Road trips.

[Swampy]

A road trip in February to the North Country can be iffy. If you drive, you wind up with a car full of grime, you need to stop at Walgreens every couple hours for another gallon of windshield washer fluid, there's so much sludge on the grill the adaptive cruise control radar is worthless, and if Larry Baum flies in he won't fly out for a couple days. You will see some crappy houses on the outskirts of Potsdam. You will see a high-tech commerce park out by the airport with one building (Silicon Valley, watch your backside). You'll see a lot of plows. You'll also see moments of beauty such as the falls in St. Regis and the St. John in-the-Wilderness church in Paul Smiths. You'll drive through a winter carnival in Saranac Lake although I'm not sure how the dozens of sombreros relate to Saranac. In Lake Placid, you'll see the Olympics live, on a jumbo screen outside the Olympic center.

Yes, the availability of hockey video may cut down on attendance. Students may have even more of a workload than we had. Maybe they go to the gym and get in shape rather than watch athletes who are in shape. I like that you have multiple ways to get tickets; for Clarkson you could call or go online and when the Cornell section was sold out, they worked to find a ticket in the next section over. If they turnout wasn't what it was a generation ago, it's still enough that the host schools are in awe of Cornell's turnout.

+1

[Scersk '97]

For some reason, there always seem to be a lot more Cornell fans at Yale games than at Quinnipiac, even though the rinks less than 10 miles apart.

The ECHL atmosphere at Quinnipiac sucks; that is, beyond being just awful, everything going on in the rink mostly sucks the life out of the crowd, home and away.

Last time, their band was having some sort of alumni weekend and they STILL had to be happy with the few opportunities provided for them to play in between "announcements" (advertisements) and piped-in jock jams.

[RichH]

For some reason, there always seem to be a lot more Cornell fans at Yale games than at Quinnipiac, even though the rinks less than 10 miles apart.

The ECHL atmosphere at Quinnipiac sucks; that is, beyond being just awful, everything going on in the rink mostly sucks the life out of the crowd, home and away.

Last time, their band was having some sort of alumni weekend and they STILL had to be happy with the few opportunities provided for them to play in between "announcements" (advertisements) and piped-in jock jams.

Shut it. I'm thrilled to constantly learn of the options of Mercedes & BMW dealers I have in suburban CT.

[Trotsky]

Students may have even more of a workload than we had. Maybe they go to the gym and get in shape rather than watch athletes who are in shape.

Pfft.

Asian kids don't have to work out to stay in shape...

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Students may have even more of a workload than we had. Maybe they go to the gym and get in shape rather than watch athletes who are in shape.

Pfft.

Asian kids don't have to work out to stay in shape...

That's wrong on a couple of levels.

[Trotsky]

Students may have even more of a workload than we had. Maybe they go to the gym and get in shape rather than watch athletes who are in shape.

Pfft.

Asian kids don't have to work out to stay in shape...

That's wrong on a couple of levels.

[KGR11]

Bad weather Friday? Games available on TV.

I should have given mention of the band, without them, the games would have been super quiet. They are great. When and if you donate to CU, put a couple of bucks to the Pep Band Fund. It helps them to travel.

There's a fundraiser today, 7-11 PM, through D.P. Dough when you mention the band. For every calzone or 10 dollar purchase made, D.P. Dough will donate a dollar to the band. If 100 people order, they'll double the amount!!

[Jim Hyla]

A road trip in February to the North Country can be iffy. If you drive, you wind up with a car full of grime, you need to stop at Walgreens every couple hours for another gallon of windshield washer fluid, there's so much sludge on the grill the adaptive cruise control radar is worthless, and if Larry Baum flies in he won't fly out for a couple days. You will see some crappy houses on the outskirts of Potsdam. You will see a high-tech commerce park out by the airport with one building (Silicon Valley, watch your backside). You'll see a lot of plows. You'll also see moments of beauty such as the falls in St. Regis and the St. John in-the-Wilderness church in Paul Smiths. You'll drive through a winter carnival in Saranac Lake although I'm not sure how the dozens of sombreros relate to Saranac. In Lake Placid, you'll see the Olympics live, on a jumbo screen outside the Olympic center.

Yes, the availability of hockey video may cut down on attendance. Students may have even more of a workload than we had. Maybe they go to the gym and get in shape rather than watch athletes who are in shape. I like that you have multiple ways to get tickets; for Clarkson you could call or go online and when the Cornell section was sold out, they worked to find a ticket in the next section over. If they turnout wasn't what it was a generation ago, it's still enough that the host schools are in awe of Cornell's turnout.

A road trip in February to the North Country means you get to see some good hard college hockey, that's it!

If your car being full of road grime and not having adaptive cruise is important to you, then I'd say your values are screwed up.::screwy:::-D Besides windshield washer fluid and adaptive cruise are meant to be a way to get your goals, not goals themselves. And I don't know what you mean by, iffy. It's winter, to go skiing or to hockey games means you have to drive in the winter, sometimes it snows, or like on Sat., sometimes you have freezing rain. You plan accordingly. If your goal is important enough, you'll accommodate, if not, you watch at home by yourself, on the internet.::bang::

The problem with tickets not being sold by the visiting team is that rinks are not all keeping visiting sections. Most don't have them listed online. For those of us who have been to the rinks many times, we have a good idea, newbies don't.

[billhoward]

I don't want to take this too far off topic but technology will keep your, and my, sorry ass safe on road trips. I believe I am a good enough driver (last speeding ticket, Jimmy Carter was in the White House; last accident, undergrad years hit by a cop on Route 13, beat the ticket) to know I'm not as good late in the day as in the morning. Adaptive cruise, lane departure warning, and blind spot detection are all helpers. I drove 900 miles Friday-Sunday, solo. I used to do that in a single day. If you're 40+, you can probably use help. That's my take.

[Trotsky]

Winning attracts more buzz and more attendance, home and away.  Higher scoring increases enthusiasm.  We've gotten both this year.  Hopefully that will continue.

The thing we need now is to nail down achievements.  We're on a 7-year skein without an ECAC Tourney title.  That's the third longest in modern program history:

Code Select Expand

9 1958-1966
9 1987-1995
[b]7 2011-2017[/b]
6 1974-1979
5 1981-1985
5 1998-2002
4 2006-2009

Break that streak.

[Jim Hyla]

I don't want to take this too far off topic but technology will keep your, and my, sorry ass safe on road trips. I believe I am a good enough driver (last speeding ticket, Jimmy Carter was in the White House; last accident, undergrad years hit by a cop on Route 13, beat the ticket) to know I'm not as good late in the day as in the morning. Adaptive cruise, lane departure warning, and blind spot detection are all helpers. I drove 900 miles Friday-Sunday, solo. I used to do that in a single day. If you're 40+, you can probably use help. That's my take.

To continue going off topic (sort of), I totally agree with you on all of that. All my vehicles have them. However adaptive cruise, when driving to the North Country in snow, is not what I'd rely upon.

My point was, these things are a means to an end, not the end. We've all driven without them, and when I'm in snow, on roads with infrequent traffic, I'm more happy with myself and ABS. Lane departure is NG in snow, and I'd never rely upon adaptive cruise in bad conditions.

And yes, I've also been known to drive 100s, in fact Syracuse to Allston and back, with only a 3 hour respite in between.:-D

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Students may have even more of a workload than we had. Maybe they go to the gym and get in shape rather than watch athletes who are in shape.

Pfft.

Asian kids don't have to work out to stay in shape...

That's wrong on a couple of levels.

Yeah, yeah.  I got the joke.  Didn't mean I liked it.

[Scersk '97]

Adaptive cruise, lane departure warning, and blind spot detection are all helpers. I drove 900 miles Friday-Sunday, solo. I used to do that in a single day. If you're 40+, you can probably use help.

To continue going off topic (sort of), I totally agree with you on all of that. All my vehicles have them. However adaptive cruise, when driving to the North Country in snow, is not what I'd rely upon.

My point was, these things are a means to an end, not the end. We've all driven without them, and when I'm in snow, on roads with infrequent traffic, I'm more happy with myself and ABS. Lane departure is NG in snow, and I'd never rely upon adaptive cruise in bad conditions.

Along with all the rapturous paeans penned toward the coming techno-nirvana of a world full of driverless cars (in which, thankfully, we will all be able to devote even more of our time to the unhealthy attractions of our many distracting electronic devices), it is my firm belief that all the "driver aids" mentioned above are leading to a serious decline in driving skills, like PAYING ATTENTION and driving in a manner APPROPRIATE FOR CONDITIONS. Considering the idiocy I've seen at intersections on my many trips north these last few years, I think ABS was the beginning of the decline, actually. People don't consider these technologies as something to help them if they make a minor misjudgment; rather, they DEPEND on them and make them part of their bad driving habits. (Slow down to approach a stop sign? Oh, ABS can handle this glare ice.)

And, regarding driverless cars: Once you show me a driverless car that can make its way at speed through a snowed-in Finnish rally course seeded with cyclists to avoid, little children that randomly wander into the street, and a number of motorists who don't have the all the "aids" available and drive like slightly irrational human beings always have, I might start believing we're 50–100 years away from having viable driverless cars. We are, as a society, spending an unsightly amount of money on this effort. Perhaps the money could be better spent fixing the infrastructure that is crumbling all around us and figuring out better ways to move people around, like—I don't know—the actual high-speed rail and better mass transit that most of the rest of the developed world enjoys.

[Trotsky]

On the contrary, my guess is we're about 20 years from driverless cars starting to seriously rival driving and 50 years from driving being illegal.

I will very happily be dead.

But it's all been shit since we traded in horses, anyway, so meh, whatever.

[Scersk '97]

But it's all been shit since we traded in horses, anyway, so meh, whatever.

I'd say since we ripped up all the streetcar lines, but I catch your drift.