cherrie Jones Tailgate Party at the Metrodome, ever.

It would obviously be our last game in the Metrodome ever as well.  It was a little hard for me to realize that since it was also the end of the season so it didn't seem odd or sad at first because I knew I wouldn't be coming back again this year.  Maybe it will sink in next season when we're not there.

We typically play great against Detroit at the dome and this day was no exception.  The Vikings won, 14-13 with Cordarrelle Patterson scoring both touchdowns, one rushing (50 yards) and one receiving. 

Last SKOL Line

All the security in yellow coming out around the field

Last game moment- Vikings win

After the game, there was a 10 minute intermission before Matt Birk, Robert Smith, Adrian Peterson and Bud Grant addressed the crowd and their final farewells to the dome and the fans in the dome.  

I'll be writing about my personal experiences at and with the dome later this month.

Goodbye, Metrodome!  

A Win?!

As of Sunday, December 1st, there were two tailgating opportunities left until the big one, the last one at the dome, the one and only, Cherrie Jones Tailgating party.  Because of this, we decided that we want to tailgate one more time in our lot and one more time walking around and in other people's lots.  We decided that we'd walk around this time so the first lot we went to was to our high school friend's parking lot.  Yep, M and I both have high school friends that have tickets together even though M and I went to different schools and we're 3 years apart.  It was kind of weird making that discovery many years ago.

We met up with my friends Chris and Scott and M's friend Todd, AKA Sea Bass.  Not sure about that one. We didn't stay too long with them but continued to walk around looking at everyone else's setup when M ran into another high school friend named Jesse.  At this time we were playing phone tag with M's other friend Wayne who happened to be out there too and in our usual lot looking for us.

We eventually made our way back to our regular tailgate lot and found Wayne and Tyler and didn't spend much time with them either as they had free beers coming their way on the plaza.  I did manage to get a picture and we did get time to play with the random dog that was hanging around. 

This dog was fun, playful and very smart.  He had a tennis ball and he wanted to play with anyone that would play with him.  He would catch the tennis ball in his mouth when thrown to him and then give it back to you to do it again.  M played with him until his glove was full of dog saliva. 

We played the Chicago Bears and in my experience seeing the Bears live, those games have been some of my favorite.  I'm not sure why but I almost always have fun at those games.  Maybe it's because most often, we win against them at home.  

I had a feeling that we were going to win this game as I had picked the Vikings to win in my Pick'ems league but as the game started and went on, it turned out to be a pretty boring game.  Ponder went out at one point with concussion-like symptoms, a reason we didn't know while we were at the game.  Cassel steps in and starts performing, at least more than Ponder did, which we all know that happens, besides the coaches apparently.  

The 4th quarter gets interesting when it's tied and we end up going into overtime, something we just did the week before with the Packers and ended up in a tie. It was a series of bloopers for both teams that kept giving each other's team another chance to score to win the game including a winning field goal wiped out by a face mask penalty and another missed one by our reliable Blair Walsh and a bad coaching decision on the Bears side to kick a field goal on 2nd and 7...and miss. The back and forth of each team having three possessions was really bizarre.  Eventually, Vikings end up winning with less than 2 minutes on the clock in OT, 23-20.  

Adrian Peterson hit two milestones that day.  He ran for a total of 211 yards, the 5th time in his career he's gotten over 200 yards in a game as well as passing the 10,000 yards mark in his career.  He did it in 101 games and is the 3rd fastest person to do it besides his two heroes, Eric Dickerson and Jim Brown.  I've seen multiple Adrian records being broken at home and I'm happy that he was able do it in front of a home crowd.

To celebrate the win, M and I had bear chops for dinner.  Take that, Chicago!