13 December 2010
The Big Chill
(The Big Chill set a new world record for attendance at a hockey game. It's also the biggest crowd for any NCAA event. Photo Leon Halip/Getty Images)
I am glad Big Pink is located a little to the east of the current path of the Jet Stream. We got rain, the upper Midwest got enough snow to make the Metrodome in the Twin Cities Collapse.
It could have gone another way, of course. We got hammered three times last year, based on the confluence of moisture from the Gulf and the polar jet over the little Diamond of the District. Matter of luck, completely, or rather pure chance.
My son was up in Michigan for a remarkable hockey game between the Spartans and the Wolverines, outdoors, in the massive Big House football stadium in Ann Arbor. There is no dome there. Football- and now hockey- is palyed in the out of doors the way God created the sports.
They were calling the event “The Big Chill,” in honor of the movie about angst among some 1970s Michigan grads, and the local temperatures. You can imagine it resonated pretty well, and made me consider the gravity of the trip North for Christmas I have on the calendar.
My son called to report that his fight back had been cancelled due to snow. I was struggling to get to a holiday reception out in Reston, but got enough news to be startled.
DC is a pretty good hockey town, but it is all pro and all indoors. The game in Ann Arbor was like any football Saturday at The Big House. He said parking was a nightmare, there was impressive tailgating, and the crowd was as big as a football game against hated rival Ohio State: 113,411.
“Dad, it was the biggest crowd in the history of the world to watch a hockey game, and the biggest crowd for any event ever sponsored by the NCAA. Michigan, five-zip.”
“Awesome,” I said, “And what a boost for the hockey program. Nice, now that we don’t have a football team any more.” I wished him safe travels on the way back.
I pulled on my boots and slogged out into the rain for the drive to out the nightmare that is I-66. Broken concrete, redirected lanes, massive construction at the chokepoints. All in the rain, with the local lunatics hurtling with joyful abandon.
On the radio, there were continuing reports about the suicide bombing in Stockholm. I turned up the volume to hear. An Iraqi-born Sunni apparently did it, a young physical therapist with a wife and two young kids. He had advertised on a Muslim dating site for a second wife.
I shook my head. I wasn’t able to handle one, much less two. Damn suicide crazies.
I got out to the suburbs, where the McMansions dot the roads on massive lots. My friends have a nice place, and I shook the rain off my Burberry at the door. When I came in I realized that the crowd was from a little to the East of Washington, based on some business enterprises my friends are involved in.
In short order, I was chatting with the son of the Minister of Defense from a country we don’t talk about any more: Iraq. And a journalist from a country just a little to the west of there, Turkey.
I walked into the house with ideas of crazed bombers, and an hour or two later I motored into the chill gloom, thinking about something else altogether. Maybe a New Caliphate wouldn’t be a bad idea, I thought.
It is worth some discussion. Maybe tomorrow.
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
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