katster's closet

This piece of wood is the edge of a bleacher seat from California Memorial Stadium, home of my beloved California Golden Bears. In the process of renovating and modernizing the facility, which was originally built in 1923 on top of a major earthquake fault, they tore out the wooden bleachers.  I’ve not had a chance to get back to Memorial since the renovation and retrofit, but I’m told it was done well. 

Turns out, though, that those wooden bleachers date back to the original opening of the stadium.  Wow!

The Wooden Duck, a company in Berkeley that specializes in making furniture out of reclaimed wood, managed to get its hands on the old bleachers and, from there, offer pieces for sale. They’ve done some gorgeous work, which you should check out.

My thanks in particular to TwistNHook, the proprietor and head honcho of the zany crew over at the California Golden Blogs, the best Cal sports blog on the entire Internet, including the North Korean parts. ;) He procured the bleacher piece for me, and I owe him.

I eventually plan to get a nice photograph or lithograph of Cal Memorial and frame this block with that. It will go nicely with my 1959 Rose Bowl pennant/program/ticket and my copy of the Daily Californian dated Monday, November 22, 1982 in my tiny museum of Cal memorabilia. :)

But that is my cool thing.

–>

Mirrored from retstak.org.

The Bears last week against Arizona. Photo credit Monica’s Dad on flickr // CC BY 2.0

There was a point in time where Tedford seriously considered bolting for another job. Those opportunities came early during the Tedford era, fresh off of Cal’s most impressive season to date in 2004. However, one of the main reasons why a lot of Old and Young Blues alike have an adoring respect for Tedford has been because of the coach’s loyalty to the program and his desire to not only win, but win at Cal.

So it turns out that Saturday will be Coach Tedford’s 100th game. This is a nice article about the change Tedford’s made at Cal — not only in terms of making the football program a winner, but for his part in turning boys into men.

My undergraduate career at Cal was the football seasons from 1996 to 1999. In those four seasons, Cal went a depressing 18-27. We made it to one bowl my freshman year (which we lost to Navy), we never won the Big Game, and we were pretty much the conference doormat. We also cheated, and rightfully got slapped for it, but it’s not like we could even cheat right — the point of cheating is to win, no?

Anyway, the highlights, which were few, were beating Oklahoma twice (although those OK teams weren’t very good) and taking three of four from USC — but they weren’t very good at the time either. Then, it culminated in the disaster of 2001, where my beloved Bears went 1-10. Okay, I admit, by the end of it, I was idly rooting for a “perfect” season, but we managed a win in the last game of the season, a postponed-by-9/11 game with Rutgers in New Jersey. I still maintain that if we’d played Rutgers when scheduled, we’d have won that game and gained the confidence to take a couple over the course of the year, but I can’t prove it, and if it had worked out that way, then it might not have lead to something good.

The good, in this case, was the fact that we managed to convince the offensive coordinator from an Oregon Ducks team that really should have played in the National Championship that year to come to Cal and be our head coach — a dude named Jeff Tedford.

Tedford said that from the beginning, he wanted to change the football culture at Cal. And when, that first season, my first year as a grad student at Cal, I was in the stadium to watch Cal completely blow the Baylor Bears out of the water 70-22, and when the first Cal play from scrimmage went for a touchdown, I began to believe again. When we went 7-5 with the same players that had gone 1-10 the year before, and would have gone to a bowl if it wasn’t for the aforementioned cheating, things got a bit better. Of course, the greatest thing was finally seeing a Big Game victory — the first Big Game victory for Cal since I was a junior in high school.

Being a Cal fan’s a hard thing. My Bears are pretty much the Chicago Cubs of college football. The last time we went to a Rose Bowl was in 1959, and Cal fans start every year with the high hopes that this will be the year in which we go to the fabled promised land of Pasadena, California for New Year’s Day. And year after year, the hopes turn frail and bitter as the Bears inevitably find ways to lose games they shouldn’t, or have the unfortunate luck to get good just as USC is putting together a dynasty for the ages.

This season’s been a really disappointing one — we thought we finally had all the tools into place to beat USC and take the Rose Bowl. Well, USC won’t be going this year, but Cal isn’t in position to take advantage of it. About the best we can do is play spoiler to Stanford’s Rose Bowl dreams, and, well, that ain’t looking overly good. (Did you see what Stanford did to Oregon and USC? Wow!)

But get rid of Tedford? Are you kidding me? He’s 66-33 overall. That’s a pretty good winning percentage — and he’s done it at Cal, where the institutional support is always going to be somewhat lacking. Sure, we haven’t made it to the Rose Bowl yet, but on the other hand, I actually believe that we will go someday. And we’ll go with Tedford as our coach.

I mean, I finally actually got to touch the Axe, right? I gotta believe.

Rally members who graduated from Cal without seeing a Big Game win finally get to hold the Axe for the first time. Note the huge smile on my face — I’m the one in the blue and gold rugby and Cal hat

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

It's been a good couple of days. DJ is scared of me when I'm standing, and when I first arrive back after being gone, but as she grows used to my presence, she gets a little more trusting. Enough so that I'm sitting at the kitchen table and was able to give her a bellyrub. Zoe is Zoe, just her usual happy-go-lucky self. Last night, we had chicken for dinner, and the dogs loved that. Tonight, I was out for a bit, so I brought dinner home and shared.

Also, you haven't lived until you've had dogs wrestling across you when you're lying in bed. %)

Yesterday, I sat around, talking with folks on the net and reading Curse of the Narrows, which is about the Halifax Explosion, and why Halifax gives a Christmas tree to Boston every year. (The book's fascinating -- so much that I think I'm going to get a copy of my own. And maybe one for zibblsnrt too, because I like giving him stuff, and I think he'd like the book.)

Today was the busy day, since I had lunch in Berkeley and evening in San Jose. I stopped off at the base camp in between, so I wasn't gone overly long at any point. The funny part was that I let DJ and Zoe go out front while I was packing things into my car to go to Berkeley, and I left a door open. I wasn't thinking very hard, and suddenly I had two dogs in the car, ready to go. I was sorry to disappoint them. :) In Berkeley, I met with Aaron and Cathy, two folks who were instrumental in getting me through my grad program. Down in San Jose, after driving through commute traffic, I got to the Starport and was able to catch gridlore and kshandra briefly. It's always nice to see chaoswolf, mdlbear, super_star_girl, and flower_cat.

Speaking of commute traffic, a few tips. One, the merge lane means "get over when it's safe", not "speed to the end of the lane and bludgeon your way into traffic." Two, there's a nifty little invention on your car which is called "the blinkers". There's probably a little lever right next to your steering wheel, and you push up to signal right and down to signal left. If you get confused, think about how you'd hit it if you were turning the wheel to execute the turn. Please use this to signal your intention before you change lanes, not during. Three, it's a stalled car and/or an accident. It's nothing special. It's probably not the president. There's probably nobody being carted from the burning wreckage with blood everywhere. Keep driving, fool, and pay attention to the person in front of you, or you'll be the one everybody's gawking at when *you* have the accident.

And now Zoe's passed out on the shelf in the kitchen, and I think DJ is on the bed, and I've been going to bed right around midnight, so it's time to turn in.

Tomorrow plans to be nice and relaxing, I'll get some necessary chores done and some studying, and then I'll meet luns and spitgirl at a place nearby (E. 14th and Hesperian, I think.) I know where both those streets are in relation to where I am, and I have a local map in the car. (It cost me $5, but $5 to be able to navigate without getting utterly lost in a maze of twisty little neighborhoods all alike and getting eaten by a grue is worth it.)

Friday night, I have tentative plans with damienroc in the City for dinner, which, if I'm going to do that, I'll BART in.

Saturday is devoted to packing and loading.

It's been a wonderful week so far. I'm saddened that it's more than half over.

So I'm working on my Peachtree homework.

And the book directs me to write down an address with the following city/state/zipcode:

Eugene, OR 94703.

Now, you probably wouldn't have doubletook at this, but I know that wasn't Eugene's zip code. Not because I've lived in Eugene, but because I've lived in Berkeley, and have seen that zipcode printed several times. It's just south of city center (it might be the municipal buildings' zip code.) In fact, in college, I had the next number up, which is 94704. :)

But the point is, it's not in Eugene. (Which probably is something in the 97 range, I've not bothered to look it up. fb says it's 97403. Yeah. I really trust this book...) ;)