Even a blind nut can find a squirrel...: July 2012

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Volt – Inception

With the advent of a new driver in the family, the focus slowly but surely has turned towards a new vehicle. And even though it is technically MY turn for a new car, most of the talk has been about getting Suzanne a new car. There are a couple of reasons for this:

Suzanne has expressed, repeatedly, that she is tired of driving a min-van.
Given Suzanne’s commute it makes sense to get something a heck of a lot smaller and a whole lot greener.
We really need the van for a few more years at least for transport of boys and boys equipment….just can’t see how we can go away from that.

We’ve been talking Toyota Prius for an awfully long time (with a small dash of BMW convertible thrown in as a dash of excitement).

So, we started looking around a little more seriously when we came back. Went out one evening and test drove a 2012 Chevy Volt. The short version is that aside from getting used to the rear view mirror I really liked it but Suzanne hated the interior…the Volt was white (the only one at the dealership) and the interior was a gray or black with a white instrument panel…a really big contrast that Suzanne thought looked really cheap. Very surprised by how the car drove; we were on battery power the whole time and it certainly didn’t feel that way, no problem with acceleration.

Looked at Prius on the way back home (dealership was closed), stopped by and looked at a BMW convertible on the way home too….

The next day, in the pouring rain and with Matthew, we test drove a Prius. Suzanne liked the interior of the Prius better, it would be able, although crowded, to fit all three boys in the back. The engine, a true hybrid, has limited pickup…you can mash that pedal down and it’s not going to get better on the acceleration front. Matthew, just blown away by all the new-ness, is all onboard with anything!

The Prius, with it’s hybrid, will get 50-60 mpg all day long no mater what. There is a plug-in Prius (not available in Michigan yet) that will increase that number to 90 by giving you about 11 miles of electric power before the battery goes.

The Volt gives you 38 miles of electric power….so the top end of it’s mpg measure could be very high. Given Suzanne’s normal commute, it might be a long long time before we have to fill up the gas tank.

Test drives are over and the internet research begins…and Suzanne discovers that the ugly looking interior of the Volt is only for white colored Volts….other exterior colors for the Volt have grey interiors and gray instrument panels. And something amazing happens….Suzanne, who has never ever bought (or even driven for an extended period) an American car slowly but surely decides that the Volt is the way to go.

(with one caveat…we are leasing it, not buying it. The lease price is very palatable for two years and the lease also lets us drive and make sure we like it. Also, we want to see how the battery operates over the long-term….any degradation in storage of power or anything like that)

So while Fric and Frac are up in Evart at camp, on Wednesday the three of us headed down to a dealer in Southfield to pick up a 2013 Volt. The color is Viridian Joule….some fancy term for a gray that looks blueish-green at times.

Why did we drive all the way down there? Apparently this dealer has made it their specialty to sell Volts; there is an article in Forbes magazine about them. And, they have this color.

You can see the door for the electric charge in the photo above.

Next week we’ll go with a post to discuss first impressions…..

Matthew Art 2012

The last of these types of posts as everyone is now out of elementary school…..and there weren’t even many pictures this year to talk about.

Given the quotes from the artist, it’s probably a good thing that this is the last of this type of post.

“I barely even know now…do I have to do this? What the heck Dad!”

“Geeee. (sigh). I’m not going to do this”

“I don’t know. Dad, I just don’t want to do it.”

(Matthew left the room before making some comment on this)

Spring Hill – Before and During

Fric and Frac are off at camp…..pictures and updates from the camp appear online AND are sent home daily, so, might as well collect them here.

These are the photos I took before we left:

Henry will have the top bunk; Matthew will be beneath him.

Fric and Frac in front of the cabin door….

The boys on the logs surrounding the bonfire right before we left.

Onto the Camp photos:

The first day only provided this photo

Fric, Frac. In the bottom row; Henry (below Matthew) plays soccer with Matthew and Sam (Henry’s older brother) is to the right of Henry. We are somewhat surprised that there are only 6 people in the cabin; expected more.

So each day we have paid a little extra to get one picture and one one or two sentence quote. “I’m really excited about zipline and I really like playing gaga ball and six square”.

“I’m really looking forward to the zipline and riflery was really fun!”

“The xipline has been the best part of camp”

“I really like the zipline and I want to do it in Hawaii. We did archery which was fun too, then high ropes!” Note. we are strongly considering returning to Hawaii for Spring Break 2013.

“Just went canoeing and I can’t wait to go down the waterslide!! I also lost two teeth this week!!”

Oh Christopher, if you only knew what your refusal to change shirts for three straight days is going to get you when you get home…..

“Today we went canoeing and we already went zip lining”

“I learned not to wear wet pants all day”

“The best thing at camp is the blobs because my counselor Alex blobbed me.”

“B lobbing” is when the counselors jump on an inflatable in the lake and sending each camper bouncing off the inflatable into the lake. Matthew is claiming to have gone 30 feet in the air!

The camp also posted a few pictures on line in photo albums:

Dead-Eye Fric

Doing some sort of craft…

Dead-Eye Frac. Post-camp debrief reports that Frac was one of the few campers to hit a target here…

Being Crafty.

Camp Store: Each boy had $30 in their account to buy stuff during the week. The purchases are a study in the nature of pre-teen boys:

Matthew:

Christopher:

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Euro2012 – Lupercio Photos

Finally remembered to go and download the pictures Stephanie sent via email from Florence and the three or four she posted on facebook. Thanks Stephanie!

In the van after the visit to the Accademia to see the David. Matthew looks pretty good for being sick earlier. Really get a kick out of the Subway and McDonalds that are clearly visible in the background…

David, front.

David, back.

David, pop art(?) in the courtyard

We don’t do many pictures at the sights…just a preference of Suzanne and I.

But we ended up with two here….

You saw this earlier from a different angle….Stephanie was right in front, so, her picture is much better than mine.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

July Soccer Updates

It never stops…

On Goal: Matthew attended the week long camp again. This time we asked a friend from the soccer team to join us.

Matthew competing in Goalie Wars (click on the picture for the video)

Other weeks have been more successful than this one at camp; Matthew’s team lost in the World Cup final 3-0. The good news is that they had to beat two teams to get there, and did so pretty convincingly. The bad news is that they weren’t very competitive in the final game. I don’t think Matthew played very well all week; he certainly wasn’t the aggressive little boy that he needed to be to compensate for some of his team’s weaknesses.

He did return to defend his Goalie War title…that didn’t go so well either. He won the first two rounds, but, lost in the final (that’s the picture above) to a kid that probably would have beaten 9 times out of 10. But that’s the way it goes sometimes…..

Extra training: Matthew came home from school toward the end of the school year and said “hey, one of the fourth grade teachers said that her son was interested in doing some soccer training this summer”. Coincidentally, I had just started to ask around to see if anyone was interested in running some session.

Matthew has gone to 3 or 4 of them; 90 minutes each, most with one other boy (I thought more would show up from the team…but no). They’ve been surprisingly good and Matthew has gotten a lot of good soccer workouts in, especially focusing on his footwork and first touch.

Bath 4v4: Summer also means a bunch of small-sided soccer tournaments. Our European vacation ruled us out of the first event, soccer in the sand over in Grand Haven. We understand we missed a really fun event, but, hey, we were in Europe.

The first of the 4v4’s that Matthew is playing and I’m coaching was last weekend; the last time a boy did the Bath 4v4 was Kevin…that’s a long time ago. We are playing U10 after talking a little bit about playing U12.

In hindsight, I guess we should have played U12. We had to stop or slow down to keep two of the game scores reasonable and the boys didn’t react well to that and actually tied a U9 rec team because they were so out of it and not engaging when they needed to. We finish group stage in 2nd place, one 7-0 win, one 2-2 tie.

The knockout stage was kind of strange, we play the #1 seed in the second game (we won the first game against the #7 seed 6-0 and were in stall mode most of the second half). The #1 seed was a bunch of kids from a travel soccer team down in Jackson…so, we think it will be a good game.

This is from Game 2, the tie that will not be spoken of. Matthew, like in most 4v4 games, is back on defense. He made a few goofs that directly lead to goals but man, we gave up 3 goals in 5 games and most of that is because of him.

He scored one goal (ok, not really, but, we’ll get to that) but had more than a few assists as he would grab the ball, dribble up field, and make a nice pass over for the easy score.

This is Matthew all day long….big kicks out of our end. Our team, and their team, are way back near the other goal. We ended up stationing two players on the sides as targets for Matthew and then a midfielder about 15 feet back towards Matthew to collect deflections off the targets and their defenders. Worked out really well.

This picture is from the 4th game against the #1 seed. You can click on the picture for the video.

We are winning 1-0 at halftime….they were kind of stupid, or maybe lulled to sleep by playing weak teams…they kept rushing four kids forward into the offensive zone and we made them pay on a counter-attack. Being able to do that, and having Matthew able to boot the balls 3/4 of the field, forced them to drop a kid back for the rest of the game. They took a lot of shots, but, they weren’t good shots, and we didn’t have a lot of trouble defending them or watching them go wide.

The picture, and video, above is of the first 45 seconds of the xecond half. Matthew takes this free kick and gets it high…if the green kid doesn’t get it the ball it’s going to go to our kid moving in towards the goal. The green kid heads it….into his own goal.

Sadly, for them, the kid dissolves into tears and never comes back….and I’ve been there in a 4v4 tournament and had talked with the boys about it at halftime. We score again 30 seconds later, and go on to win 4-0.

I don’t have photos or videos of the final game (and the game at that point was pretty much over) but Matthew had a great header to clear the ball away from the net (it was going to go in…he headed the ball up, it bounced in front of the goal and then over the goal).

As always, the chest bump is the preferred form of celebration….

We won the final game 6-1….I think it was 3-0 at the half and it was 5-0 before they scored (Matthew completely misplayed a ball and the guy went right by him….oh well). I neglected to mention so far we did this without a sub….we were supposed to have five players but one didn’t show. I told the boys all day that it wasn’t an excuse, they should all be able to play 10-minute halves of soccer without needing a break.

The 2012 U10 Bath 4v4 Champions: The Fireballs.