Tag: Honey Badgers

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Adventure Sports

Honey Badger Rock Climbing Fun Day

Our Honey Badger Fun Day was originally planned to be at an indoor trampoline park. I was pretty excited, it sounded very cool to try out. Sadly as the last minute we had to change plans as it looked like we wouldn’t be able to jump that much that day. The place was all booked up.

So change of plans, we went with some indoor rock climbing at Elite Climbing. I had been there before and it was super awesome, and being Dustin’s birthday too I knew it was something that he would surely enjoy as well. He was always part monkey.

So we all met up early in the day, some of us at Joe time others on Honey Badger time (aka as late). Then rode up in 2 cars. It was pretty exciting. On the way up we stopped to get some lunch before out epic climbing at Panera. It is a fine eating establishment and all seemed please with the choice. I got a Turkey Bravo with an apple instead of chips. I would save my scrumptious apple for after/during my climbing.

We got there without getting lost like my first voyage there. What was super bizarre is that I ran into a friend from high school there who doesn’t live in that area either. What are the chances that we’d both drive all the way over there to do some indoor climbing? Surely it must be immensely miniscule.

Climbing went really well. Our trainer wasn’t nearly as helpful as Gio from the first excursion, but it still went fairly smoothly. It was really great to see everyone get up there and have a good time. I was really impressed with how well everyone had done!

Dustin was climbing all over the place, and Caitlin has an amazing climb on wall number 9. It was pretty amazing to behold, she made several key recoveries and made it over an pretty impressive incline to get all the way to the top. Amazing climb!

All in all it was a very fun day and I was able to climb for a couple of hours with some great Badgers and still make it back in time for my Mom’s birthday. I just with it was a bit closer to where I live.

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Adventure Sports

2013 Honey Badger Holiday Party

The much heralded Honey Badgers franchise had their 2nd annual holiday party. Invites went out to current and past Honey Badgers greats. It’s a very exciting time.

The turn out was pretty solid, around 10 people or so. Unfortunately we did have a bunch of last minute declines, but realistically as we get older that no longer surprises me. People just seem to have more things going on.

Once again hosting veteran Fierce served as the generous host and did another fantastic job. This year we decided to hold a tournament of holiday themed games. I made a scoreboard all by myself with no help, and we would use that to keep official score of the various game’s outcomes.

Here were some of the amazing games that we played:

  • Cotton Ball Race
  • Toothpick Marshmallow Towers (the only failure)
  • Jingle in the Trunk
  • Merry Fishmas
  • Hannukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa (rock, paper, scissors)
  • Holiday Song Lyrics
  • Sudoku
  • Christmas Ball

I was very glad to see just how much fun everyone had participating. We had some very impressive and fun moments. Congrats to Caitlin and Dustin on their team victory! It was a true Christmas miracle!

The was also a gift exchange, where you could trade, open, or draw a swap from a hat. I’m not sure I can fully explain it as I’m not sure I fully understood it, but it worked and everyone walked away happy. There were high heels of lotion, a strange baby from San Diego, and countless other amazing goodness. Another Christmas miracle for all!

Another very fun and successful Honey Badger Holiday Party!

 

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Adventure

Halloween Fun 2013

Unicorn maskI haven’t really been much of a Halloween person for quite some time. However, through the magic of the SJSL and younger friends, I did partake in a few more fun-tastic activities this year.

After shaking off my years of Halloween rust, I realized I had no idea what to be for Halloween. As simple as a task this should be, I was having much difficulty with it. Just couldn’t come up with a good idea. So I would visit the various stores on my lunch breaks.

On one particular break I randomly walked by a fairly large and somewhat creepy unicorn mask. I can’t quite explain why, but I just knew that it was right for me. I’ve long been a big fan of unicorns and all the magic and goodness that they bring to this world, plus it was also pretty creepy at the same time.

After purchasing the mask, I realized that I couldn’t see anything out of it at all. There were 2 small holes in the nostrils, but they were so tiny and far away due to the wonderful snout that it made for extremely limited vision. My only solution was to bring out the scissors and create new areas of vision.

First I expanded the nostrils a bit. While this did help a little, vision was still very much limited. I then decided to get bold and create a new hole were the unicorns mouth was. This did help out a lot, and didn’t deface the unicorn’s beauty that much at all. It seemed natural and allowed me some hope at not destroying everything in my blinded path.

The first Halloween party I would attend would be a jawn at dodgeball rookie sensation Dave’s home. He’s a good guy and really went all out in his party. It was pretty impressive, he even had a cauldron that let out an fine mist due to some dry ice. Very impressive.

What made this party so memorable to me was the age difference between me and the rest of the fine guests. During a match of dodgeball, age difference is harder to realize as we’re all just running and throwing for a few minutes once a week. But in a fine Halloween party (jawn) setting it becomes more noticeable.

I pretty much just stood behind my glorious unicorn mask and observed the ways of the young. It was pretty entertaining and thankfully the young Ricky and elder Kevin were on hand to converse with me. I didn’t stay too long, in fact I just abruptly left as Ricky would later call me out on. But it was a fun time while I hung in there. I was truly a grandpa unicorn.

The next night was another Halloween party at the Swift’s residence. This one would too turn out to be quite a fun time. Again I was a majestic unicorn. This night would however truly belong to the Honey Badgers. Nearly the entire dodgeball team was present at one time or another. It was pretty amazing to behold.

Soe stand out costumes to me were Jared who would transform into Bob Ross as the night great, Caitlin was a most amazingly well done Ms. Pac-man (and Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde), Dustin of course was Harry Pot-head, and Ricky was Quail man just to name a few. Though they were all pretty great and unique.

It turned out to be a pretty great time, and it was really nice to see most everyone on the team. They really are a pretty cool bunch.

So it turned out that I had a pretty eventful Halloween weekend.

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Adventure

Honey Badger Scavenger Hunt

Last night was our first every Honey Badgers Scavenger Hunt! We had a pretty great turnout, with current and past teammates as well as family members and friends too. I was very happy with the interest in the event and was glad to see it turned out well.

I decided to have the teams look for things on the OC boardwalk and beach, and take photos that they would have to share in person. I thought this would be easy, and also require some element of speed to cover as much ground as possible.

I also wanted to include some type of puzzles or riddles too. I was torn between a physical type of challenge or a mental one. I went the mental route with some riddles, a geometric puzzle and some trivia. I think it went over very well, and it was vey entertaining to watch the teams struggle with some of the questions. The triangle puzzle turned out to be the most challenging for most.

Then they had more things to find and take photos of for the last leg. I kinda wanted to mix up a scavenger hunt with the Amazing Race, and I do think it worked out well. Most teams seemed to finish up in an hour and a half or so.

The Meghan team were the victors in the end, narrowly edging out Jared and John B and Ginny, Dustin and Sean. It was very close, and I was very anxious to see just who would finish first!

Some stand out moments for me was watching the various teams try not to tip off the other teams. The frog with a crown and spinning wedding bears were both very funny for me to watch. Some teams just boldly took a photo, while others were a bit more convert and sneaking a photo in. Very funny to watch!

I’d deem this a very successful event and one that we will have to hold again!

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Sports

Dodgeball Week 1

Honey BadgerThe SJSL dodgeball league kicked off last night, and the Honey Badgers (our team) played 2 games to start the season. Let me start off by saying what a great bunch of teammates we’ve got. We somehow seem to really luck out with getting good people randomly assigned to our team. The 3 “new” girls were fantastic and perfect teammates, really look forward to playing more alongside them.

The first game was against the Terror Squad. They had some hard throwers on both their girl and guy sides. As a team we started pretty slow, but once we settled down and got the hang of the speed and the ball we won a few of the matches.

I personally got off to a pretty lousy start. I don’t think I threw a ball until the 3rd or 4th match. I spent too much time surveying the field and got hit with some pretty easy one’s early on. Once I settled in though, I let out some decent throws.

The Terror Squad won the game, but I could feel our team’s confidence grow as we played more matches. I was really proud of our girls. Lauren and the sisters Caitlin and Meghan were really aggressive running up to the line to get the ball make many throws. Katie and Stephanie played really great too, lot’s of courage on display.

Dodgeball is very tiring. The frantic pace of the games and playing 16 matches per game can really were you out. Our team somehow drew to play 2 games this night. Despite the fatigue, we were ready for our second game (against a fresh team that hadn’t played yet)!

The Lightning Donkeys greeted us for our second game of the night. A very unique aspect of their team is that they have no girls, just guys. So they played a handicapped game of 4 of their guys against our 5 girls. I’m not so sure that this format will be fair as the season goes on, but we’ll see.

Easily the highlight of the night was the first game pitting our 5 girls against 4 of their guys. I can genuinely say that I can’t easily recall a prouder moment than watching our girls play that first game. They were fearless! They sprinted up to the line and played tough the entire game. In an instant classic moment for the ages, we were down to just Caitlin and a few of their guys. Caitlin took them all out! It was amazing, she is truly my hero.

Our guys new settled down and wiser from our earlier game were able to handle their guys for all but one of our matches. I saw some much improved play by Jared and Kevin the iron man didn’t rest a single match last night (I how you still have an arm today).

I felt a lot more comfortable throwing and was pleased to of been able to take out a number of their guys, with a few clinching our victory. I still have to work on staying more alert and not being so reckless on the court, but the season is still earlier. Hopefully their is a Coach Emanski instructional VHS tape on the fundamentals of dodgeball I can watch.

In an ugly moment for the night Katie did get struck perfectly in the face by a very hard throw by one of the Lightning Donkeys. It was a pretty bad scene, she wasn’t at all pleased, but it was clearly an accident. He wasn’t trying to hit anyone in the head, but at the same time their guys didn’t have to throw quite so hard at our girls when they were playing against them.

All in all it was a great night. Big Mike launching some bone crushing throws, Dustin and Geoff with very solid play, great stuff. While a bit hectic at times, dodgeball is really shaping up to be one of the better ideas in a long time.

Honey Badgers don’t care!