Contact John Fisher 716-374-1606 for information and to purchase.
Gloves
Add caption
Make: Mission
Size: 9"
Price: $10
Make: Easton
Size: Youth 10"
Price: $10
Make: Easton
Size: Youth 11"
Price: $10
Elbow Pads
Make: Easton
Size: Youth Medium
Price: $10
Make: Graf
Size: Jr. Sm/Med
Price: $5
Make: Bauer Vapor
Size: Jr. Small
Price: $10
Shoulder Pads
Make: Reebok Size: Jr. Medium Price: $15
Make: Easton Size: Youth Small Price: $15
Make: Easton Size: Youth Medium (runs a bit small) Price: $15
Make: Bauer Size: Jr. Medium (Fits height 4'5" to 4'9" and chest 28" to 32" Price: $15
Make: Graf Size: Jr. Medium Price: $15 Shinpads
Make: Bauer Vapor XVI Size: 11" (Jr. Medium, 9 to 12 yrs old) Price: $10
Make: Sherwood T-90 Size: 12" (jr.) Price: $10
Make: Bauer Nexus Size: 12" Price: $10
Make: Easton Size: 9" Price: $10 Pants
CCM Supra Jr. Large (26" waist) Price: $10
Reebok Jr. Medium 24"-27" waist For height 4'8" to 5'2" (two pair of these) Price: $10
Easton Youth Small 20" to 22" waist Price: $10
Skates Various Sizes - will be posted soon.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Canadian Invasion: June 25, 1994 at Griffis Sculpture Park
Lowest of the Low. 54:40. Spirit of the West. Pursuit of Happiness. Watchmen. Rose Chronicles
If you grew up listening to the alternative music station CFNY 102.1 from Toronto, then you heard songs from these bands every day.
The concert at Griffis Sculpture Park in Ashford Hollow, NY (near Springville) ranks among one of the most memorable concert days I've ever been to.
The concert itself was a mudfest: the music began under cloudy, rainy skies accompanied by an unseasonably chilly breeze. I've never been one for concerts at huge venues like indoor hockey arenas or football stadiums. I prefer smaller settings like the Tralf Music Hall, the Town Ballroom, Faherty's and Nietsche's, all great places to watch bands in Buffalo. Griffis Sculpture Park was a very unique venue. Yellow school buses ferried concertgoers from the parking lot to a field, then from there we walked to a sloping field where the stage was set up. The view at the top of the hill was of the Boston, NY hills. A cool setting for a day's worth of good music. But what are these bands doing now? A few of the bands continue to perform together, while members of some of the bands have also branched off and released solo recordings or with other bands. For some, as the narrator always said in each episode of VH-1's "Behind the Music:" Offstage, things were falling apart. The Lowest of the Low broke up around 1995, but have since gotten back together for various shows. Ron Hawkins and Stephen Stanley from that band continue to compose and tour separately. 54:40, Blue RodeoandSpirit of the West continue to tour but have slowed down a bit, apparently due to side projects of many of the band members. Fans of Spirit of the West were saddened to hear John Mann announce in September of 2014 that he's suffering from early stage Alzheimer's. Sad news to be sure, but they continue to put on a great show. One of my all-time favorite bands. They'll play at Niagara-on-the-Lake in late August, 2015.
There isn't much online about The Pursuit of Happiness past 2005, when the band recorded a song or two for its greatest hits release, but it seems for all intents and purposes the band stopped playing in 1995. The Watchmen played together until 2009 (at least according to its website). And, finally, perhaps the strangest end to one of the bands that performed at the Canadian Invasion occurred to the Rose Chronicles. The band broke up among discord in 1996. Most recently, however, its former guitarist Richard Maranda is ontrial in Canada on charges of killing his father.
Thanks to the magic of YouTube, parts of this historical show are captured on video. Search the crowds; you may recognize yourself or your friends. See below.
If you were at the show, please post a comment and let me know what you remember from that day.
Cheers!
54:40
Blue Rodeo. This seems to be their last song of their set: Five Days in May.
Rose Chronicles
There's also a pretty good report from the show:
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Rocky Sail to Port Maitland
Last month, one of the racing yachts in the Volvo Ocean Race2014-15 slammed into a reef in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The $6 million yacht, Team Vestas Wind, was sailing along at 19 knots in the dark when she hit craggy rocks about 250 nautical miles from the island of Mauritius. The crew was rescued two days later.
It’s hard to believe that a seasoned professional crew,
driving a brand new, multi-million dollar boat loaded with the latest navigation
electronics would make such a horrible mistake.
But, as the saying goes, if a sailor says he hasn’t run aground, he’s
either lying or he just hasn’t done it yet.
The grounding, which was dramatically caught on video, made
me recall the first time my navigational error and carelessness caused me to
hit bottom.
I wasn’t driving a state-of-the-art racing yacht with GPS
navigational charts at 19 knots. I was sailing a 21-year-old sailboat with a broken knotmeter and a depthmeter that looked like a clock. My sailing experience was four years old, limited mostly to day cruises on sunny
days or under beautiful sunsets just a mile or so off Buffalo Harbor.
Although we and the boat came away from our grounding uninjured, it was a very nerve-wracking few minutes. Here’s what happened:
There were eight of us on a sailing weekend aboard Second Epic, my 1987 Newport 30-III – my
two brothers, Brian and Kevin; my brother-in-law Brian; and my four nephews,
Tim and Andrew Short, and Dan and Patrick Fisher.
Our original plan was to sail from Buffalo to
Port Colborne’s Sugarloaf Harbour Marina, which we had done the year before. Unfortunately, after confirming the weekend with the guys, I
had not realized that Port Colborne’s annual celebration, known as Canal Days, occurred
on the same weekend. It’s a very popular
weekend for the marina, with boaters and sailors coming from different marinas
to party all weekend, so all of the transient slips were booked.
Arial view of Port Maitland and the entrance to the Grand River
After learning that the marina in Port Colborne was booked
up, we decided to go farther west along the Canadian coastline to Port
Maitland, then motor up the
Grand River to a marina in Dunnville. It looked like a long trip, but everyone was
excited for the adventure.
We cast off lines at 7 a.m. from Buffalo. Winds began light, but picked up around lunch
time and we were enjoying a 13-hour sail to Point Maitland.
Although I knew how long we had to sail, I didn't really appreciate how long we had to sail....The ride took hours. As we passed Port Colborne and finally made our way closer to Rock Point, a few miles before Port Maitland, I had noticed a buoy far out to port –
much farther than I wanted to travel. We'd have to turn away from our destination just to make it around the buoy. The wind and waves had increased a bit during the afternoon and we were all getting tired and ansty to make landfall.
It was about 1700 hours (5 p.m.), I was at the helm, and even though we were looking forward to getting to the marina, we were all enjoying a great sail. I soon could clearly see the lighthouse and breakwall of Port Maitland emerge on the horizon.
A few minutes later, I noticed the needle on my old depth
meter begin to descend from 60 feet, where it had been for hours. The dial moved a bit fast, down to 50 feet, 45 feet, 30 feet.
Suddenly, the dial on the depth meter dropped to 15
feet. My brother-in-law Brian was
standing next to me at the wheel. “I think we need to
tack out soon,” I said.
“That’s a good idea,” Brian replied.
He had no sooner said that when suddenly: CLUNK! The boat
lurched forward. The rig shook. We had hit bottom. Solid rock. There was a grinding sound as the keel scraped along the shoal.
I panicked. I left
the helm, jumped below and checked the bilge.
Still dry. I ran up and scanned
the horizon. We were the only boat on
the lake. What do we do now, I thought.
Brian Short took over. “Everyone
get to the bow,” he said. Everyone did as he said, and I took the
wheel back from him. He told me to turn the wheel all the way to the right as he let out the boom.
Second Epic bobbed in the waves, clunking along and scraping
the bottom as she changed direction.
After a few seconds, her bow was pointing toward the open lake and the
awful scraping stopped. I spun the wheel to center and she sailed off the rock and gained speed. I watched the depthmeter quickly dial back to 60 feet. It was several minutes before anyone said anything. We had likely been stuck for less than a minute, but it felt like a long time. I think my heart didn't stop pounding until the next morning.
We made it safely to Dunnville Boat Club as the sun was setting at 2030 hours. I told the watchman at the boat club what had happened.
Second Epic at Dunnville Boat Club, the morning after the grounding
"Oh, people do that all the time," he said. "One guy set his autopilot using his GPS straight for the harbor entrance and didn't pay attention. He sunk his boat."
When the season was over in September and the boat was lifted out of the water, I checked out the hull and the keel. There was light scraping at the front edge of the keel, but that was it. We had been lucky. Much luckier than the crew of Team Vestas Wind a few weeks ago.
Heavy, dark clouds to the south of us made their way single
file toward the east. For a few seconds,
small rain drops spattered onto and around us, almost discouraging us from
taking the boat out.
Just south of us, against the abandoned grain mill on the
east side of the City Ship Canal, a rainbow entered the water. I’d never been so close to a rainbow, and I
can tell you, there was no pot o’ gold sitting on the canal’s service,
either.
A few minutes later the sky directly west of us began to
lighten up again.
We – my brother Kevin and I – dropped the lines and motored
out, north in the canal, past the vestiges of Buffalo’s history as a major
Great Lakes port, and by the new Canalside, which is a new, vibrant park along
Buffalo’s Inner Harbor.
The wind was from the southwest, a steady 10 –to-12 knot
wind, Force 3-ish on the Beaufort, the sky now blue and the sun the yellow
color of early evening.
After passing the outer breakwall (the North Gap), we
unfurled and trimmed the sails, set the course on a close reach with our only
goal to have a nice relaxing sail.
I looked west toward Canada, and southwest to the horizon,
the open lake. The storm had scared all
other boats away for the night.
Innisfree was the only boat out there.
The water rushed by the hull, boiled at the stern and fell away with a
gurgle. I went below to turn on some
music, but my brother told me to keep it off so he could hear the sound.
We sailed in silence for a while. I was able to forget about my long list of
tasks at work, the never-ending deadlines and the need to please everyone.
On the way back, a few projects crept back into my
head. At least for a while I left them
all in our wake.
Last night was the first time I’ve ever had the Coast Guard come
aboard.
My four kids and I were headed back to the dock from a nice Friday
night sail; the sun was between the clouds and the horizon, so there was a nice
orange glow in the sky.Michele, my
wife, was at a dinner party so it was just our kids and I out on the boat.
On our way back into the Inner Harbor, as we passed the Little Rock, I
noticed a small Coast Guard boat
head in our direction.As we motored
slowly toward the City Ship Canal, it passed us, turned around and came up on
our portside stern quarter.Two
Coastguardsmen stood on the rail of the powerful boat as it approached.
"Have you been boarded by the Coast Guard this season?" one
of them called out to me.
After I answered no, he said, "Permission to board your
vessel?"
I didn't think I had a choice.
After they asked me the best spot on the boat to come aboard, the
helmsman steered his boat directly against ours.The Coast Guard boat’s hull is wrapped in a
rubber bumper, which allows the helmsman to drive up and basically rub against
the hull of our boat without damaging it.
My 14-year-old daughter looked frightened, the same look she had when I
was pulled over for speeding in 2006 coming back from my sister's house in
Dayton.
My 12-year-old son came bounding up the companionway steps to tell me
something, when he saw the two guys with guns at their sides; he stopped dead
in his tracks, his eyes wide.
Their sisters continued playing and laughing below, unaware that we
were just boarded.
The men explained that they were doing a safety check, I could keep
heading to our dock and they’ll be off quickly.I thought it was nice that one of them asked me if it was “OK” that he
step down into the cockpit of our boat.Very polite.
The two went to work, asked for my license, whether I had enough life
vests on board for everyone, where my flares were, looked for my fire
extinguishers, other life equipment, went below and checked the engine
compartment, etc.
During the whole time, I wasn’t nervous, but I wasn’t totally calm
inside, either.I wasn’t sure what would
happen if they found something amiss, and I was pretty sure I was fully
compliant with the safety equipment and rules, but there is still the
uncertainty….
As we headed down the Ship canal, I knew I was in for a difficult
docking since the wind was coming from a direction I wasn’t used to. I was
hoping they were planning on staying until we docked.But after about 10 minutes, they were done,
thanked me for my time, hailed their boat over, and jumped off.
As my first blog entry, I'm kicking it off as a #TBT post. I wrote this in spring of 1990 as a junior at John Carroll University. It was late in the evening, dark out, as I headed back to my dorm from Grasselli Library. The night was warm and when I looked up into the sky, I was struck by the numerous stars. I had begun thinking alot about my future, what to do with my life, where it was going, and conceived this poem as I imagined myself on a beach, under the stars, comtemplating what was to come of my life. This poem appeared in the John Carroll literary magazine, The Carroll Quarterly , in 1990 or 1991. Star-Thoughts
Under the black blanket of night
spotted with the lint-like stars,
I sit, listening to the clicking of the crickets,
not alone,
but in the company of contemplative thoughts,
thinking of things which enlighten, frighten, mystify me.
Memories of the past,
moments of the present,
and Possibilities of the future twinkle in my mind
and set my soul upon a quest
to work the world as it's not.
As numerous as the stars are my dreams and hopes;
The cold ground holds reality
to which the crickets call me back and tell me
here is now, and there, are things to be.
Life is living reality.
Time trickles through my fingers
as the sand gets colder, harsher to sit on.
In the East dawns a delicate day of expectations realized and crushed,
Opportunities seized and missed.
Star-thoughts fade and forgot, the day embraced and kissed.
Make: Reebok
Make: Easton
Make: Easton
Make: Bauer
Make: Graf
Make: Bauer Vapor XVI
Make: Sherwood T-90
Make: Bauer Nexus
Make: Easton
CCM Supra 
Reebok Jr. Medium
Easton Youth Small 
