Illini lose first game to pesky Maryland
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006
I honestly expected the Illini to get blown out and that looked to be the case early in the game. However, the orange crush helped the Illini battle back in the second half to take the lead for a short time. Down 3 late in the game, the Illini made a defensive stand but then Maryland stole the ball and scored. That pretty much sealed it for Maryland. I was surprised that Weber didn’t put Jamar Smith in the game to provide a spark. He was pretty non-existent when he did play, so maybe that’s why he didn’t see much time late in the game. I shutter to think how tough playing Arizona will be in a few days. I guess I’m still spoiled by our magical run from a few years ago. Reality check time Stan, the Illini are rebuilding. :-)
I guess when the #1 and #2 defenses in the NFL clash, turnovers are bound to occur. Unfortunately for the Bears, it was the final interception from Grossman that sealed the win for the Patriots. One thing I noticed is that the Patriots have one heck of an offensive line. Brady never got sacked and I believe he was only hit twice. (Grossman wasn’t that fortunate) I’m not making any excuses here for the Bears, but that lovely new field that New England installed looked like crap. I think a lot of the guys on both sides were losing their footing. I definitely blame Urlacher’s missed tackle on Brady on the field because he would never miss a wide open tackle like that. So the Bears drop to 9-2 on the season and hopefully can bounce back next week against the Vikings. I can hear some fans already wondering if we shouldn’t bring Griese into the game, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet. One positive in the game was the strong running game by Cedric Benson. He ran over a few guys in the 1st half, so that was promising. New England right now looks like they could definitely make and win the superbowl. Hopefully the Bears will be there in a few months to change that fate. :-)
Unfortunately I didn’t realize that they’d all blown away, so that kinda shot that idea down. Before I departed home, I had loaded up some area geocaches into the pocket pc and my GPS. I pulled up one out in the country (GCXFG7) and decided to go after it and see what happened. I parked the car and read the clue on the pocket pc and then went treking with the GPS60csx. About 5 minutes later I discovered this coffee can cache and opened it up. I didn’t have anything with me to leave nor did I have a pen, but luckily the log book inside had a pen attached to it so I was able to sign the log. I carefully repacked everything and sealed the coffee can back up, then took a moment to rejoice as I found my first geocache! I went back to the car and marked the cache as found and wrote a little note to remind myself to log it when I got back home.
would prove much more difficult to find given the terrain of trees and thorny things. The clue stated that there was supposed to be a path to follow to get to the cache, but there was no path that I could find. I battled my way through the trees, twigs, and small hills. (some slightly muddy too) I kept glancing at the GPS and noticed I was getting closer, but I was really having issues with the terrain. What was left of the thorn branches kept grabbing my jacket and pants in some attempt to ‘protect’ the cache! ;) I battled on and shortly after saw the little tupperware container next to a tree. Hurray!!! :P Once again, TNLNSL. :) However I guess you could say I took home a few battle-wounds and thorns embedded in my pants.