More Ocean City, plus Some Sports Thoughts

Catching up after being on vacation for a week....

In my write-up yesterday about our trip to Ocean City, I neglected to mention what was perhaps the highlight of the trip.  After a hotly contested round of miniature golf on the Boardwalk, we approached the 19th hole wherein a hole-in-one would earn you a free round of golf.  If you've played mini-golf in your life, you know that these things are set up so as to be nearly impossible to make, and I, predictably, failed miserably in my attempt.  Marilyn, on the other hand, calmly set her ball down and rammed her putt up the three inch wide ramp and jammed it right into the hole.  Sirens went off and and a ticket for a free round spit out of the machine.   No putt in the Ryder Cup later this month will be as  dramatic. 

I also mentioned how well we ate down at the shore.  A couple of comments on that:

1. A boardwalk pizza joint called 3 Brothers from Italy do the impossible.  They produce a slice of pizza that looks good, smells good, and is absolutely tasteless.  Ended up throwing it away after about four bites.
2. I am at an age where I can no longer eat more than about a third of a funnel cake, which is probably a good thing.  In fact, watching the girl pour the batter into that vat of grease to make my funnel cake, I almost walked away.  Yuck!
3. On the bright side, we did find a terrific pizza joint on the boardwalk called Angelo's II.  See for yourself:

On to other subjects....

• The Steelers now stand at 1-1 after an impressive win over the Jets on Sunday.  The running game was unimpressive.  The passing of Ben Roethlisberger was superb.  After allowing the Jets a touchdown on their opening drive, the defense, playing without Troy Polamalu and James Harrison, completely shut down the Jets.  Ryan Clark was tremendous, and you wonder how the outcome might have been different in Denver last week if Clark were able to play.
• The Pirates.  Wow, don't those back-to-back shutouts of the Cardinals three weeks ago now seem like a million years ago?  At this point, I am going to save any in depth comments until after the season concludes, but suffice to say that I fear for a winning season, and six weeks ago I thought a plus .500 season was in the bag.
• The National Hockey League owners have locked out the players.  Yes, the owners that have been doling out nine-figure contracts, some of them covering ten or more years, are claiming that they are going broke unless they players give back.  Haven't we seen this movie before?