Random Photo(s) of the Week: Green Bay Forever

If you grow up in Oklahoma, you have to fight the urge to like the Dallas Cowboys. It happened for me, early, on a Sunday after an Oklahoma loss to Texas the day before, when I saw gloating Texas fans at a Cowboys game, playing up the TV cameras and pointing to their Longhorn gear. And I've hated the Cowboys ever since.

Who to like in the NFL then? Easy, the Green Bay Packers. A throw-back team, unabashedly wearing green-and-yellow, not owned but run by a wayward Wisconsin town of 100,000. It's practically the anti-NFL team. Plus they have a history of beating Dallas.

The last time Green Bay won a Super Bowl, I woke early -- like 3am -- to get to a Saigon sports bar playing the game live. The owner didn't understand how to throw a Super Bowl Party well, and had a cover band from the Philippines onhand to play 'Hotel California' DURING the game. Angst of bleary-eyed ex-pats encourage the band to stick with a halftime performance.

Ten years ago I visited Green Bay with friends Chip Dalby and Tom Caw. We saw Brett Favre play, Brett Favre Drive, ate brauts, threw some pre-game balls, and watched Favre failed to rally the Pack against the Chicago Bears.

Doesn't matter. Packers are the anti-Cowboys. And more.

76-Second Travel Show: 'What's the Harvard/Yale of Travel?'

Episode #046
F E A T U R I N G * 8 5 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

Those who think the Red Sox/Yankees are the best rivalry in US sports ought to spend more time around college football. Considering the numbers of times baseball teams square off each year, and -- then -- how meaningless each game really is, nothing beats college football.

Particularly when it's two teams playing for nothing but pride. Harvard and Yale were, historically, instrumental in CREATING the sport of football. Unlike the big BCS teams, they have no polls, no bowls, no championships looming -- just a regular-season schedule capped with one of the biggest unseen rivalries in the country.

Sports in general is an underrated way of connecting with locals anywhere you go. And I found the same joy from mingling in the whirlwind of overcoats and scarves at Harvard Stadium a week-and-a-half ago. It was fun. And different from games back in Oklahoma. No merch stands, programs were free, and there were a lot of people in overcoats and scarves. One woman, a proud Crimson fan, told me, 'The boys sing 10,000 Men of Harvard in the locker room after each win.' So?, I thought. 'First in English, then in Latin.'

Football players who sing in Latin? Definitely not in Oklahoma anymore.

Where to watch the World Cup 2010?

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell spent the summer of 2007 travelling around Britain without resorting to planes (simple!). Now they're home and keep up the carbon-lite world travel habit in all sorts of ways. This post is by Nicola

So where's the best place to watch the World Cup this July? I'm asking this less for myself, more as a puzzle. I know one sports writer/lecturer who is taking her toddler to South Africa for the full atmosphere (but worrying as much about which malaria tablets to take as how to get tickets). My Brazilian-based friend plans to come back "home" to London just in case England does really well - I also happen to know he likes being around the UK for the soft fruits season, so that's two draws. Meanwhile his wife thinks it might be more fun in Brazil, just in case her team does really well. While the Dads group from Nell's school look set to fall back on a CAMRA (ie, real) pub near Baker Street that serves Abbot Ale and when they drank there last undoubtedly set up England's recent victory in the friendly against Egypt. A winning ritual should not be broken they claim.

Where you watch and how you get to that place can be a brilliant way of sharing the joys and blows of being a football follower, or it can be rubbish (yes, that's why there's a picture of the rat infested rubbish truck from the recent Rio carnival!). I'm guessing I'll see some of the games with friends and family on outdoor screens, walkable distances from my home.

It's been 10 years - this coming April - since Lola and I took our last flights (first as well in her case as she was not quite two years). Nell is nine years and still hasn't gone on a plane. Pete has flown in the past 10 years but only twice, once for fun and once for work, so our family footprint has stayed low for a significant length of time compared to our friends.

Our no-plane boast is not so great if we compare with our own childhoods - Pete never took a plane journey with his family, it wasn't until he was 18 that he set off for an airport check-in. I think I made one return flight to Northern Ireland as a toddler (apparently noisily confusing nuns with Father Christmas) and then another aged 15 when my Dad suddenly took us all to Paxos, a Greek island.

Our family's experience shows you can have fun at home in the World Cup (why, even Lola was born at the start of the 1998 kickathon), in fact home is probably the only place you can watch every game, keep up to date with every bit of information and still keep that carbon footprint a blistering zero. Here's to an England win...

It's time to party

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 11, and Nell, 8, spent three happy months during summer travelling around Britain. Now we're home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint.

In the run up to the Copenhagen meeting next week there seems to be a sense of great sadness. See here at the Guardian. We did all this to the world. We made October the hottest, November the wettest, Sydney the dustiest, etc. And at night I am conscious that my bedtime reading, Notes from Walnut Farm - a collection of Roger Deakin's writing during the six years before he died - is imbued with sadness. Even the frothy spring cow parsley is berated for replacing rarer, and arguably more lovely, violets. See the cover here.

Which is why it is lovely to sometime crash a party and cheer the hell up. December is the best time to do this, but last month the highlight near home was when Algeria qualified for the World Cup. The guys in Little Algeria (an area around Finsbury Park) were able to celebrate qualifying for the first time in 21 years. They bounced up and down, they drove around the block hooting horns. They marched back and forth the zebra crossing. And they waved flags, smiled and gathered together (yes,blocking the buses) conscious of just how far their team had come in order to make the slot for South Africa in July 2010.

It was like a flashmob, but less contrived. You could smell the happiness.

Having fun doesn't make me forget climate change, but it does remind me how important it is to avoid the tendency for humans to look on the dark side. Yes the world is in a bad, bad place. But without hope it really is hard to summon creativity. And creativity is what we all need, and especially the journalists writing up the story and those world leaders whose job it is to get a deal.

76-Second Travel Show: 'Saving College Football, from Fort Worth'

Episode #011
F E A T U R I N G * 3 2 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

TCU WINS COLLEGE FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP!

If you didn't know, the USA's favorite sport isn't baseball. It's football. American football. And it's taken very seriously. The writer Hunter S Thompson actually shot himself amidst the ennui just after football season ended in 2005. The title of his suicide note? 'Football Season is Over.' And Barack Obama, early in his days as president, addressed a serious issue: the lack of a playoff system in college football.

Now, the 76-Second Travel Show (SSTS) is getting involved.

Presently a BCS ranking system sets up which of 119 college teams get to play in the cul-de-sac championship game at the end of the year. Considering seasons last 12 or 13 games, with no playoffs, it is mathematically speaking the most irrational sports league in the world.

Sure, bickering about it can be fun. But too often some undefeated teams can only look on -- like Penn State in 1994, Auburn in 2004, Boise State in 2007, Utah in 2008 -- as other undefeated teams deemed more worthy, per a complex and controversial human/computer ranking system that smacks of gymnastics judges, play for the coveted (yet butt ugly) Sears crystal trophy.

This week we'll find out who plays for this championship title in Pasadena on January 8. Mostly likely it'll be this Saturday's Florida/Alabama winner versus Texas. No real surprise. And that's the problem. Looking at the six remaining undefeated teams (right), we see a clear separation line between 'tradition' teams and 'newby' programs, the latter working off disadvantageous pre-season ranking (see blue numbers), while the big kids getting favoring ones.

That's not exactly fair.

SSTS proposes a new let-love-rule SSTS system.
No bowls. No playoffs. And NO pre-season rankings. Just bring back tie games and adopt England's Premiership model, where wins gets three points and ties one. All teams would have to play an equal number of games. In case of matching end-of-season records, first compare home/away/neutral site records (Alabama and Florida played four away games each, Texas five, TCU seven!), then the quality of opponents.

The SSTS rankings, then, would look like this:

1. TCU
2. Cincinnati
3. Alabama
4. Florida
5. Boise State
6. Texas

--> Thus, the SSTS names TCU (Texas Christian University) as the SSTS Season Champion. And to tribute the Horned Frogs' championship, we visited its hometown: Fort Worth, Texas.

Another option, I guess, is eight-team playoffs.

It's worth noting that the founders of TCU moved from the original location in Fort Worth in the 1870s because of all the whores and booze. Then moved back when things 'calmed down a bit.'

Where Travel Meets Politics: Canada

HEROES FOR ONE DAY
I wrote a piece for World Hum this week on "Travel Writing as a Political Act," expanding from the ideas in Rick Steves' new book Travel as a Political Act.

What it doesn't tell is the one time I ever traveled with a clear political purpose. To change things. To make a difference. To tape up posters to sway a numb local populace.

I did this in CANADA.

My friend Matt and I had become, cheekily enough, huge Canadian Football League fans in the mid '90s. It started by calling Air Canada’s toll-free number to ask what cities had CFL teams, then adopted the closest, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. The operator told us the team was North America’s oldest football squad – around since just after the American Civil War – but was in danger of folding.

Matt and I plotted a rescue. We booked train tickets and packed “Save the Ti-Cats” posters thrown together at an East Village Kinko’s and a roll of duct tape.

On the train a Friday or two later we talked with Tommy, a peppy Chinese-American café attendant, who’d clap his hands after delivered a microwaved ham sandwich. He loved his job, but had never heard of the CFL – and didn’t care to. Strangely we had about the same reaction from our Hamilton taxi driver taking us to King St the next morning. “There’s a game scheduled?” The team was 4-13, yet still technically in the playoff hunt. But did anyone care?

They did. A couple hours later, we found the Canadian Football Hall of Fame –and its charmingly defeatist outdoor sculpture Touchdown that highlighted the failed defender – crammed with scores of fans and many old Ti-Cat greats, like Garney Henley and Rufus “Baby” Alexander. One couple in their late 40s – Bob and Pat – helped us sign up for the team’s fan club and eventually would mail a stream of chunky packets filled with photocopied Ti-Cat stories for two seasons to come.

Later Bob and Pat took us to a pep rally at dinky Ivor Wynne Stadium, where we sat amidst the couple hundred fans braving a chilly rainfall. We dutifully clapped along as players matter-of-factly walked out in jerseys and jeans. Then a voice call out over the PA, “We even have some fans who came in from New York to see our Ti-Cats play tomorrow.” Us. We felt like heroes.

That night Matt and I celebrated our success with a pitcher of Sleeman beer each at a hockey bar on King St. Staggering back to the hotel afterward, we tried taping up a few of our hundred posters on random street signs, then gave up after Matt vomited on a curb. I don’t know Canada’s rules regarding public intoxication, but I thank the Hamilton police for their restraint.

The next day, the Ti-Cats lost the game on the last play of the game and missed the playoffs. We figured the dream was over. But Hamilton quickly picked up enough “seasons tickets” (no typo) to save the team from bankruptcy. They hadn't really needed our outside help, but were happy to have two new Ti-Cat fans.

The next season we returned to Canada to see Hamilton play (and lose horribly to) Ottawa in the Canadian capital. Bob and Pat met us at the historic Frank Clair Stadium – which turned 100 last year and sits beside the city’s impressive Rideau Canal. You’d think it’d be a stunning spot for some three-down football. But not for Pat. She shook her head at first gaze and said, “This isn’t nearly as nice as Ivor Wynne.”

Definitely not. I do kinda wish we had a sign that said it.