I was amazed that the stadium was completely enclosed in a box of 980,000 bricks. It was like walking into a huge bank building and discovering they kicked all the executive offices out and put in a football field. The construction did not at all strike me as a stadium. Our tour guide said that the 1.8 million sq. ft. building was large enough to house Mt. Rushmore. Besides the almost 1 million bricks, it took 16,000 tons of steel to construct.

There were more than 1100 TV sets in the building. Even the bathrooms contain TVs so you don’t miss any of the game.

We saw some of the 100 concession stands where they, on average, sell 5,800 hot dogs per game. We also got to visit the press booth and the Quarterback Suite. They serve food at both. In the QB Suite you have to pay $275 per seat during a game, but it includes all you can eat food and soft drinks. That is still an expensive meal. The guide said that sometimes press people will show up and depending on what the menu is for the game decide to either stay or go home and watch the game on TV.

On the lowest of 7 levels is the field and locker rooms. The hallways are large enough they can drive tractor trailer rigs through them for food and team equipment delivery. We were able to go into the visitor’s locker room, but not the Colts’.

The field is also on that lowest level. The artificial turf is unique at Lucas Oil Stadium in that they don’t roll the turf up to host other events like at other stadiums. The turf in permanant and they use 9,000 terra covers (rubber looking tiles) to build the alternate surfaces on top.

Lucas Oil has their name on the stadium by funding a portion of the construction. Something to the tune of $120,000,000. It will take Mr. Lucas 20 years to pay that off. That is a serious chunk of change.

There are many other stats that I wrote down as we took the tour, but I can’t imagine anyone but me being interested in them. You know, boring things like 75,000 miles of cabling. That is enough to go around the earth 3 times. Also that the 2 roof panels each measure 160′ by 600′. That is about the size of 2 football fields end to end for each panel. And facts like, each of the score boards is 97′ by 37′. That is 9 stories wide by 3.5 stories tall. Believe it or not, the scoreboards do not look that large since they are in a building that is 30 stories tall. You know, boring facts like that.

The only downside was the trip to and from the stadium. No, it had little to do with my brother’s driving abilities. All I can say is that it takes a special kind of person to be a teacher to screaming 3rd and 4th grade kids.

Interestingly, there were quite a few adults on this field trip. They have never had so much parental participation on a trip before. Men went on a 3rd/4th grade field trip. They either really love their kids, or it had something to do with the destination.

First time I called he did not answer and I did not get his voicemail. He is good about returning calls, so I would have left a message, but I did not have the option. I called back about 10 minutes later. He answered the phone, but seemed a little out of it.

“Are we champions?” I asked.

“We’re champions?” he asked me.

“That is what I want to know. Did we win?”

“We won? What was the score?” he continued to ask.

“I don’t know what the score was. I was not there. Do you know the score?”

“So tell me what the score was.”

I thought he wanted me to guess so I said “10 to 6.”

“We won 10 to 6?! That’s wonderful!” he yelled.

“No! I am asking you. Did we win? What was the score? Didn’t you just finish playing?” Surely he could not have gotten drunk in the 30 minutes after the game.

This time he responded a little clearer. “I am in Paris and did not play. So, did we really win?”

Ah-ha! It is 4:30 in the morning in Paris. He wasn’t drunk. He was just asleep.

He woke up by this time and realized what the conversation was. Then he said that he would send me a text message when he found out the score. He has phone numbers to several of the other players.

About 45 minutes later I got a text message from him saying that we had won. He did not give me the score, but I will probably find that out in the next few days. The score will be forgotten in a few months anyway. The fact that we won is what is important.

It was good to get a review of the show this week. That is what prompted me to try and get one out before we leave on our next trip. We should have left this morning, but car problems delayed us. So I am using the time the car is in the shop to put this together. Enjoy!

Show Notes

• Long Beach Trip
  • Video Clip
  • Aquarium picnic
  • Bluff Park
  • 13 mile run
  • Hill Running
  • Krispy Kreme
  • Road Runner experience
• Seven Wonders
• Fourth of July
• Missionary Talks
  • Rick Powers
  • Jim Sloan
• Sound Snap
• Facebook
• Car parts
• My final football game
• Music:
  • Super Polka theme music from Kevin MacLeod

Tonight we won our final game of the season with a score of 20-12. That gave us a season record of 3 wins, 3 losses. We needed this win tonight to go into the championship and we got it.

I will be heading out of town in a couple of days and won’t be back for a few weeks. Therefore, I will miss the final game. I have not been much of a help to our teams winning ways anyway. I have not played much. I did not play at all tonight.

I found out that this weekend we won! The weekend before we lost. That gives us 2 wins and 3 losses. If we win this coming Saturday we will go to the final game. I will be able to play Saturday, but not after that. We will be going to camp during that time and I will be out of town. Even though I won’t be able to play, I still want my team to go to the final of course.

The first place team is already guaranteed a spot. I think we are tied for second. But the stats put us in third. We could still go to the final game if we lose, but the other team that shares second with us has to lose pretty badly too.

The game was a bit more lively than last week. We had two team members ejected. An ejection also carries with it a one game suspension. So they will not be able to play with us next week. Plus we had one player blow out his knee. No, not one of the 40 year olds either. He is 21.

We were playing in another state (I think our only road game) and I was one of the only 2 cars that were coming back last night. The city of Campeche is about 2 hours from Mérida. I got to bring the injured player home and to the hospital. The game ended around 11, and with getting loaded up, stopping at a convenience store for food and grabbing gas, we did not get on the road till 12:00. I got home around 2:30 this morning after dropping my ambulance load at the hospital.

I played a bit more in this game than last week. There was another new guy that has not been to any of the practices who played my position.

Our defensive line was incredible. A marked change from last week. One of our tackles could not be there, so we moved a line backer up to that position. That made all the difference. This line backer turned tackle ended up with probably 6 sacks and multiple running back take downs. He was quite impressive. I think he will be staying at tackle.

Our kicker was injured during the game and we trolled the sidelines to see who could kick. One guy volunteered and did a great job. I don’t know how he would do for field goals (since we don’t have our arena built, we are not kicking field goals yet), but for the kickoffs he did well at placing the ball at the back of the field.

All in all, a much better game than last week. We seemed a bit more together.

As much as a numbers and stats guy as I am, I do horribly keeping score at a game when I am on the field. There is no public scoreboard and no announcements of the scores. Everyone has to keep up with the score themselves. I would not have known the half-time score had the coach not unmercifully berated us for letting them get that last score.

I have no idea what the final score was, but we lost. I think they were 2 TDs ahead of us at the end.

I did not play much. There was another safety that was there. It was the first time I had seen him, but apparently he had been practicing with the team early in the practice season before I arrived. The team had been playing together for several weeks before I knew about them and showed up. I guess the coach knew more about him and let him play instead of me. It was a bit frustrating to have been at every practice over the last three weeks just to sit the bench while someone you have never seen takes your place. I will just have to work harder in practice and impress the coach.

No one got ejected. That is always good. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. Our oldest, and most beloved player, caught a pass and dragged three defenders out of bounds with him. The play was whistled dead and the three defenders kept pulling on Carlos trying to bring him down. The Refs blew the whistles a good 5 or 8 seconds while they kept hitting on Carlos. Our bench cleared out (with the exception of about 3 of us) to start a ruckus. The Ref was going to eject one of our players, but could not remember the number of the player. The funny thing was, there was no personal foul nor unsportsmanlike conduct called.

The thing to remember is that we are not professionals and we don’t have professional refs. It is all about playing and winning…not necessarily about going about it in a fair and orderly manner. Therefore, if you show up for practice for 3 weeks straight and other players don’t, they may still get to play just because they are better, not because they are dedicated. On that note, we had 24 players at the game Saturday when we only have 8-14 show up for practice.

I don’t really know how to do all this stuff on my own, so I called my uncle. He does body work for fun and profit. It is a hobby of his that he does real well with. I am a little nervous around paint and metal, but he just jumps right in knowing that everything is fixable if you have the right tools. He helped us replace the front clip on our truck and then re-paint the whole thing.

When I say “he helped us,” I mean that he pointed to the next task and my wife and I pulled the whole smashed up front end off and replaced it with one from the junk yard. Then we did all the body prep up to the first coat of paint. He came out and shot the paint on for us. You see, he was laid up with kidney stones. In the week that we did all of that he was in and out of the hospital twice. We did all the work until the very end, which he crawled out of his death bed to finish up. It turned out great.

So, anyway, I called him a few times this last week when I was in the process of getting the helmet prepped and painted.

I ended up with about 4 coats of white I think. Up through 3 coats I was still seeing that it had not blended well. The final coat went on OK, but it was really hard to see the spots I missed until it dried. It was not a problem, though, since I followed that up with 2 or 3 coats of clear coat. This was all out of spray cans picked up at Wal-Mart. Not your high dollar car paint, but it turned out fine.

I did get a couple of slight runs in the clear coat, but only I can see them. I tried to point one out to a friend, and even though I knew where they were, I had trouble finding one. So they are not that bad.

I think it turned out nice. Now when we play our first real game on Saturday, I will get to scuff it up. If it still looks decent after this week’s game, I will throw some wax on it towards the end of next week. That will have given the paint 2 weeks to cure. I have been bringing the helmet into the bedroom at night so that the air conditioning will help set the paint better. It is amazing to me to see the difference in the hardness of the paint 2 days after I had it in the air conditioning. We don’t have central air here and electricity is too expensive to run the A/C all day. So we just have it on at night in the bedrooms.

You can click on the pictures for a larger version.

They were still asking me if I was OK. I assured them I was and I asked the coach why they kept asking. The coach and one other fellows’ eyes got big and they said “You got hit really hard Tuesday. Really hard.”

I remember getting taken out by a blocker, but did not feel it was that big of a deal at the time. They said that when I got hit and was flying backwards it was like in a movie where one guy gets picked up off the ground and thrown backwards onto his can. My feet went up and I went down. I got to thinking about it more this morning and I don’t actually remember what happened after I was hit. Now, I have slept since then, so that could explain it. But I remember seeing the lineman come at me with his block and remember feeling the blow, but I don’t remember hitting the ground or getting back up. Shortly after that I was replaced by one of our wide receivers who came in to play safety for me for a few plays.

So, maybe I was hit harder than I thought. My shoulder got banged up badly that night and I guess it came from that hit. The major road rash I have on my arm and knee came from the interception I caught and the resulting tackle.

The black and blue spots are starting to show up today.

Since I started playing football, the iodine has gone into service. Ever wonder why football players use knee pads? Or elbow pads? That is to cut down on the amount of iodine needed to keep a team on the field. I have so many rubbed off spots on my pointy surfaces.

We won our scrimmage tonight. I think the final score was 6 touchdowns to 3. We had a decidedly stronger defense than they had offense. We got a touchdown on our first drive, though they had the ball first. Your’s truly made an interception off of a long pass and was able to run the ball back a few yards before being taken down by 2 tacklers. That turnover set us up for the first touchdown.

After that we got one or two more and then they scored. With 10 minutes left in the game the score was 4 to 3 (our favor). We then drove down for 2 more TDs before the game was over.

It was different playing against another team. You don’t feel bad about hitting them hard. On the other hand, they didn’t feel bad about hitting us either. I was headed toward a runner and totally zoned out that there was an offensive lineman giving blocks for him. I got canned so hard… Did you know you can bruise your deltoid muscle.

As I admitted yesterday, my 37 year old body probably won’t recover like it used to.

The game was supposed to start at 8:30. We were told to be there at 8:00. There were 3 of us there at 8:00 and the bulk of the team did not arrive until 8:45. Not a single opposing team member arrived until 9:00. By 9:40 we started playing while they still had teammates coming in. We played until 11:00.

That, my friends, is Mexican time. That can be very frustrating if you allow it to be. After a while you realize that you will just have to live with it and you try to laugh it off. On the other hand, when I am in charge of an event, I start on time and don’t feel any grief when they show up after the party is over.

We put our daughter’s hair in curls. She had a scowl on her face after she saw herself in the mirror. It took quite a bit of work to get her to smile for this picture.

My wife was complaining that her hammock was lumpy the other day. I am not sure how that happens, but I have fallen victim to that ailment sometimes too.

Local elections were held here in Mexico yesterday. Apparently the PRI party swept this area. We are in a very strongly PAN area. PAN was the incumbent party and is the party of President Calderón (elected last year). I was a bit surprised to hear that PRI made a come back. None of this stuff actually makes sense to me anyway. Both main parties have their advantages and disadvantages. As a missionary, PRI is a bit better for us.

Missionary Talks is well over 8000 total downloads now.

I have my first real arena football scrimmage game against another team tomorrow. I heard that the oldest player on the other team is younger than our youngest player. I fall in the middle to lower end of our age bracket at 37. They will probably be faster than us, but maybe we can make it up by actually having brains and using them.

A few weeks ago we took our deaf church to the zoo. This other picture is me swinging. With the exception of the other missionary family, I am the old guy in the church. We are made up of a group of teens and a couple slightly older people. So when we get together for stuff like this, the kid in me comes out. He is not too far below the surface anyway.

Last week my wife and I went out for Mother’s Day (on Monday) and hit the magazine rack. There are a couple of stores which sell US magazines–at a premium. My wife picked up a couple and I picked up a Runner’s World. I have really been enjoying it. Cover price in the US is $4.50 while I had to pay over $6 for it here. Not horrible, but I still can’t afford to do it all the time. I did find Runner’s World Mexico one time. It was around $4, but I have never seen it again.

How is that for an eclectic mix of randomness?

Since I knew I would have a football scrimmage game today, I decided to make my run a short easy one. 5K at a slow pace should be around 10:20 for me. This one was 11:06. That was certainly slow.

Though it never really gets cold here, we still have a fairly dramatic Spring. This morning there were lots of trees in bloom. I have read several runners who state that their sense of smell is heightened while running. This is true for me as well. The trees smelled very nice.

Since it was 83 degrees on my run this morning, that also means that the dog “stuff” that was baking on the asphalt had a very strong smell.

One of the smells that I have come to enjoy while running is the smell put off by tortilla factories. We don’t have many on my current route. Only one. On the other side of town where we lived before, I could not do a run without running by 3 or more. They were plentiful over there. That is a nice smell. But, you can always feel the temp rise when running by one. The heat the machinery gives off is amazing. I can’t understand how people work in those places.

My team lost by a couple of touchdowns.

Though I am in pretty good shape, the body still hurts and gets sore from hitting the ground. Twenty years ago when I was playing ball all the time, I don’t remember being so sore the next day.

This morning I had a 10K race that I wanted to run. I had planned the race before I knew that I was to have the game yesterday. When I went to bed last night I had decided that my running of the race was dependent on how I felt this morning. I guess I felt alright since I woke up and motivated myself out the door.

I ran the first half in 29:22 and the second half in 30:38. Almost even splits. According to my watch, my time was 1:00:00. Official time was 1:00:05. Since my goal was 1 hour or less, I took my watch time. (BTW, this is the first race that I have run here that was actually the advertised distance.)

I was still sore and stiff through the first kilometer and was still considering turning around early. Somewhere between Km. 1 and 2 I decided to stay in the race.

It was a smaller race. Probably only 150 people. I took 26th for my division (30-39 year olds). I don’t know how many were in my age group. But, there were some people who came in after me.

I got a fairly nice T-Shirt from the race. But it is XL in size. I used to wear XL and don’t want any more shirts that size in my life. So, it will become a grungy football shirt. Why, oh why, do they give out L and XL shirts at races? Don’t they know the majority of people will be average to thin?

After all was said and done this weekend, I was glad I skipped the 8 mile long run I had planned for Saturday morning.

A friend of mine talked with his kid’s coach and got all the info for me. I was to show up at 8:00 tonight ready to practice. As always, no one else showed up until 15 minutes late and then the majority of people weren’t there until 8:30. But such is life here.

Everyone asked me what position I played when I last did play (20 years ago in high school). Since I was always the heaviest kid in school, I played both offensive and defensive lines. I am definitely not the heaviest person on this team. In fact, there were probably only 2 smaller than me. They stuck me in the defensive backfield as the safety. That is a position I have never played based on my size and lack of speed.

I don’t know that I will stay at safety, but it was fun playing there tonight. I have always enjoyed defense and this is a position that, though you don’t get to bang heads every play, is very important. Maybe I can hone my skills at it and make it my position.

Next practice is Friday.