In case you don’t know, the Kentucky Derby is also known as “The Run for the Roses.” Why? You see, the winning horse gets draped with this beautiful rose garland. And what a crazy horserace this year’s Run for the Roses was!
First of all, the track was a muddy mess, making the outcome more uncertain; The Triple Crown races —The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes— are for young horses only (3-year-olds, teenagers really), and most of them don’t have experience with muddy tracks. Second, it was won by a DQ; In all of 145 years of Kentucky Derby history this has never happened. If you had bet on Country House to Win you would have collected a cool +$132 on your $2 ticket (one usually gets cents on this kind of bets). Most people think Maximum Security was robbed (myself included). It was so crazy even the Donald got involved.
I have a longtime tradition to watch the Triple Crown races (and making personal bets) with Mik —That’s my nickname for my beautiful wife; it goes back to when we were dating: I learned her maiden name and mispronounced it as MacFerren; she promptly corrected me to MicFerren— We watched the race at one of our all-time favorite places, Stadium Brew while sipping mint juleps. I asked the pretty bartender to dial a couple of sports screens to the race, so we could watch it. The manager went one step further and turned all the TV’s to the Kentucky Derby, with sound, which is not usually done!
By the way, I came across this video while watching sports documentaries, during my early-day warm-ups with one of my caregivers; Even if you don’t like horse racing, it’s well worth watching for its amazing story.
By now, everyone should know that the NCAA Men’s Basketball team from the University of Villanova is better known simply as ‘nova. And that they won this year’s championship in a historic tournament run.
What most people don’t know (unless they were of driving age back in the 70’s) is that Nova was also a Chevrolet brand for a pedestrian car that was fairly successful and like all Chevy’s, were most-of-the-time reliable, relatively inexpensive and stock cars that could be converted into powerful beasts with a few modifications..
“No va” means “it doesn’t go” in Spanish and there’s a urban legend that the car didn’t sell well in Latin America because of its unfortunate name; Nothing could be farther from the truth, the Nova sold fairly well in my native Venezuela. As a matter of fact, my family owned one in that puky dark-purple color. Although, I didn’t inherited it, one my older half-brothers did; And he drove it for many years.
After Villanova advanced to the Final Four, I made a comment to one of my college BFF’s that was rooting for ‘nova, letting him know that his chosen team ¡Si va! which of course means,“yes it goes,” in Spanish.
So why was this year’s Villanova’s win historic? It all there! But let’s not forget that it could have been a ‘villaneous’ game if the point differential would have been the same as in the first few minutes!
I have many Guardian Angels; I call them Framily! They have helped me in one way or another, especially after my spinal cord injury. But there is one woman in particular that is my main Guardian Angel and that’s my mom. She does all the things mothers do and then some; She helps me financially from her meager resources, whenever I need it. Ever since my skiing misfortune, she visits me for about a month every year. She has a heart condition for which she takes two pills everyday. She then proceeds to walk 5 kilometers to do food shopping and to cook up a storm —She’s Spanish; she uses the international metric system— All she asks in return is for good conversation, occasional technical support and that I pick a good movie or program to watch on TV.
The duty is reciprocal. A few years ago, I devised a game in order to remotely check on ourselves on a daily basis; we pick a phone wallpaper from APOD or Bing and then tell each other our choices for the day. I call her every Sunday like I will be doing in a few hours. And we use WhatsApp to communicate with each other.
So am I mama’s boy? Or are my mom and I each other’s best Guardian Angels? That’s like asking if today is April Fool’s Day or Easter Sunday!
No matter what happens between Mik and me, you are always welcomed to visit and stay in my home. Except that you will have to sleep in the den/office on a futton, or in the living room in a very comfortable sleeping sofa. Unless you want to sleep with me and be woken up by a crazy guy howling back at a wild coyote outside my window, or be woken up at 5:30 am to classical music while I do my Dawn Patrol exercises.
xo xo xo xo xxx xo xo xo xxx xo xo xo xo xo xo xxx xo xxx Sri
My mother-in-law was right; At least about the weather for March, in SoCal. It was cold and rainy for the first couple of weeks of the month and today, it was a beautiful day!
💞 [FYI] [NRN] My New Home } Title of email originally sent to my immediate family (both bands).
What can I possibly learn from this individual? I’ve been asking that about my great friend Soid, most of my adult life. I’m not an English native speaker, and as it turns out, the great majority of raunchy sayings, I have learned from Soid.
But allow me to take a stroll down memory lane: I distinctly remember how I met Soid; I was working as a dock-master; at the OCC-UCI Inter-Collegiate Sailing & Rowing Base, Soid and his UC Irvine crew mates had just won an important rowing regatta. As is customary, members of his eight-men big boat, ended up in the water as part of the celebrations. Soid, been an excellent swimmer, decided to venture out close to the Lido-14 docks, where I was administering sailing tests. Not only was I concerned about the difficult docking maneuvers that my students would have to complete, but I was also worried about the possibility of a keel or rudder hitting Soid. I let him know about the situation in no uncertain terms; He didn’t say anything, but while swimming away, he gave me a look that undoubtedly meant: “Who is this f*cker trying to orchestrate my high?”
Later that evening, I returned to my dawg house, where to my surprise, the UCI eight-man rowing team, including the pretty coxswain, were celebrating with a BBQ, a couple of kegs and several macho competitions. Soid and I, didn’t say much when we saw each other again, we just laughed; We’ve been friends ever since. For the next couple of years, we mostly met when he and our UCI rowing friends visited the dawg house. But we always had great times.
After college, we lost track of each other: I married Sally one year after UCI –This disturbed my roommates and friends to whom marriage was an event way into the future; And I wasn’t ready for all the female drama waiting for me in Venezuela; I know now what I knew then: I made the right decision– Soid went to Oregon to get his MBA and to Arizona for work reasons. We would meet again when my UCI buddies decided to invite me to my first All Boys Trip at June Lake. I think they were worried about their strange customs and whether I would like ABTs; Boy, were they wrong!
Soid tried to poke fun at me during my first ABT; I ended up teaching him how to dance Salsa while wearing nothing but Depends. And I taught everybody how to drink vodka like a Cossack, while balancing backwards on a kitchen counter –Careful, I’m sure there are old grainy VHS tapes somewhere– But ABTs would be the start of a tradition for me: I would never consider an ABT fully started until I had a chance to chase and wrestle Soid when he first made an appearance. I guess it was my way to compensate for Soid’s bouts of coprolalia, that would peak at ABTs.
Two events stick in my mind because of how special they were: Most people don’t realize that Soid is generous, specially with his time. As I was getting ready to do my first Pier-to-Pier swim, he made sure that I could finish it. We took a double-kayak from Corona del Mar to Laguna Beach, where he made me swim around offshore buoys and considered me ready. Of course, we still had to paddle back to Big Corona. We had a great time!
As we progressed into our family and working lives, I would see Soid many more times. By then, I had acquired a taste for rowing sleek outriggers in the beautiful Newport and back bays. That’s how I would finish up my Friday’s; I would mostly row by myself but if I was lucky and could make it work, I would invite dear friends to share some time on the water followed by an ample dinner. Most of these friends were going through some tribulations. Soid may have been going through some problems, but I didn’t care: All I wanted to do was to spend time with my friend. I remember the outing because hundreds of fish were freakishly jumping out of the water; We may have selfishly thought that this was some sort of sign. In reality, there was an overabundance of aquatic insects and the jumping fish were feasting. We never had to mention anything serious. We had a great time!
I doubt Soid knows that I am still learning from him. The lessons are more subtle now. I know I will be learning from this individual for the rest of my life.
