2019-06-14

Reading the blog (I haven't been here in a while, obviously) has given me the urge to maybe try and restart again.   Set a mini-goal of writing about at least these 5 things. 

1) the end of Christopher's senior year and his transition to Wayne State

2) the planning of my trip to Korea to see Kevin and our trip to Japan

3) the buildup towards Matthew's senior season of soccer

4) my 50th birthday and the weight loss that has occurred and will continue to occur

and

5) Suzanne and my trip to the United Kingdom in June.

Unexpected things

Haven’t posted in a while - there hasn’t been a whole lot to post about. But I should finally updated Cpher’s wrestling season. Last time I was talking about Cpher’s exploits on the mat he had gone 4-1 at a Saturday tournament, losing his last match - and he probably should have won that.

It was ugly after that for a while. Very ugly.

1) Lost to East Lansing 9-5 - the guy didn’t try to do much but took advantage of Cpher’s mistakes to score points. The guy kept getting warnings for stalling BUT I guess the lesson learned is that losing a point for getting warned is a successful strategy.

2) Lost to Jackson by pin in the 2nd period in the 1st match of Leagues. Cpher had beat this guy before but was never really in this match - the guy had taken him down twice before he pinned Cpher.

3) Lost to East Lansing 3-1 in the 2nd (and last) match of Leagues. This match was much more even than the first since Cpher was more content to wait for his opportunity. The ending was disappointing; Cpher should have / could have gotten takedown points with 30 seconds left and didn’t (our coaches were not happy) but the guy was able to turn it around with 10 seconds left to get takedown points and win. Cpher admitted he was disappointed he didn’t get points and kind of gave up.

4) Lost to Grand Ledge by pin at Team Leagues. Thought the ref counted the pin very quickly; maybe quicker than anything I’ve seen this year. Match was significant in that the GL guy took advantage of Cpher having to lean into him becuase of Cpher’s height by pulling backwards and snapping Cpher down.

5) Lost to Brighton by pin at Districts. He was losing 8-5 in the 2nd before getting pinned. Brighton guy used same tactic as described above; took advantage of Cpher leaning.

So that’s a 6 match losing streak heading into what could be the last match of the year; the consolation round of Districts. But….because there are only 7 heavyweights (out of 13 teams) the match has a big upside - a win here means that Cpher is guaranteed to advance to Regionals. The opponent? The kid from Jackson. Cpher’s win in December was by pin after he was down 4-0; Cpher’s loss last week was after he was down 4-0.

So, it was not a real surprise I guess to find Cpher down 4-0 at the end of the 1st period. The guy had taken advantage of Cpher’s mistakes for two takedowns and Cpher was lucky to have the period end or he might have been pinned.

2nd period starts and it is different than the 1st…it is actually different than the last six matches…..Cpher is tied up with the guy and they are trying to trip each other to take their opponent down. This goes on for 20 seconds and Cpher is the one who gets the Jackson kid offbalance and down they go - Cpher is on top and he pins him! The kid is going to Regionals!

Cpher, because he won, got to wrestle for 3rd and lost to the Brighton kid 5-1. The Brighton kid got all of his points in the 2nd period with one takedown and then a near fall and then basically turtled in the 3rd period AND stalled enough to lose a point. But Cpher couldn’t get him out of that position and that was that.

More Cpher Wrestling

Sorry, there’s a lot of it right now, so, there is going to be a lot of posts about it. It’s all over in 2-3 weeks though.

Last Saturday was the Adam Nevills Memorial tournament here in Okemos. Six teams, so 5 matches and each and every team has a heavyweight.

Match 1: Haslett - this kid was one of the first kids Cpher ever wrestled in 8th grade….he was no match for Cpher then and was no match now. Cpher admitted later he didn’t go all that hard and so the match was about 30 seconds longer than I thought it would be.

Match 2: Williamston - by this time we’ve had a chance to see the other heavyweights wrestle and I figure Match 3 will be the hardest. Cpher again does what he does and pins this guy in less than a minute

Match 3: Mason. Cpher got lucky here - the varsity heavyweight was off at a college visit. He’s undefeated this year and we weren’t under any illusion that Cpher would be the one to end that - it would have been fun to watch though and see how Cpher could have competed.

Mason’s #2 heavyweight was enough of a challenge. The 2nd match this year to go the distance; it had some of the same elements that the first decision had. The kid would attempt takedowns against Cpher but Cpher would get the points for them; kid would escape and the process would slowly repeat itself. In the end, a 9-6 win for Cpher.

Match 4: Waverly. A different kind of challenge here - this kid was smaller (but still a decent size heavyweight) and quick. And he wanted more than anything than to get Cpher into a bear hug and try and toss him to the mat. He succeeded in this very early and went up 2-0. And then Cpher escaped, the kid tried again and Cpher was ready for it and it didn’t work and Cpher almost got the pin out of it. They reset, kid tried again, didn’t work, and Cpher almost got the pin out of it and by the end of the 1st period it’s 10-7 Cpher. I’ve never seen a Cpher match with that many points.

By the middle of the 2nd period it was 14-8 and Cpher got the kid on the ground again and finally pinned him. Cpher’s 4-0, maybe he can go undefeated today!

Match 5: Charlotte. By all reasonable measure Cpher should have / could have won this. This kid lost to the Mason and Waverly heavyweights. And Cpher was winning 4-0 late in the first period and I’m not sure what happened. The kid took Cpher down; Cpher tripped, and he was trying to get away from being pinned (and he looked to be escaping) when the ref said he got pinned. Cpher later says he was pissed off about it, he didn’t think he was pinned. I think he should have just tried to roll off of his back instead of trying to ‘back’ away from the kid on his back…..I’m not sure you can do what he was trying to do without getting both of your shoulders on the match at the same time.

Oh well. 4-1 (and if there had been individual flight winners he would have won 1st place) is a pretty good Saturday

Cpher Wrestling - Holt

I haven’t been writing about these Wednesday meets because, well, since I’ve restarted blogging every Wednesday meet has been the same. Cpher wins by forfeit. This Wednesday actually featured a real life opponent.

The match went like the majority of Cpher’s wins have gone - Cpher overwhelms his opponent and pins him quickly. A few things of note here:

1) Cpher is now 9-2 in January. It’s been quite a change since the 5-7 start to the year. A lot of this is that the “opponent win by stupid Cpher move” hasn’t been seen for a while.

2) With the win Cpher is in a great position to finish 5-1 and in 2nd place in the league. He, um, failed to compete, against the kid who will finish in 1st and if he doesn’t regret that choice I do - it would have been nice to know if he can beat that kid (and he was competitive for 90 seconds before getting taken down and not really trying to avoid getting pinned).

3) The Cpher-style of wrestling is different than almost everybody else I see out there. He goes straight ahead and attacks and attacks and attacks. There is no ‘tactical’ pause - and I think he might want to consider how to ‘retreat’ from bad positions and start over against some opponents. Next Wednesday will be interesting - the heavyweight from East Lasning, from what I have seen, likes to take his time and tie up his opponents and wait for his spots. My prediction is that Cpher overpowers him….but I’ve been known to be wrong on this kind of thing.

USS Enterprise

Things that make me happy - getting this

The company has offered a subsciption to get smaller models (I think they are up to 90(!) now) but even though they look cool I’m not sure I want to get into collection 90 some ships at $20 something a pop. But very recently they started to offer XL size ships. So this Enterprise is almost a foot long.

Ok, maybe a touch more than 12” long with my engineers scale there. Looks pretty cool - they offer about 10 XL ships now and I’m not sure I want all of them BUT I do think I want 6-8 of them. Because that’s the geek I am.

Detroit

Work had me down in Detroit on Friday for a meeting about a decommisioned industrial site - the owner is trying to figure out the best way to finally ‘close’ the site and maximize the return during divestment. It is a very nice location - there are a lot of possibilities.

A view from the parking garage

Dawn. That’s Belle Isle in the middle of the Detroit River - we need to get over there sometime this summer; it’s one of the things we haven’t done in Michigan yet.

In the elevator of the Ren Center as we headed down to go to our meeting.

The site we were talking about - it’s been used as the scene for some films recently since it was decommisioned in 2008. Like this one for example.

Cpher Wrestling - Ithaca

The latest Saturday adventure takes up north to Ithaca. This is a straight-forward double-elimination tournament.

Match 1: For the first time this year Cpher faces an opponent who he has wrestled before, Ithaca’s #2 heavyweight. This kid is smaller, and can wrestle well, and pinned Cpher in 4 1/2 minutes the first time and sadly, pins him in 90 seconds this time. I wish I had a good explanation for why he struggles so much against smaller and faster opponents. Inexperience? Not coached to handle this (and my opinion on the coaching is ‘meh’. It just seems like the coaches are ‘there’ - I never hear them coaching during the match. So, to the consolation bracket he goes.

Match 2: Up against Ithaca’s #3 heavyweight (that’s such an advantage for them to have kids who can wrestle against each other in practice). Cpher dominates this kid and wins in about 40 seconds

Match 3: The opponent is from Onaway (this meet was an introduction to a whole lot of smaller Michigan schools I have never heard of). Cpher wins by pin after 90 seconds; he tossed the kid to the ground so violently at one point there was a noticeable ‘whoa’ from the crowd.

Match 4: For 5th place he faces a kid from Marlette. Cpher reports the kid was bleeding pretty good after the match; Cpher won by pin in 2 min and 30 seconds.

It’s been a nice change from December - Cpher went 1-2 in both of those Saturday tournaments and now in January he has gone 3-1 in the last two tournaments. Has a league meet on Wednesday where I think he will finally get to wrestle and probably is favored to win against Holt.