Time to Build Your Shrine for the Bruins!

By now you've got to be paying attention to the Boston Bruins. Even if you couldn't tell the difference between a Zamboni and a jock strap two months ago there is no questioning the excitement around the Hub these days. To all the bandwagon jumpers and fair-weather fans I say, come along. It's been a fantastic playoffs ride and we only have four more wins before hoisting Lord Stanley's Cup for the first time in 39 years.

If you're looking for a way to influence good karma may I suggest building a shrine. Sure it's a little obsessive, maybe a little dorky. Ok, definitely dorky. But, it has worked for me in 2004 when the Red Sox won it all for the first time in 86 years so there is no reason to think my plan would fail me now.

First, you need to grab everything in your house that you associate with the Big Bad Bruins (if I had suggested this back in the mid 90's you'd probably be unhooking your toilet). Now, go ahead and arrange these totems of triumph and arrange them close to your television set. Finally, and this is the most  important part, leave it there until the Cup is ours.

I cannot stress this last part enough. It's going to be a tough battle but these Bruins play with a lot of heart so we as fans have to match that with our loyalty. We've seen them go seven games with our arch rival Montreal Canadiens (AKA the Canadian National Diving Team), we've seen them sweep the Philadelphia Flyers who, just one year ago, totally broke our hearts, and we just witnessed them clinch a trip to the Finals against the Tampa Bay Lightening who last won it just seven years ago.

My shrine consists of many artifacts that I associate with my team. First, the obvious ones. Behind me in the above photo hangs my four Boston Bruins playoff rally towels, which represent the four wins we need to finish business. In front of me is my circa 1984 Boston Bruins pennant which I have held onto for three decades and remains untarnished - just like my love for the Bruins. In front of that pennant are two autographed photos of my two favorite Bruins legends.

The first one is of Rick Middleton, perhaps my biggest influence growing up. In fact, he was my idol. We had the same name, which I thought was cool. He played left wing so I played right. He was number 16 so I went the next even number down and held onto it for the duration of my playing days. My dad surprised me one day when he took me to a car dealership where Rick Middleton was signing these photos. When it was my turn to meet him, I couldn't say a word - I was in shock. The signature comes with a personal message that reads, "To Rick, Good luck in your hockey career! Rick Middleton."

The bigger photo needs no introduction. Bobby Orr is the best Bruin of all time and I had the very bitter-sweet opportunity to skate with him for an hour in 1986. Christa McAuliffe's son and I played on the same team when Mr. Orr came to cheer him up with a surprise visit after the fateful morning of January 28. He stayed after the game and signed a photo for every kid on the team and every piece of hockey equipment the team handed him. So, this is another relic that I hold sacred.

On a lighter note, it is important to become a part of your shrine. I am holding onto my Concord Youth Hockey Mite League Championship trophy. It is the only trophy I ever won and the championship game-winning goal was scored by yours truly. In my other hand I am holding my 1985 All-Star plaque. These items might not clearly be associated with the Bruins but they are definitely Bruins-inspired! I figure, if I can claim to be a champion then the Bruins should have no problem joining my club.

As you can also clearly see, I am not too proud to pull on my Boston Bruins youth size sweater. Sure, it fit better when I got it on Christmas morning in 1985 but I can still fit into it so I wear it with pride. Also, the hat is a nice touch but the big piece is the playoff beard. I don't know how the tradition started but I haven't touched this hairy beast since the last week of the regular season back in April. It just might be the secret weapon in my shrine.

So, Bruins fans, go forth and paint your house black and gold or whatever you gotta do to feed the positive energy that the Bruins need. We're almost there and everyone needs to get involved!

Traversing The Wildcats (The Movie)

Winter is a slow time of year for me when it comes to backpacking. My last trip took place in January and I was anxious to get out again so I planned an overnight excursion up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and assembled a small group of friends to join me.

The conditions were virtually ideal considering the time of year when winter and spring seem to overlap in the mountains. The temps were cool to freezing. The trail was cleared at the bottom and covered with ice and snow above 3,000 feet.

We hiked along one of the more strenuous parts of the Appalachian Trail, also known as the Wildcat Ridge Trail, from Pinkham Notch on Route 16 over to the Carter Notch Hut. In fact, through-hikers often reflect upon the ascent of Wildcat D from the highway as one of the steepest and most demanding parts of the entire 2,181 mile Appalachian Trail. So, it was especially fun to do this with the added challenges of winter and the complete absence of other hikers.

I usually shoot a series of photos on a trip like this but I felt like making a video this time instead. It's the first video I've put together on my Mac, which I think is evident once you start watching it. Anyway, it was  a fun trip and an equally fun project. Hopefully, you will enjoy the spectacular views New Hampshire's White Mountains have to offer and feel encouraged to hike them sometime soon.

4 Things You Should Know About Canadiens

Your Bruins are going on a run for Lord Stanley’s Cup and the journey starts tonight in Boston against the undersized Canadiens and their thin-skinned fan base. Can we win it all for the first time in 39 years? You bet! Could we see our team succumb to pressure and repeat last year’s epic failure? Absolutely not! Here now, are four solid, fact-based, non-biased, hard-hitting, never-been-discussed-before-now, things you should know about our first opponent.

4) Everyone Hates the Canadiens. This is fact. People don’t just hate Canadiens here in Boston. People everywhere hate them. In a very scientific survey (I can’t recall the name of it), a highly reputable global research company (their name eludes me at the moment) found that nearly 98 percent of Earthlings have a “less-than-favorable” opinion of Canadiens. I can’t just make this stuff up, people. When asked, “What do you hate most about Canadiens?” one unidentified respondent from the Ivory Coast referred to their cheap tips, bad driving and Celine Dion as major contributing factors toward his/her negative assessment.

3) Canadiens are Fragile. Again, another obvious point but one that cannot go unmentioned. Remember a couple weeks ago when Zdeno Chara drove Max Pacioretty into a stanchion? Then, remember how the fans flooded emergency services with a conservatively estimated 56,000 calls to 911? And how the Montreal Police Department opened a criminal investigation against “Big Z” for his hit that was deemed nothing more than player interference by the NHL? Of course you do! Now just imagine how fun it will be to watch the bigger and stronger Bruins beat a team that picked up six skaters from Disney on Ice in last year’s draft (another fact). Or watching the non-action taken by the french-speaking police when “Z” and the Bruins take the series up to Montreal this Monday for Game 3.

2) The Fans are Disturbed Individuals. This might not be so obvious to casual hockey fans but it gets in-your-face annoying real fast if you ever have to share the confines of a bob house with one of these highfalutin Habs. They regularly boo our National Anthem and turn it up a notch during the playoffs to the point that team management has to publicly address the issue and ask for it to stop. This is just wrong. Our country is awesome. Their country - not so much. It’s cold, it’s boring and it’s cold. None of these three reasons for their misery are our fault. I’d also like to point out that Habs fans aren’t too smart either. You see, they boo our anthem despite having seven American skaters on their roster. Imagine being their captain, Brian Gionta from Boston College or one of their defensemen, Hal Gill from Concord, MA trying to get pumped up and win one for their fans while listening to that crap. I thought Neil Young and the Bare Naked Ladies were tied for Worst Sounding Canadian Performers (excuse the redundancy) but these fans have taken it to an even lower level.

1) That F’n Ole’ Chant. Some things in life annoy me; YouTube clips of kittens doing kitten-like things comes to mind. Terrorism, that’s pretty annoying too with all the threatening and senseless killing. But, nothing makes me want to pack my ears with blood-sucking leeches more than listening to this steaming pile of monkey shit sprinkled with asbestos whenever the Canadiens score. I have it on good authority that Alanis Morissette teamed up with Bryan Adams to write this one. Wouldn’t surprise me, as I’ve eluded a few times, no good music has ever come out of Canada. Anyway, my point is this. There are ways of showing pride and there is a manner of “rubbing it in” and this “song” takes on qualities to support the latter. Furthermore, it sounds like a ripped off chant belonging to the fans of a certain Euro football team - which it is.

There, now you are an informed fan of Boston Bruins playoff hockey. Enjoy the series.

Rick Fink is a remarkable blogger with astounding perspective who might post once a month, twice if he finds the ambition. In 2010, his readership eclipsed the esteemed benchmark of 15 people (non-related). Rick likes to make his own lace doilies in his spare time.


Photo of Tyler Seguin taken by Rick Fink, also an awesome photographer.

Backpacking and Modeling: I Can Do Both

I went to the Harvard Square newsstand the other day to pick up the March issue of Backpacker magazine. Splashed across the cover read, “Better Than National Parks! 10 epic routes-no crowds or permits.” I opened it to the article and there it was, spread across two full pages (58-59), a photograph of me looking across an alpine lake at 13,024-foot Snow Peak high in the Colorado Rockies. 

This post isn’t about my fifteen minutes of fame and all that comes with it like the scores of beautiful women asking for my number or the countless kids seeking my autograph. Oh no, that was already happening long before the photo was taken. This is more about the trip, which ranks as one of my favorites. 

* * *

Back in August, while flying high above the checkered terra firma of midwestern farm land, my growing anticipation was matched only by my curiosity. This week-long trip had two objectives; attend a bachelor party in Denver and embark on a four-day backpacking journey in the Rockies. The backpacking trip was going to reunite me with my college roommate and great friend, Ryan Bonneau, the guy who snapped the photo.

I last saw Ryan about 11 years ago when we lived in New Hampshire. He was doing well at a financial services company but decided that office confinement wasn’t his thing. He knew he’d rather be fly fishing so he moved to Telluride and became a guide. His other passion is photography and he has developed a respectable name for himself within the trade having been published in several nation-wide publications. (You can see his work at ryanbonneauphoto.com).

After a long drive from the airport, we finally greeted each other at the trailhead and realized we had no map. It was a rookie mistake but we circumvented the error by taking a picture of the map posted at the trailhead with my Blackberry. It’s bush league - I know.

We hiked six miles up steep terrain with hardly any interaction with other hikers. Backpacker magazine’s assertion of “no crowds” is quite accurate and can be attributed to the absence of any 14,000-footers within the Gore Range. We loved it. In fact, we were hiking this spot because Ryan received a shot list from Backpacker looking for photos of the area. He was on assignment so-to-speak.

The photograph that appears in Backpacker might seem natural - as if I’m unaware of being photographed - but that isn’t the case. To get the shot Ryan stuffed a sleeping bag inside my backpack to fill it out. Then he gave me a red jacket to help me “pop” in the scene and finally he handed me a mesh Patagonia trucker hat for character, I suppose. 

After “wardrobe,” I was able to skip hair and make-up because: A) I have no hair, and B) I never go camping without my own bronzer. Ryan set up the composition, making sure to maximize the benefit of the reflection of Snow Peak on the lake, and sent me out rock hopping into the scene. He snapped a few shots and interjected direction on my posing while I balanced on a rock that surfaced above the deep cold water around me. 

“Tuck your thumbs inside your shoulder straps!” 

“Bend your right knee a little more!”

“Give me a quarter turn to the right!”

and the predictable, "Suck in your gut!"

This whole experience taught me life lesson #414: Modeling isn’t easy nor is it appreciated. And herein lies the reason why I refuse to grace the cover of GQ or Esquire.

Within 45 minutes the sun had risen and the shooting was done. We had three peaks to bag and hoped to make it to another lake on the other side of the mountains you see in the photo. As we hiked around the lake and up the super-steep and unstable terrain of the mountainside,  we began to have second thoughts (this is where a map would have come in handy). 

We pondered and pointed at possible passages to get to the other side but all options seemed too dangerous. We contemplated our options; we could go up and maybe die or we could chill by the lake for the next few days. We opted for the latter and made our way back down the mountain as Ryan’s dogs went crazy chasing the countless marmots scurrying in the underbrush and rocks.

Later, Ryan did some fishing. He favors the catch-and-release philosophy but I told him that if he could catch it, I could cook it. And with that I was searching the area for a flat,  low-profile rock that could double as a griddle. It wasn’t long before I heard the range-echoing “awe yeah!” and saw him coming back with an impressive and tasty-looking 23-inch cutthroat trout. We were pumped and I took a photo of him with the fish, which currently serves as his Facebook profile pic. We now had a feast so I scoured for firewood while he uprooted some wild mushrooms with the aspiration to fully live off the land, even for one day.

The rest of the trip was solid. We had great weather, the Gore Range all to ourselves and no bears. We hiked out and grabbed lunch at a place in Vail before going our separate ways with the notion that we would hike together more regularly than once every 11 years.

And with a wave and two honks of the horn, I was heading back to Denver for the bachelor-party-of-all-bachelor-parties. It started in the basement of Coors Field drinking Blue Moon straight from the vats and ended with a long nap on the flight home.