Lunar lineage

Outdoor season has begun. Our first meet was Saturday at West Point. This season will find me behind the wheel of a van more often than not, because of our quirky travel schedule. Yes, that means "van talk."

On Saturday, it also meant the renewal of a regrettable -- but certainly legendary -- tradition in our program.

I guess you could call it a family tradition.

But first, a little history is in order.

Back in the dark ages of my tenure as coach at Marist, we rarely traveled in buses. It was always vans, usually to some dreadful indoor track venue like FDU in Hackensack, NJ. Let's travel back in time to a dark winter's night in 1992, and a van trip back from FDU.

I'm behind the wheel of a Marist van, cruising along Route 4. In the back, Dave Swift yells out for me to speed up or slow down (I cannot remember which, that was a long time ago), so we could be near the other van, being driven by Coach Phil Kelly. Naturally I obliged.

Ah, Dave. You remember Dave, right? Now the fancy Spackenkill High School coach. Back then, he was JLSB. Mr. Bucket. A team leader, school record-holder, and resident wiseass.

I did as instructed. Then, BOOM! Shattered glass in the back! What the heck happened? Hey, we're in Jersey. Did we get SHOT AT? Was it a DRIVE-BY? No, no. Nothing nearly that sexy. Instead, Bucket thought it might be entertaining to MOON his teammates in the other van. Apparently, the sheer force of his Two Cheeks shattered the large back window into pieces.

It was too bizarre to be true, but the "cold reality" hit us soon after as we sped up Route 17 toward home.

But first, we stopped on Route 17 for a Pizza Hut dinner. We explained to the staff our predicament, and they agreed to give us some pizza boxes to shore up the gaping hole in our van. Yeah, great. That cardboard lasted for a few miles till we got to the NJ/NY border, after which we froze our ... um, asses ... all the way back to Poughkeepsie. Explaining the gaping hole in the van to the Marist athletic staff was interesting, to say the least.

Fast-forward to 2009. Through a minor miracle of taking my shortcut along the waterfront in Newburgh, I somehow got ahead of Coach Chuck, who was driving his Jeep down to West Point. When I spotted him in the rearview mirror as we were going over Storm King Mountain, I got very excited that I was ahead of him. A rare occurence indeed, since I drive like an old man ... and he does not.

In the back of the van, by the window, was Adam Vess. Ah, Vess. You remember Vess, right? Bucket's nephew and God-son. Vess, the fancy IC4A champion. A team leader, school record-holder, and resident wiseass.

Come on. You know what's coming next. Yup, you got it. Two Cheeks to the window, Vess moons Chuck and his passengers.

Fortunately, the 2009 Marist vans are sturdier and the big back window remained intact. For now.

Sorry. I bet you were waiting for another "van window explodes" ending to this story.

Anyway ... I will post West Point meet splits as soon as possible.