Mike's Page

It's fun to watch the search engine hits to my blog when the Ohio State / Michigan game rolls around. My article from last year about jumping into Mirror Lake is getting a lot of traffic.

This year a writer from the Lantern happened upon that post, and asked to interview me. That's a first for me! A lot of Mirror Lake history and parts of our discussion appear in an article in today's Lantern.

I think it's the first time my name ever appeared in that newspaper. I didn't think he'd print the part about not jumping in 1990 because I was wearing my only good pair of shoes! I was prepared in later years with old clothes and ratty sneakers.

I wasn't yet steeped in the tradition of The Game when I arrived at OSU in 1990, and so I sold my student ticket for the Michigan game for slightly more than I paid for the whole season. But I kicked myself when I watched the game on TV from Cincinnati on Thanksgiving weekend; the crowd was so energetic that I wanted to be a part of it. Maybe if I'd have been there the Buckeyes wouldn't have lost 16-13! I vowed to not miss my next chance to go.

I had the luck of going to OSU during the John Cooper years, which meant plenty of wins during the season, but devastating losses to Michigan and bowl game disappointments. The Bucks lost to the Wolverines in Ann Arbor in 1991, 31-3. In 1992 I got my chance to see The Game. I screamed and hollered until I was hoarse, and maybe it did some good, because the Buckeyes pulled off a 13-13 tie with a late game comeback. I remember being genuinely excited about the tie; after all, it was a step up from a loss. OSU's president at the time, Gordon Gee, referred to the game as "one of our greatest wins ever." At the time it didn't seem unreasonable. It sure beat the 28-0 drubbing the Buckeyes would take in 1993, and it stood out as the only non-loss to Michigan when I was in school. So I relish that tie; perhaps if college football games had had overtime back then it would have been a win!

I'm glad the Bucks have turned it around in recent years, but I'll always be a little nervous and excited during Michigan week. GO BUCKS!

Jen and I got the chance to get away for a weekend, and at the last minute settled on going to the mountains in North Carolina. I found a cabin at the Nantahala Village, west of Bryson City. The village consists of a lodge with rooms and a restaurant, and several outlying cottages and cabins. Our cabin was perched high on the side of a hill with a great view of the mountains to the west (and pretty good sunsets). The cabin was a small two-bedroom house with some old furnishings. The satellite receiver was from the dark ages. But the fireplace and the hottub were great!

The restaurant at the lodge served some really good food, but the service was slow. I'm not sure they were expecting the number of guests they had this late in the season. Over the weekend the lodge hosted an art show with various paintings and pottery, and some funky hand-crafted Native American drums.

The weather was cool but sunny. Some trails of the Nantahala National Forest border their property, and we hiked for a couple hours on Saturday. The trails offered some neat views of some offshoots from Lake Fontana. The only other trail users passed by once on horseback. The trails weren't really marked, so we got turned around a little, but found our way back. Along the way back we spotted several small birds. Once I got the binoculars on them they looked like goldfinches with yellow mohawks. I looked them up when I got home and I'm pretty sure they were Golden-crowned Kinglets. We also spotted a fat lizard along the trail, which I think might have been a northern fence lizard.

We had a fun and relaxing time...it was a nice spot for a getaway.

After running this blog for nearly two years and never receiving a meaningful trackback link, I have turned them off. Trackback spamming has been picking up, including 5 today.

I'm getting to the point where I just might stop running this blog software. There's other ways to publish content. Spammers don't seem to bother as much with custom software...they go after the thousands of people all running the familiar stuff.