Monthly Archives: May 2010

Last Match

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We are passing milestones with Ian at what feels like a frightening pace right now: Thursday was his last day of high school (graduation is this next week), and yesterday was almost certainly our last soccer match together as father/coach and son/player. Bittersweet, to say the least: we won an easy match against a Utah team after dropping a pair of close matches against teams from Utah and Nevada, matches we could have and probably should have won. Soccer is a funny game, and sometimes it’s simply not enough to play better than the opponent…

We ended our season with a trip to the Salt Lake City area to play in the Wasatch Classic tournament. We ended up coming down with 15 of our guys and played well, but were more than a little unlucky on both sides of the ball particularly in our second match. So that easy win yesterday represents what will be — unless something really unexpected would occur — the last time I will coach Ian or a team he’s playing with. This, in particular, has been a fun season to have been with these guys, in part because we had some success but more because the mix of young men and personalities were just a pleasure to work with and the be around.

It has been an incredible experience as a coach and as a father to have watched him grow and develop as a player and as a young man over these 10-plus years. I know it hasn’t always been easy for him to be a coach’s kid, but he has dealt with that aspect of this with grace. I’m tremendously proud of him, and grateful to have had this opportunity.

Back Home and Catching Up

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I made it home from DC on Friday in one piece, and although both of the connections on the flight home were very close I actually arrived as scheduled. This trip was the first time in quite a while I bumped into any problems going east; usually it’s the other way around. I had a full but good week in DC:

  • Good food: Indian at the Polo Club near Dupont Circle on Tuesday, South American at La Choza someplace out toward Vienna/Fairfax on Wednesday, and Spanish on Thursday (I have to track down the name of the place where we met for dinner)
  • Met Jim and Brittany for dinner on Wednesday evening; it was great to get to see them again and spend some time catching up with them
  • A week filled with project meetings (a couple of which were surprisingly productive) and presentations
  • Had a few minutes to spend between meetings on Thursday morning at the Sackler Gallery across the street from DOE’s headquarters in the Forrestal Building

The early start on Friday morning for a 6:10 flight out of Reagan made for a long day, but it was nice to get home by mid-day.

Friday evening was the start of a soccer tournament here in Idaho Falls, and we’ve been blessed with glorious weather the past couple days (and today looks to be more of the same). Ian’s team played one match Saturday afternoon (a 2-0 win against a good team) and has two more slated for Sunday. We’ve got a couple more weeks of league play before the end of the season and are planning on wrapping things up with a tournament in Utah over Memorial Day weekend.

Ian and Fi, Graduation Dance -- May 2010

Ian’s senior year of high school is winding down, with the graduation dance Saturday evening sort of serving as the beginning of the end. He and Fi did stop back here at home after dinner so that we could get a picture or two before they headed off to the dance. They are already finished with their AP tests for the semester and it sounds like the next couple of weeks are going to be pretty loose in terms of school itself. Graduation itself is June 2 for their high school… Deb and I are still trying to get our heads around the thought that Ian will be done with high school and moving on to the next phase of his life.

The streak continues…

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… my streak of bad luck traveling. OK, not seriously bad luck, but just enough to make one wonder.

I’m in DC this week — traveling with Jeff — for work, and rather than wait for the trip home at the end of the week to continue my stretch of some sort of travel anomaly, we decided to get it going early this time: some sort of failure on the “igniters” on the plane scheduled to take us from Salt Lake to Cincinnati as they started the engines to leave. (Igniters? Sounds more like something we’d find on a rocket…)

An hour and a half later, we left Salt Lake which meant of course we just missed our connection in Cincinnati, so we got to hang out in the Cincinnati airport and enjoy a (not-so-fine) dining experience there rather than somewhere good (read: with food) in DC. The interesting part about just missing our connection is that our bags made the connection and were waiting for us in at the Delta luggage place in the bowels of the airport. Of course, we only went there because our bags didn’t come out at the baggage claim place for our flight. Go figure…

A good thing: our hotel is right next door to a 24-hour CVS, so Jeff is in CVS heaven this week.