Good Night from Loose Field. Drive Safely!

Golden is Thy Tate...A weekend at Notre Dame 9/19/09

Me, Paul, Katrin, Jim, Renata, & Mark

Paul & Katrin are smiling....but not as much as when they saw me coming up the stadium steps.

Notre Dame's Golden Tate (from MSNBC Sports)

Lucas County Arena - Open House

Images from the Open House for the new Lucas County Arena, the home of the ECHL's Toledo Walleye:

Spike, the mascot

Lots of neat stuff in the team shop.

Montreal, on further review

1. I saw enough of Montreal to convince me that I need to return. I left enough tourist-guide recommendations on the table to justify another visit. Plus, I want to see a hockey game next time around. Like Rick Steves says - always assume you'll return.

2. It takes far greater talent than I have as a traveler, to find a bad meal in Montreal. I want to check out the poutine and spruce beer place on rue Charlevoix that Samantha Brown visited, and render a verdict on the Fairmount-vs.-St. Viateur bagel debate. I HIGHLY recommend m:brgr. http://www.mbrgr.com/

3. The people in charge of Amtrak need to go to Canada, ride the train, and take notes.

4. I believe the bilingual style of the Montreal Impact PA announcer is worth emulating.

5. Montreal - France with training wheels. I did my best to stick with French, but enough people are bilingual, that I could have gotten along fairly well without it. I was able to order food en francais, and get what I thought I ordered. A girl is cute when she greets with "Bonjour-Hi!", but it simply doesn't work when a guy says it. There's just no way to make it sound manly.