I'm back home from my 3 day trip to AZ for the Mesa Police & Fire Games. We played ice hockey and came home with a bronze medal. It should have been silver but we had a bad combo of very poor/biased officiating and a bad shorthanded goal scored during a penalty caused by said poor/biased officiating. We would not have won the gold because there was one team that was simply head and shoulders above every other team. It was actually painful to play against them. All in all though it was tons of fun. We played 5 games in 3 days. Needless to say my legs are sore. We played the first 4 games at an amazing facility in Scottsdale called the Alltel Ice Den. It has two sheets of NHL sized ice, a great pro shop, nice locker rooms, a gym, a pizza restaurant, and a very nice snack bar. The facility was clean and very well kept. It's where the Phoenix Coyotes practiced before they moved to their new home in Glendale.

The other aspects the trip were great too. It's always fun spending some time on the road with your boys and hanging out. SuperGreg was an outstanding host and his buddies are cool dudes. Some of my team were very impressed with SG and his local hookups. SG's pad is pimperific. He keeps an immacculate home just as his X5 is spotless with all of its 18,500 or so miles on it. His puppy Zema behaved herself and thankfully she did not try to eat me. Thanks again Greg! Your hospitality was appreciated.

SG and I also went to the local Lexus dealer and test drove an IS3 50. I've got to say that I was very impressed. The back seats are indeed very cramped and there is still a very Japanese car feel to it but otherwise, it's a great car. The performance is amazing. It just scoots! It's very smooth and the ride is very nice. The steering is a little light for us who are used to the almost perfect steering feel of a BMW. The features on the car are incredible and nothing the E90 can touch. There are options that you can't even get on the E60's. The ventilated seats are very nice when you want to keep your junk cool, the nav is outstanding and it has full voice control as does the HVAC and stereo system. We didn't play with it much but the salesperson demonstrated how you can tell the HVAC to go "cooler" and it does it. Sweet! The backup camera is very trick too. I must say that having driven an E90 330 Sport 6 speed, it is a better driver's car but the IS 350 is very, very hard to pass up. For the same money you can get the IS 350 with all of those bells and whistles I listed while the 330i would be navless and couldn't possibly have ventilated seats. We'll see what I bite on....

On another car note, SG and I took a rocket ride in his friend's E55. Holy crap is that thing fast! We jumped on the freeway and I swore we were going to take flight. We blasted from nothing to 140 in about a blink or two and it made the other cars look like they were parked on the freeway.

Anyway, sorry for the long read. It's good to be home.

PS: If anyone watched the men's final of the Pacific Life Open tennis tournament with Roger Federer and James Blake today, you probably saw me and the wife sitting about 5 rows up from the court just off of mid-court to the umpires left. Federer cleaned up and took home $490,000.

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