Holiday Power Rankings

Today is a federal holiday.  We observe New Year's Day today since it was a Sunday.  So let's celebrate the holiday with a ranking of the federal holidays.  I'm going to go from first to worst because you're more likely to be surprised by the bottom of the list than by the top.  I'm judging these holidays mostly based on what we're celebrating and less so on other factors (New Year's Day bowl games aren't going to help New Year's Day much).  But being celebrated on the same date every year is a plus.  I like knowing that as a teacher I will never have to go to work December 24-January 1, July 4 (you could say the whole summer, but I did work during the summer for the first four years of my teaching career), and November 11.

1.  Christmas.  This one is obvious.  We celebrate the birth of the greatest human being ever.  As a Catholic, this has to be first on my list.  The only mark against Christmas is that it is highly unlikely that Jesus was born on December 25, but since we don't know when he was actually born, December 25 is just as good as any other day.  The only question is what day of the week is the best for Christmas.  There are a few factors to consider.  As a Catholic school teacher, when does my Christmas vacation start and end?  I like not working on Festivus and January 2.  How long is my Christmas vacation?  How long is my last week before Christmas?  I hate having a five-day week immediately before Christmas vacation.  What days of the week are All Saints Day and the Immaculate Conception?  How many days of school do I have between Thanksgiving and Christmas?  What day of the week is my birthday (since it's 15 days after Christmas)?  So here are my day of the week rankings for Christmas:

1. Friday- 7 days off from school, a three-day week going into vacation, school starts again on January 4, 17 days of school between Thanksgiving and Christmas, my birthday on a Saturday.  The downside is being in school through Festivus.

2. Thursday- Thursday and Wednesday are the two days of the week where you might get a full two weeks off.  I actually prefer not having that.  Let's bang out an easy two day week on either side of the vacation rather than having those two days at the end of the year.  But you don't go back until January 5, it's only 14-16 days of school between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and my birthday is a Friday.

3. Wednesday- Possibly two full weeks off, School ends on December 20, but that's a five-day week, 15 days of school between Thanksgiving and Christmas, back on either January 2 or January 6, my birthday is a Thursday.

4. Tuesday- 7 days off from school, you only go until December 21, easy three-day week coming back.  The downside is that since the Immaculate Conception is a Saturday, I have 20 days of school between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

5. Saturday- only 6 days off from school, you go until Festivus, full week coming back, 18 days of school between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The good news is that you don't have a full five days before vacation and my birthday is a Sunday.

6. Sunday- 6 days off from school, you have a full five-day week before vacation that goes through Festivus, 19 days between Thanskgiving and Christmas, my birthday is a Monday.  The good news is that you don't go back to school until January 3 and it's a four-day week.

7. Monday- 6 days off from school, a full five-day week going into vacation, 19 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, back on January 2 (which will be awful next year when the College Football Playoff games are on January 1).

Back to ranking the holidays:

2.  Independence Day.  We should be celebrating July 2, but I can live with July 4.  It's early summer, the days are long, and we can celebrate not having a queen.  Good times.

3.  Washington's Birthday.  It's Washington's Birthday (a day worth celebrating), not Presidents Day (a day that would not be worth celebrating).  The problem is that Congress messed up the holiday by moving it to the wrong Monday.  I can live with not always celebrating it on Washington's actual birthday, but Congress moved it to a Monday that is never Washington's actual birthday.  I get a week off that coincides with Washington's Birthday.  Lincoln's Birthday should be a federal holiday too, but that's a different issue.

4.  Thanksgiving.  Now admittedly, Thanksgiving is more fun than Washington's Birthday.  But I'll take the birth of the person I consider to be the greatest American of all time over an arbitrarily chosen Thursday in November to give thanks.  But I do like Thanksgiving.  We should give thanks for all the blessings we have in this country.  As much as my brother doesn't like it, we are very fortunate to live in this country.  We celebrate with food, football, and family.  And there's a lot of history associated with Thanksgiving.  Of course you have the Pilgrims.  But I'm more concerned with history since the US became independent.  George Washington proclaimed a Thanksgiving holiday in 1789 to give thanks for God's protection prior to the Revolution, assistance in achieving independence, and help in establishing a constitutional government.  Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a Thanksgiving holiday in 1863 to celebrate the Union victory at Gettysburg.

5.  Veterans Day.  Memorial Day is probably more important, but Veterans Day is getting the nod for always being November 11.  It started as a day to remember the end of World War I.  It's now a holiday for all veterans, but I like how it's still on the day that World War I ended.

6.  Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  It's a day that honors one of the greatest Americans ever.  He was also not a president of the United States. It's good to remember that this country is much more than just who the president happens to be at a particular time.  I would like it more if it was always celebrated on January 15.

7.  Memorial Day.  You could easily put this one higher on the list.  If not for Veterans Day, I might have this one as high as number 3.  But it's position on the calendar is arbitrary and we have another holiday that honors people who have served in the military.

8.  Columbus Day.  Whatever you think of Columbus, his arrival in the Americas is one of the most important events in the history of the world.

9.  New Year's Day.  This is a completely arbitrary celebration of something that doesn't need to be celebrated.  January 1 being the first day of the year is arbitrary.  And what are we celebrating anyway?  Putting up a new calendar?  Who cares?  I really don't get it.  I was asleep when 2017 began because it's a really silly thing to be celebrating.  And I've always thought New Year's resolutions were just silly.  If you want to improve your life, why do you have to wait until January 1?  Just make your life better whenever you can.  But going back to January 1 being an arbitrary start of the year, my year starts with the first weekend of college football (which leads into the new school year).  If I want something to celebrate, the start of college football is much better.

10.  Labor Day.  Let's be honest, it's a made up holiday.  And as a teacher on Long Island, it just marks the end of my summer.  So Labor Day for me means I have to go back to work.  It's not something I have any interest in celebrating.

And I don't feel like doing another post, but let me make some comparisons involving Brian Kelly.  Take a look at these tables (the formatting might be weird because of some copying and pasting from Word):

	Brady Hoke at Michigan	Brian Kelly- Last Four Years
Record	31-20	31-20
Major Bowls	1-0	0-1
Worst Season	5-7	4-8
Status	Fired	Still Employed

	Mark Helfrich at Oregon	Brian Kelly- Last Four Years
Record	37-16	31-20
College Football Playoff Record	1-1	0-0
Top 10 Finishes	2	0
Top 20 Finishes	3	1.5 (24/20 in 2013)
2016	4-8	4-8
Status	Fired	Still Employed

	Gene Chizik at Auburn	Brian Kelly-Last Four Years
Record	33-19	31-20
National Championships	1	0
Bowl Record	3-0	2-1
Status	Fired	Still Employed

	Les Miles at LSU	Brian Kelly at Notre Dame
Winning Percentage	.770	.656
National Championships	1	0
Major Bowls	2-1	0-2
Bowl Record	7-4	3-3
Percentage of Seasons Ranked Top 4	25%	14%
Percentage of Seasons Ranked Top 10	42%	14%
Percentage of Seasons Ranked Top 25	75%	43%
Status	Fired	Still Employed

	Les Miles Since 2010	Brian Kelly at Notre Dame
Record	63-19	59-31
Top 10 Finishes	2	1
Top 20 Finishes	5	2.5
Major Bowls	0-1	0-2
Status	Fired	Still Employed

We finally found something where Kelly wins,  but it’s winning in that he’s gotten to one more major bowl than Miles since 2010, but neither have won any in that time.

	Tyrone Willingham at Notre Dame	Brian Kelly- Last Three Years
Record	21-15 (.583)	22-16 (.579)
Worst Season	5-7	4-8
Bowl Record	0-1	1-1
Major Bowls	0	0-1
Top 15 Finishes	0	1
Top 25 Finishes	1	1
Status	Fired	Still Employed

We had to go to Tyrone Willingham for a comparison where Kelly might win, but even if he does, it's not by much.

Kelly has been at Notre Dame for seven years.  Going 4-8 in year 7 is just not good enough and there's nobody to blame for than besides Kelly.  These are all his players.  All of his records and winning percentages are giving him credit for the losses which have been vacated by the NCAA (Notre Dame is appealing).  I don't think those wins should be vacated.  Notre Dame gets punished for doing the right thing when it found out about academic misconduct.  At just about any Big 12 or SEC school (probably except for Vanderbilt), those things get swept under the rug and nobody gets in trouble.  So while I don't think the wins should be vacated, there have been too many academic issues under Kelly.  There were the arrests this summer.  And he's just not winning enough.  It's time to go.  And he probably would be gone if not for the fact that Jack Swarbrick gave him an extension after last season.  I think Jack Swarbrick has done some things very well as athletic director.  But in overseeing the football program, he has failed.  It's time for both Swarbrick and Kelly to go.  As Ara Parseghian said when Notre Dame was blown out by Miami to end the 1985 season, "From these ashes, Notre Dame will rise."  And we will once again when we have the right athletic director and head coach.

My Future Book(s)

I've been told that I should write a book on my travels when I'm all done.  I have two states to go and maybe a few more baseball stadiums (I would like to get to the Braves' new stadium next year, we'll see about Tampa and Oakland).  Australia was really the country that I want to get to.  I mentioned in that post that I'd like to get to Italy and the Vatican and maybe Poland.  The one I left out was Norway.  It would be great to visit the birthplace of the greatest football coach of all time.

But I don't know if that's ever going to happen and that's not what this post is about.  My favorite student is a San Francisco Giants fan.  She has to be pretty awesome if she's my favorite despite that obvious character flaw.  I've had her for four straight years, I'm her Mr. Feeny.  We give each other a hard time about baseball.  I tell her that when I retire, we're going to write the book about the greatest day in the history of sports.  That day, of course, was October 15, 1988.  In the afternoon, good prevailed over evil in the Catholics vs. Convicts game and Notre Dame was on its way to a National Championship.  At night, Kirk Gibson hit the game winning home run off of Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the World Series and the Dodgers were on their way to being World Series Champions.  I have no memory of college football in the 1980s, but the Dodgers winning the World Series is the first sporting event that I remember being aware of.  I probably didn't watch the games, but I knew they won the World Series.  If I remembered that day, it would definitely be the greatest day of my life.  I recently bought Game 1 of the 1988 World Series on iTunes (apparently the whole game is also available for free on Youtube, but I had gift cards, so whatever).  With Vin Scully retired, I have to have some of his classic games available to me.  So I have that, Game 7 of the 1965 World Series (51 years ago today), no-hitters by Hideo Nomo and Clayton Kershaw, and a few others so far.  Major League Baseball has classic games going back decades and Games of the Year going back to 2013 available on iTunes.  For some unknown reason, Clayton Kershaw's Opening Day shutout/home run in 2013 is not included for that year.  I was at the game, which was awesome, but I'd love to rewatch the whole thing and listen to Vin Scully's call.  If anybody knows of a way to do it, please let me know.

And after last night, I might have found my second book, Game 5 of the Dodgers-Nationals Series.  That was an absolutely classic game.  I was hoping for a little more out of Rich Hill.  I knew he wasn't going deep into the game, but I was hoping for more than two and two-thirds.  Still, he kept the Dodgers in the game.  Dave Roberts made a good move and got four big outs from Joe Blanton.  He brought his eighth inning guy into the game in the third inning.  And it was the right move.  The Dodgers were down 1-0 and you had to keep it as close as possible.  As expected, Julio Urias came in to start a fresh inning and got the Dodgers through six (with some help from the Nationals' third base coach).

I was unusually calm even though the Dodgers were trailing.  And then the seventh inning happened.  I told my favorite student that Joc Pederson was going to hit a home run and he did to tie the game at 1 (I also told her Adrian Gonzalez would hit a home run in Game 4, so let's keep this going, I'll say Justin Turner hits a home run in Game 1 against the Cubs).  Yasmani Grandal walked and Howie Kendrick singled.  Urias was due up.  Roberts put in Charlie Culberson to bunt.  He didn't get the job done.  I was critical of Roberts for that move.  Before the game, he said Kershaw was absolutely not available to pitch.  I assumed that he was telling the truth (and maybe he did mean it) so I said he should have used Kershaw there (the lesson, as always:  I'm an idiot).  Kershaw is the active leader in sacrifice bunts (Baseball Reference has him second to Elvis Andrus, but I'm pretty sure they're counting sacrifice flies too).  I also didn't know Roberts's plan for the bullpen.  Anyway, the Dodgers took the lead on a pinch hit single by Carlos Ruiz and then tacked on two on a triple by Justin Turner (Ruiz came up big in this series, but I still miss A.J. Ellis).

After the Nationals used six pitchers in the top of the seventh, the Dodgers had a three-run lead and nine outs to get.  I assumed Pedro Baez or Josh Fields was coming in because I figured Roberts would save Grant Dayton for Bryce Harper and Daniel Murphy.  Instead, he wanted Dayton to turn around Danny Espinosa and face Clint Robinson.  That didn't work.  He walked Espinosa, gave up a home run to Chris Heisey, and gave up a single to Clint Robinson.  Dayton has been good this year, but he was the only relief pitcher who didn't get the job done for the Dodgers last night.

After Dayton gave back the insurance runs and left the tying run on base, I was as nervous as I've been watching a baseball game for the rest of the game.  With the top of the order coming up and the tying run on base, Roberts went to Kenley Jansen in the seventh inning.  At that point, I realized it was a real possibility that Kershaw would pitch.  But Jansen had to get as many outs as he could.  He got Trea Turner to fly out, but then Bryce Harper singled.  With runners on the corners, Harper stole second on strike three to Jayson Werth.  That opened up first base to walk Daniel Murphy intentionally.  Jansen struck out Anthony Rendon with the bases loaded to end the inning.  Jansen walked Stephen Drew to start the eighth.  He got Danny Espinosa to pop up a bunt, and then a fly ball to center and a strikeout to get out of the eight without much difficulty.

Clayton Kershaw went out to the bullpen to get ready for the ninth.  Bryce Harper was due up second so I thought Kershaw was getting ready to face him.  Harper has decent numbers against Jansen and bad numbers against Kershaw.  But Jayson Werth was after Harper and he has good numbers against Kershaw.  Jansen struck out Trea Turner to start the inning.  Then he stayed in to face Harper and Werth.  He walked both of them.  Then Dave Roberts went to Kershaw to face Murphy.  There was a chance Kenley Jansen would get the loss.  If that happened, I couldn't be mad at Jansen.  He threw more pitches than he ever had in the Majors and he got seven outs.  He gave it everything he had.  I definitely thought about how Kershaw had been left in too long in playoff games by Don Mattingly and maybe even by Roberts in Game 4.  Now I worried that Roberts waited too long to go to Kershaw.  And Dodger nemesis Daniel Murphy was coming up.  Kershaw got Murphy to hit a pop up on the infield.  The Nationals had to go to their last pinch hitter, Wilmer Difo, to hit for the pitcher.  Kershaw struck him out on a beautiful curve ball.  It was in the dirt so Carlos Ruiz had to throw to first to end the game.  It was a good feeling.  It was Kershaw's first save in the Majors.  He had one save in the minors and his catcher for that save was Kenley Jansen.  Pretty amazing.  This will be the fourth trip to the NLCS for the Dodgers since the 1988 World Series.  In their last three trips, they won a total of four games.  And they never took five games to win the Division Series before.  So last night was probably the most exciting Dodger win since the 1988 World Series.

I don't think they give out a series MVP until the NLCS, but I was thinking about who would get it for this series.  When the Dodgers took the 2-1 lead, the first name I thought of was Joe Blanton.  Yep, Joe Blanton.  He pitched five innings and allowed one hit, one walk, and no runs.  But with the way the game ended, I think you'd have to split it between Justin Turner and Clayton Kershaw.  Kenley Jansen gets an honorable mention.

I certainly hope the Dodgers aren't done.  The Cubs should be favored.  They have home field and they have their rotation set up the way they want it.  I'm assuming Kershaw will pitch Game 2 and Rich Hill will pitch Game 3.  But the Cubs don't have Matt Carpenter or Daniel Murphy.  If you offered me a split in the first four games and then it's a three game series with the last two in Chicago, I'd take my chances with that.  And I hope the Indians beat the Blue Jays for three reasons.  First, the Blue Jays play in Canada.  Canada can have hockey, this is baseball.  Second, they don't play on grass.  Putting the dirt around the whole infield definitely makes their stadium look better, but still, baseball should be played on grass.  And finally, the Indians will provide a better contrast in uniforms with either NL team than the Blue Jays would.

Let's go Dodgers!

Kershaw vs. the Rain

It was a rough summer with Clayton Kershaw's injury.  He made one start during my summer vacation and then he missed the next two and a half months.  Fortunately, he made it back for the end of the season and his second start was at Yankee Stadium.

Adam had asked me about going to a Yankee-Dodger game at Yankee Stadium.  It was only the Dodgers' second regular season series in New York.  I was there three years ago for the first meeting at Yankee Stadium.  I definitely wanted to go again, but there were some things to consider.  They were coming in for a Monday-Wednesday series during my first full week of school.  Not ideal, but I still wanted to go.  I told Adam that I wanted to see if Kershaw was pitching in New York and Wednesday was out because it was a 4:00 start.  So of course, Kershaw ended up pitching on Wednesday.  I really hated the idea of missing Kershaw's first ever start at Yankee Stadium, so I decided that I would get out of work a little early and drive to the Bronx.  Getting off Long Island was fine, but it took about a half hour to go three miles from the RFK Bridge to Yankee Stadium.  Anyway, I got to my seat after two batters.  Not too bad.

Our view for the game

To celebrate seeing Kershaw pitch, I had a Bronx Summer Ale (the school year said fall, but science still said summer) and a hot dog.  Finally, Yankee Stadium got some beer from the Bronx Brewery.  I had never had their Summer Ale before, but it was pretty good (and I think most breweries that aren't Sam Adams don't do summer beers very well).  Ordinarily, I'd go for something a little more exotic than a hot dog at a game (especially at a stadium that I don't get to as often as Citi Field), but I decided to save money and go with a classic for my last baseball game of the season.  I was pretty satisfied for $7.

Kershaw was cruising.  And then the rains came.  The game was delayed after three innings.  We moved up a few rows to get under cover.  We ended up next to an interesting character.  He saw my Jackie Robinson shirt and blamed the Dodgers for the rain delay (it wasn't raining too hard).  I pointed out that the Dodgers definitely didn't want the rain delay with Kershaw pitching.  He started chanting "We're not Mets!  We're not Mets!"  And then he turned to me and said, "Or Dodgers."  He wanted the National League abolished and prostitution legalized.  All terrible ideas, but he was entertaining.

After a rain delay that was a little over ten minutes, they played another inning.  It was weird to see the tarp go on and off the field so quickly.  Then it started raining again and the tarp came out again.  This delay lasted 48 minutes.  Kershaw had gotten through four and he was perfect.  With this being his second start back and two rain delays, I thought he might be done, but he came back out for the fifth (apparently he pitched a simulated inning during the rain delay to stay loose).  Starlin Castro reached on an error and then Chase Headley got a clean single.  They bunted the runners over to second and third (thanks for giving Kershaw a free out).  Then the Dodgers brought the infield in and Kershaw struck out Rob Refsnyderl.  Kershaw got out of the inning by striking out Austin Romine and he was done for the day.  He finished with five innings, one hit, no walks, no runs, and five strikeouts.

The game was scoreless and stayed that way until the ninth.  The Yankees brought in Dellin Betances.  Corey Seager reached on an error and stole second.  Turner doubled in Seager.  Then Turner advanced to third on a sacrifice fly and scored on an error.  The Dodgers held on for the 2-0 win.  It wasn't quite Game 7 of the 1955 World Series, but it will have to do for now.

Here are Kershaw's updated numbers with me in attendance:

8 starts, 1 pinch hit sacrifice bunt
Dodgers:  9-0, Kershaw: 4-0
55.2 innings
0.97 ERA
59 strikeouts
29 hits
10 walks
0.70 WHIP
2 complete game shutouts


He's amazing.

The good thing about the 4:00 game and the two rain delays was that traffic was very light on the way home and I got back at a reasonable hour.  I stopped at Little Vincent's for a victory slice.

There's a certain blood-alcohol level where Little Vincent's is just magic.  You want to be a little drunk, but not too drunk to appreciate how great it is.  I definitely wasn't there, but this was still delicious.

With that, I was done going to baseball games for the summer, but there was still plenty of baseball to watch.  I had Vin Scully's last games.  His last home game was amazing.  The Dodgers tied it with two outs in the bottom of the ninth on a Corey Seager home run and then won it in extra innings on a Charlie Culberson home run to clinch the division.  Vin's last three games were in San Francisco.  They were pretty much meaningless, but I wanted to watch (I watched the last two over college football on Saturday and the NFL on Sunday).  His last game was an easy win for the Giants.  His message for the fans at the end of the game had me crying.  Serious tears.  It was sad that he'll never call another game, but I am happy for him.  He had a great career and he's going out on his terms.  But I will be downloading as many Vin Scully games as I can on iTunes (so far I have the Kershaw no-hitter and Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, but there are more that I'll have to buy) so that I can have Vin back in my life whenever I need him.

And then we have the playoffs.  As I alluded to, Vin isn't doing the playoffs so I'll just have to enjoy Dodger wins without him.  The nice thing about Vin not doing the playoffs was that we knew for sure when his last game was.  And it didn't matter that the Dodgers lost that game.  I hope he gets to watch the Dodgers win the World Series.  So now that we're down to eight playoff teams, let's rank them in reverse order of who I want to see win the World Series:

8.  Giants- I really really despise them.  Especially Bumgarner.

7.  Nationals- I don't really have anything against them, but that would mean that the Dodgers didn't even make it to the NLCS.

6.  Blue Jays- Canada can have hockey.  This is baseball.

5.  Cubs- If it's a National League team other than the Dodgers, this is the best option.

4.  Indians- The only thing interesting about this team is that they play in the same city as LeBron James.

3.  Red Sox- This would mean seeing Fenway Park in the World Series, which isn't bad.

2.  Rangers- They came so close to winning in 2011 and I like Texas.

1.  Dodgers-  You knew this.  My dream World Series would be a rematch of the 1916 World Series 100 years later.  Dodgers-Red Sox.  Los Angeles and Boston.  My two favorite stadiums.  Only the second World Series meeting between these two teams.  And you'd have the story line of a Red Sox hero managing against them in the World Series.

Let's Go Dodgers!

Maybe the Dingo Ate Your Baby

I took my fourth trip outside of the United States.  I went to Ireland in 2012, England in 2013, Canada in 2014, stayed in the US for all of 2015, and I just got back from Australia.  What do all of those countries have in common?  They all speak English and they are all either England or a country that was once ruled by the British (keep that in mind for later).  But I had wanted to go to Australia for a long time.  Let's review my experience with Australians:

My gym teacher from 1st-8th grade was from Australia.  I'm sure he must have talked a little bit about Australia in class, but I don't remember too much about it.

At Notre Dame, my favorite professor was Father Bill Miscamble, an Australian priest.  I had him for two classes.  The first one I took was US Foreign Policy from World War II to the Present and the second one was Australian History.  I remember that US Foreign Policy was in the spring of 2006 because I remember having Father Miscamble while the Winter Olympics were going on and during George Mason's run to the Final Four and I remember coming back from watching a Bookstore Basketball game and having to finish writing a paper on Reagan and the Cold War.  I took Australian History during the fall of 2006 (my last semester) when I was shooting for straight A-minuses.  I got an A- in Australian History (I'm pretty sure I got an A in Father Bill's other class), but I came up one B+ short of straight A-minuses (the only semester where I didn't get at least one A).  Anyway, Father Bill was awesome.  He would fall behind in class and then he would have us over at the seminary on weekends or at night to get us caught up and we didn't care because he was so awesome and also he provided food and "age-appropriate beverages," as he put it.  That was the last class I went to as a Notre Dame student.  Father Bill ended by saying to us, "My friends, get the hell out of here."  He's also a strong supporter of Notre Dame's Catholic identity.  I wish he was the president of the University.  Anyway, the first book he had us read for Australian History was Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country.  Much of the book was about all the things in Australia that can kill you, but it still made me want to go to Australia.  I reread it this summer before this trip.

And my last connection to Australia is Leigh Ellis.  He's definitely the best member of the Starters on NBATV.

So why did I go this summer?  Why not?  I'm young and I had no reason not to go.  That's what it came down to.  As I get older, it's more likely that I'd have reasons not to go.  I've taken lots of trips the last four summers going to baseball stadiums around the country, but the only two I had left by this year were Oakland and Tampa (they're the two worst and I don't really care if I get to them or not).  I was also trying to get to all 50 states.  By this summer, I only had three left to go.  And I was able to get to Hawaii on the way to Australia.  So now I'm down to two states to go.  I purposely planned the trip for right after the Olympics.  That was good because if I had planned it for earlier, I might not have been able to go.

Before going, I rewatched Bart vs. Australia, which I didn't include in my top 26 Simpsons episodes.  It might not be top 26, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that it's a top 52 episode.  I was reminded that disparaging the Boot is a bootable offense.  And I practiced playing Knifey Spoony just in case.

So anyway, it was a long trip so I won't go over all the details of what I did in Australia, but I'll go over some things.  When the Dodgers played in Australia in 2014 (which I wanted to go to, but my work schedule wouldn't allow that), I was frustrated about not being able to find Australian beer (Fosters is from England).  So the first thing I did after getting to my hotel in Sydney was go to the Redoak Boutique Beer Cafe.  I tried ordering a couple of beers, but they were out of my first two choices.  I don't remember what I ended up getting, but it was really good.  I posted a picture of the beer on Facebook saying that I tried to order coffee and this is what I got.  It was a popular picture.  If you didn't get the reference, you should have known that was not true because I think coffee is stupid (here's another unpopular opinion, wine is stupid too, but unlike coffee I'll drink it if I have to).  The last beer I had in Australia was in Brisbane at the Brisbane Brewing Company.  Again, I don't remember what I had, but the bartender asked what kinds of beers I usually drink and after hearing my answer she had me try something that was really good.  I had other beers in Australia that weren't as good as those two, but they were generally good.

My first full day in Australia featured lots of walking.  I think my phone said I walked 17.67 miles at the end of the day.  I hadn't exactly planned that.  I got up early because I wasn't totally adjusted to the time change and because I wanted to go to the famous Bondi Beach.  I had read about doing a coastal walk starting at Bondi Beach.  When I left my hotel, my phone said it was 48 degrees (the Australian winter is harsh).  And it felt fantastic.  It felt like football weather.  I took Uber to Bondi Beach.  It cost A$21.96 to get to Bondi Beach from my hotel (about $16.50 US).  The beach was gorgeous.  And there were fantastic views during the walk from Bondi to Bronte Beach.  I was able to watch the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean, which you can't do in North America.  There were a good number of people out surfing.  I planned to take Uber back to my hotel, but by the time I was ready to go back, it was rush hour and the Uber prices went way up.  The estimates I was getting were about A$50-70.  So I just decided to walk about five miles back to my hotel after having walked a couple of miles along the beaches.  That night I went was part of history/pub walking tour of the Rocks (where the British first settled with convicts in the late 1700s).  History and pubs?  I was in.  The only thing missing was sports.  It was cool, but I would have preferred a little more emphasis on the pubs.  I did have some rum, which I normally wouldn't do, but apparently it was used as currency in the early days of the convict colony in Sydney.

Pictures don't really do justice to how gorgeous the beaches were.

Like my other trips out of the country, sports were a part of this trip.  I would have loved to see some cricket (one of my goals is to figure out how cricket works), but I think they play cricket in the summer.  Australian rules football was going on so I considering trying to get to a game for that (there was a couple on the history/pub walking tour that was in Sydney for an Aussie rules game), but that's another game that I don't understand and I have less interest in trying to understand that than cricket.  But Hawaii and Cal were playing in Sydney to start the college football season.  It was my third different continent for football, but only the first one that Notre Dame wasn't playing in (by my count, I had been to college 40 games before this one).  The game was at ANZ Stadium which was built for the Sydney Olympics in 2000.  The design of the stadium reminded me a little bit of Aviva Stadium in Dublin, but it's much bigger than Aviva Stadium (capacity is 83,500 whereas it's only 49,000 at Aviva Stadium).  I was surprised by how full it was.  Attendance was listed at 61,247.  I don't know if it was really that many, but it was a good crowd.  If you lived near Sydney and you liked American football, you were going to this game.  There were all sorts of football jerseys worn by the fans and most of them were NFL jerseys.  I was rooting for Hawaii since I had just been in Hawaii and Cal is full of dirty smelly hippies.  Anyway, I was supposed to be sitting behind one of the end zones.  I got to the seat and the sun was right in my face.  I had sunglasses, but I was a little worried about getting burned.  The seats go up high on the sides so I looked up and one side was mostly full and the other was mostly empty.  So I went to the empty side and sat on the fifty yard line.  I ended up sitting much farther from the field than I could have, but I think that's a better view.  I'd rather be up high at midfield than down low behind the end zone (especially in this case since the seats are kind of far away from the field since it wasn't built for American football).  The game started with Hawaii failing to recover an onside kick.  It was pretty competitive early, but Hawaii fell apart before halftime.  Cal kicked a field goal to make it 20-14 with 4:00 left in the first half, but Hawaii fumbled the kickoff and Cal scored two touchdowns before halftime to make it 34-14.  The final score was 51-31.  Davis Webb (a guy with no first names and two last names) threw for 441 yards and four touchdowns.  Chad Hansen had 14 catches for 160 yards and two touchdowns.

My view for the game.  I didn't like the "sydney.com" end zones.

Probably my favorite part of Sydney was the cruise of the Harbor (I refuse to use their silly British spelling with unnecessary letters) that I did.  It was a hop on/hop off cruise.  So I had 24 hours where I could use it to get around the city and come and go as I pleased, but I just did the complete loop once to see the harbor.  It took almost two hours.  The harbor is beautiful and you get some commentary on what you're seeing.  The weather was great and the wind was blowing in my hair.  Good times.  For a little bit of the cruise, you get out to where the harbor meets the ocean and it gets a little more wavy.  That was fun.

I was in the Southern Hemisphere so everything was upside down.

You can see the Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge in the background.  When it was completed, it was 25 inches short of being the longest bridge in the world (to the Bayonne Bridge).

Dublin reminded me a lot of Boston.  It's much smaller than a huge city like New York or London, but it has plenty of history of anti-British feeling.  London reminded me of New York and Washington rolled into one for pretty obvious reasons.  So what would I compare Sydney to?  Sydney was kind of a combination of New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Boston.  It's obviously Australia's version of New York, but it also has some pretty cool history like Philadelphia and Boston.  And it has weather and beaches that are kind of like Los Angeles.  You could even throw Toronto into the mix because it was very clean.

If I was going to go all the way to Australia, I wanted to get to more than one city.  My first choice was Cairns, which is a tropical city in the north.  My next choice was Melboure, which is the second biggest city.  I ended up with a compromise choice, Brisbane.  Brisbane is the third biggest city and it's farther north than Sydney.  So it was definitely warmer, but it wasn't tropical.  Really the reason I went there was because of cost and convenience.  I'm pretty sure that Sydney and Brisbane are the only two Australian cities with direct flights to Honolulu on Hawaiian Airlines.  What's interesting is that Sydney is the 3rd biggest city I've ever been to (behind New York and London in whichever order they are) and Brisbane is seventh (the three I mentioned, Los Angeles and Chicago and Toronto in whichever order they should be).  It's a country of 23 million people (only Ireland is smaller of the countries that I've been to) that is almost entirely empty, but it has two of the seven biggest cities that I've been to.

I checked out some museums in both Sydney and Brisbane.  Sydney's museums were better, but Brisbane's were free (the Museum of Brisbane did have a pretty cool World War I thing).  I went to cathedrals in both cities.  I went to the Saturday vigil mass at St. Mary's Cathedral in Sydney (it was pretty cool to have fulfilled my Sunday mass obligation by 5:00 in the morning on Saturday on my time) and a Tuesday morning mass at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Brisbane.  St. Mary's had some uncomfortable pews, but you'll find that in lots of old churches.  But St. Stephen's had the most uncomfortable kneelers I've ever had at a church.  It was just an elevated slab of wood.

This is from the Hyde Park Barracks Museum.  Some of the over 150,000 convicts sent by the British to Australia lived in accommodations like this.  This room is a recreation as the building was used for other things later on, such as a depot for female immigrants from Ireland.

A statue of St. John Paul the Great outside St. Mary's Cathedral in Sydney

The Brisbane River is definitely not as nice as Sydney Harbor.  The tides flowing in and out churn up soil and just make it dirty.  And if you look at the Brisbane River on the map, it looks like a little kid had an assignment at school to imagine a city and draw a map of it.  The river just zigzags all over the place.  Anyway, I did a river cruise to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary (it was the Twin Pines Koala Sanctuary until I went back in time and changed history).  It's a little zoo with lots of koalas.  It's nowhere near as big as the Bronx Zoo, but it does have lots of Australian animals.  There's an area that you can enter and there are just kangaroos and emus walking around freely.  You can go right up to them and they're really chill.  By my last day in Brisbane, I was ready to go home, but my flight was late so I checked out a planetarium.  Part of the show was about the night sky in the Southern Hemisphere, so that was pretty cool.  They showed the Southern Cross constellation (keep that in mind also).

Australia's geographic isolation led to the evolution of some weird species.

At least one other Harborfields High School graduate has been to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.

So I finally got to Australia.  I would definitely go back.  I might not, but if I do, I would go back to Sydney, but not Brisbane.  Brisbane was fine, but I felt like I did everything there was to do there.  In Sydney, I did everything I wanted to do, but I'm pretty confident that I could have found lots more to do pretty easily.  I was searching for things to do in Brisbane.  With Sydney, I already had in mind what I wanted to do.  So I would want to go to Sydney and maybe Melbourne, Cairns, and/or Perth.  Perth has some appeal to me.  There is no other populated part of the world that is farther away from New York.  It would be pretty cool to be as far away as possible without being out in the middle of the ocean or in space.  And there's also Uluru.  That would be cool to see.  But if I never get back, I can live with that.  I'm left thinking of the end of Bill Bryson's book:

Anyway, let me rank the flags of the countries I've been to, which will lead me into a rant:

5.  Australia- You might already know, but I'll explain in a little bit.

4.  Ireland- Why does the Irish flag rank so low?  The orange third.  The orange stands for the Protestant British supporters of William of Orange, who want Ireland to be part of the United Kingdom.

3.  Canada-  Australia, you can learn a lot from Canada when it comes to flags.  You see that maple leaf and you think of Canada.

2.  Great Britain-  The Union Jack has great history and symbolic meaning.  I once gave John and Darryl a Union Jack as a gag gift.

1.  United States- You're not surprised.

I have no problem with 75% of Australia's flag (whereas I have no problem with about 67% of Ireland's flag).  So why is Australia last?  They have another country's flag in their flag!  Come on, Aussies.  Be your own country.  And I knew Australia's flag was similar to New Zealand's, but I didn't realize how similar they were until I looked at them closely.  They both have the Southern Cross constellation on them.  The stars look different (Australia's are white and all but one have seven points whereas New Zealand's are red with five points) and Australia has two extra stars, but come on.  It reminds me of some girls I used to teach who would dress exactly the same and do their hair exactly the same.  They had no individuality.  And this is not about me being anti-British.  I am anti-British royalty, but I'm not anti-British.  Speaking of British royalty, the queen is all over Australian money.  Why?  British royalty is so stupid.  The royal babies?  What have they ever done that John and Liz's kids Jack and Teddy haven't done?  And I like John and Liz much better than the royal babies' parents.  And I'm sure there are plenty of Australian babies that are no less special than the royal babies.  So Australia, get rid of the Governor General (The queen's representative in Australia who could pretty much be a dictator if he wanted to be, one of them dissolved the Australian government in 1975), get rid of the Union Jack on your flag.  Get rid of British spelling. I'd be thrilled if they decided to not use American spelling either.  They can spell color  K-U-L-E-R for all I care.  Be your own country.  New Zealand at least had a referendum on changing their flag.  If you're going to have a really silly flag, at least let the people decide (as we've seen in the United States, democracy doesn't always work, look at our horrible presidential candidates, but at least people had a choice).  You don't have to change everything.  I can live with silly place names like Queensland and Victoria (you can't change history and even the United States has Virginia, New York, the Carolinas, etc.).  Just be less British and more Australian.

You can do better than this, Australia.

Australia had been on my list of places to get to for a long time.  Before I had been to Dodger Stadium, I said the two places I needed to get to before I died were Dodger Stadium and Australia.  So where do I go next?  I'm not in a rush to leave the country again.  I think New Zealand is the only First World country that speaks English as their primary language that I haven't been to.  I actually did think about making New Zealand part of this trip, but opted against it.  I can't see making a point of getting to New Zealand.  Maybe if I ever went back to Australia, I'd get to New Zealand too.  The only other countries that I'm really interested in getting to are Italy and the Vatican City.  There are definitely other European countries that I could see visiting.  I'm sure there would be some cool St. John Paul the Great stuff to see in Poland.  I imagine there's some cool historical stuff to see in Berlin.  But I can't say that I'm in a rush to go to Europe with ISIS running around.  Israel would also be great to get to if not for the very legitimate fear of being killed by a terrorist.  I have no desire to go anywhere else in Asia mostly because I wouldn't even be able to read the writing.  And I don't have any desire to go to Latin America or Africa either.  I'd certainly be willing to go back to Ireland and England someday.  I had a good time in Toronto, but I can't see making a point of going back to Canada unless they got another baseball team (there has been some talk of baseball going back to Montreal, which seems really really silly to me).  So I might not be leaving the country again for a while.

One last thought.  My first Uber driver in Australia was asking me about the election.  He said that Australians love Americans, but get frustrated when we do stupid things.  He compared us to an embarrassing drunk cousin at a wedding.  And when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are going to finish first and second in some order in our next presidential election, it's hard to disagree.  He also said that despite that, Australians are always willing to stand up for the United States.  He didn't mention this, but you could cite the Vietnam War as an example.  The Aussies were with us when the British were not (actually, all our allies in Vietnam were from Asia or the South Pacific, perhaps the Brits and other countries would have been with us if the threat of communist expansion had been close to home like it was for our allies in Vietnam).  May that friendship between the United States and Australia endure.

Our 50th State, My 48th

Yep, I made it to my 48th state, Hawaii.  It was just a quick stop on Oahu.  For a long time I had been thinking about combining Hawaii with a trip to Australia.  There are only a handful of US cities that have flights to Australia.  I'm pretty sure that most Americans who go to Australia go from Los Angeles.  Los Angeles to Sydney is a 15 hour flight.  Anywhere else on the mainland is going to be longer (unless there are flights from San Diego).  Honolulu to Sydney is 10 hours and 45 minutes.  A long flight to be sure, but not as bad as 15+ hours.

So I was only in Hawaii for one full day and parts of two others.  Of the 47 states I had been to already, most of my trips had something to do with sports.  Even if I didn't go to a game, I made it to a few states as part of a trip to a game somewhere else (like when I got to Maine last summer after going to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park).  But Hawaii is not the place to go for professional sports.  Only Hawaii, Alaska, and Wyoming have no professional baseball teams (and I made it to Wyoming when I went to Denver to cross Coors Field off the list).  It would be kind of cool to go to a Hawaii football game and see the stadium where Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate ended the bowl losing streak, but I was too early for that.  Still, I found plenty to do in my short time in Honolulu.

On my first day, I didn't have much planned.  I got to my hotel around 4:00, which was 10:00 my time.  I was pretty tired, but I did want to adjust to the time at least a little. I also wanted to go to Hawaii before Australia because it would help adjust to the time difference in Australia.  Sydney is 20 hours ahead of Hawaii, which is the same as being 4 hours behind, not too bad (as opposed to being 14 hours ahead of New York, which is the same as being 10 hours behind).  So anyway, the first thing I did after checking into my hotel was take a walk to the beach.  It was a short walk from my hotel.  I had a view of Diamond Head from the beach.  I walked around the beach for a little bit and then just went in up to my knees.  After the beach, I took a walk to the Waikiki Brewing Company.  I might have had Hawaiian beer before, but I definitely hadn't had a Hawaiian beer at an outdoor bar in Hawaii.  I had a burger for dinner and to drink I had their amber ale and their seasonal.  I liked the amber ale better.  By the way, how does a Hawaiian brewery do seasonals?  They don't have seasons in Hawaii.

It was hot when I was in Hawaii, but there was pretty much always a pleasant breeze.

I liked the other beer I had better, but the lighter beer made for a better picture.

The second day was my only full day there and it was the highlight of my time in Hawaii.  I went to Pearl Harbor.  You can reserve tickets online in advance, but they were sold out by the time I tried to do that.  They do have a limited number of tickets each morning.  I asked at my hotel how early I should get there.  They told me 6:30 (it doesn't open until 7:00).  That was fine with me, especially since I wasn't totally adjusted to the time difference.  So I got there a little before 6:30 and there were some people on line already, but not too many.  There's a ton to see at Pearl Harbor.  I spent about eight hours there.

What everybody wants to see is the USS Arizona Memorial.  And that's what sells out (or runs out, tickets are free to see that).  There's other stuff to see that you can pretty much go to whatever you want, but you have to go to the Arizona Memorial by boat and those spots fill up.  I was able to get on the first boat.  First you see a 20 minute movie about the attack.  Then you get on the boat to go to the Arizona.  I learned a whole lot during my time at Pearl Harbor.  First of all, the US was not ready for the attack.  The military leaders at Pearl Harbor were more worried about sabotage from the Japanese population in Hawaii so they took steps to prepare for that.  Our planes were lined up wingtip to wingtip and that just made them easy targets.  And we missed some warning signs of the attack.  The Japanese sent submarines as part of the attack and we actually sunk one of them before the planes came, but apparently we didn't think too much of it.  Radar picked up the Japanese planes, but the military was expecting US planes to arrive from the mainland that morning so that's what they thought was showing up on the radar.  I didn't really know much about the USS Arizona.  Over 2,000 Americans died on December 7, 1941 and almost half of them were on the USS Arizona.  The ship sunk and approximately 900 members of the Navy are still entombed on the ship today.  And the memorial is built right above the ship.  A few parts of the ship still stick out above the water.  And 75 years later, oil is still leaking out of the ship into Pearl Harbor.  It's about two quarts of oil per day.  You can see it and smell it when you're on the memorial.  The legend is that it will stop when the last surviving member of the Arizona dies, but I heard that there's still way to much oil in there for that to be true (I think there are six surviving members).  So it really is amazing to be on that memorial.  I said a prayer for peace while I was there and held back some tears.

Part of the USS Arizona that's above water

Yep, that's the oil still leaking into Pearl Harbor 75 years later.

A few other things I learned:  The attack was not just on Pearl Harbor.  It was really an attack on the whole island of Oahu.  There were several American airfields throughout the island that were attacked (of course, most of the damage was done at Pearl Harbor).  World War II showed that battleships were pretty much obsolete.  The aircraft carrier was the wave of the future (of course, that's where the Japanese planes came from).  The US was fortunate that three aircraft carriers were out at sea delivering planes places rather than at Pearl Harbor on December 7.  And I think it was 21 ships that were sunk or damaged by the Japanese and all but three were recovered and put back into use.  I'll be spending a lot more time on Pearl Harbor with my eighth graders this year.

There are two museums that you can go into for free right by where you see the movie.  They're not too big, but there's good information on the road to war and the attack in them.  I probably spent about a half hour in each.  Then there's the USS Bowfin submarine and museum.  I'm fairly confident that it was the first time I was on a submarine.  The museum had a thing about how the submarines were named for fish and they had these cartoonish logos.  It reminded me of Abraham Simpson and the Flying Hellfish (they weren't on a submarine, but the logo looked like these submarine logos).

The last thing I did at Pearl Harbor was take a bus to nearby Ford Island. The battleships were all lined up along Ford Island.  And there are two museums to see there.  One is the USS Missouri, which is where the Japanese formally surrendered to the Allies on September 2, 1945.  That was in Tokyo Bay, but today the site of the end of the war is at the site of the beginning of US involvement.  So you can take a tour of the ship.  It reminded me of the USS Midway, which I saw in San Diego four years ago.  The Missouri is a little older.  And I'm going to go ahead and disagree with Harry Truman on something (and I do respect Truman more than most 20th century presidents).  Truman wanted the surrender signed on the Missouri since he was from Missouri.  Other people wanted it to be on a ship that was at Pearl Harbor, which would have been more appropriate.  The Missouri was being built in Brooklyn at the beginning of the war so it was not at Pearl Harbor.  And the other thing to see on Ford Island was the Pacific Aviation Museum.  It's a museum in two hangars that have been around for a long time.  In one of them you can still see bullet holes from the Japanese attack.  They have some old planes that you can check out in there.  So that was Pearl Harbor.  It's probably right behind Gettysburg in terms of American war sites to see, just because there's even more to see at Gettysburg

That's the USS Missouri on the left and the USS Arizona Memorial on the right, where the war officially ended and where US involvement started.

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This is a view of the Arizona Memorial from the Mississippi.

After that, I went to Helena's Hawaiian Food, which was on Man vs. Food.  I had the same things Adam had, laulau and pipikuala ribs.  The laulau was unlike anything I've ever had.  It's butterfish and pork wrapped in some kind of Hawaiian leaves.  It was good, but I liked the pipikuala ribs better.  Of course I've had ribs before, but there was definitely something different about them.  Very good stuff.  I went back to my hotel to charge my phone for a bit and then I had planned on going to the Brewseum.  The Brewseum sounds right up my alley, a brewery combined with a museum (all that's missing is sports).  But at that point I was tired and all museumed out, I highly doubt that the museum was going to be better than the ones I had already seen, and it was over a mile from my hotel.  So I decided to just have a beer at the hotel and relax.

This was good and surprisingly cheap.

On my last morning in Hawaii, I still had a couple of things to do.  First I wanted to get to another Man vs. Food spot, Mac 24/7.  It's open 24 hours and it's really popular.  I got there around 6:00 in the morning and there wasn't much of a crowd.  I had a short stack of their blueberry pancakes (Adam was there for the challenge and had a gigantic version of what I had).  There should be a short stack of the short stack.  I ate a little more than half and couldn't do any more than that.  They were very good, but I felt bad wasting that much food.  I can't be the only one that can't get all the way through their pancakes.  Why not have three options:  a real short stack, what I got (call that the regular version), and the crazy gigantic challenge option?  After that, I went to mass at Sts. Peter and Paul.  It was a Wednesday morning so I didn't have to go to church, but there was nothing else that I would want to do that I would have time for and it's another place where I can say I went to mass (by the time you're reading this, I will have been to mass in five different countries and many states).  My Uber driver to the church was somebody who came to the United States at a young age from Thailand (I hope I'm remembering that correctly).  He said he grew up as a Buddhist, but went to Catholic school when he came to the United States.  Despite that, he still had no interest in believing in God.  His wife is Catholic and he converted because of her.  He said that when he first converted, he was just doing it to keep his wife happy, but since then he's had experiences that made him a devout believer.  He was a really interesting guy and it was pretty cool that he happened to be my Uber driver when I was going to mass.

They were showing a replay of the Dodger game from the night before while I ate this.  The Dodgers beat the Giants 9-5.  Good times.

So that was my trip to Hawaii.  I definitely wouldn't be opposed to going back someday.  I only saw a very small part of the state.  Some parts that I saw were beautiful and some not so much (like by the airport).  I'm sure the other islands are very different since they don't have cities like Honolulu.  So maybe I'll be back and see more of the state someday, but for now it's crossed off the list.  Only two states to go.