Turkey Bowl two days away

It was tough, but I have agin resisted the very strong temptation to fly out to the Bay Area for Thaksgiving. As I wrote earlier, the usual way it works is if you don't buy your plane tickets by early September, the only decent fares are all gone. Well, this year turned out to be the opposite. In September, fares were horrible and flight selection was worse. But then the economy sunk and gas prices sunk lower than ever. I could have been on a flight with 48 hours advance purchase for $109 each way, non-stop, coast-to-coast. I saw that fare Saturday morning and considered it. I love the Turkey Bowl. The players have changed and the majority are no longer the same old friends from San Ramon High that played for so many years. But Bob and Rick Riley are always there. Brian Robinson as well. Plus, we get visits from Scott Bisson and Jud Drennan in most years. So, it is something I will miss greatly. I hope that the players that show up have a great and safe time.

Turkey Bowl

I've been playing football in Alamo on Thanksgiving Day since the mid-70s. High school friends Rick  Toft, Will and Rich Tauchar, Steve Tienken, Britt Burns, Bob and Rick Riley and others would get together on Fall Sundays and play football.  After our high school days, we used Thanksgiving weekend as a chance to catch up on each other's lives.  After college, we still kept it going, and in 1986 Nick Manadalou began videotaping the games with his camcorder.  I see games like that going on every week in my own neighborhood out here in the Maryland suburbs.  This year's Turkey Bowl will again take place on Thanksgiving Day at Rancho Romero School in Alamo.  See our website for more on the Turkey Bowl.

This year will be only the fourth time in my twenty years living in the Washington DC area that I will not be flying out to California to make the game.  I had a good excuse in 1999, when our second daughter was born just nine days before Thanksgiving.  This year, at first it seemed that air travel would be expensive, but it turned out that as oil prices decreased and the economy slowed, airfares were reasonable.  But there are still five plane tickets to purchase for my family.  And we are anticipating a 30 year reunion in 2009, so we have just decided that we will have to miss out on the fun of Turkey Bowl weekend.

Over the last 20 years, the weekend grew to include a Thanksgiving-eve (later moved to the weekend) poker game, a Friday breakfast and finally a hike in the Las Trampas Hills.  It's been a blast and a lot of new friends as well as family members have joined in the fun.  I look forward to being back for the 2009 weekend.