Flashback Friday - Are You Ready For Some Football?!

I'm going with this post even though the Miami Dolphins are winless this year.  It's gonna be a long season.  I hope head coach Tony Sparano survives.

So here is this week's Friday Flashback.  It's actually Saturday, but who's counting?

In the fall of 1997 after returning from a six month deployment aboard the aircraft carrier USS JOHN F KENNEDY while attached to the VS-24 Scouts, a couple of friends from the squadron hopped in a car (minivan actually) and headed south from Jacksonville to Miami.  It was a fun football weekend to hang out with good friends and watch my beloved Dolphins play at Joe Robbie Stadium.  Or was it called Pro Player Park or Sunlife Stadium at the time?  I don't know.  Whatever company was paying the big bucks for naming rights at the time.

Anything we did with our squadron-mates was always fun - hanging out on the water, parties, going to see movies, road trips, working out or grabbing beers.  It really didn't matter what we did.  There's nothing like being around a great group of guys to make a long deployment out at sea that much more palatable.

There was something off about this particular football weekend though.  Carol was always able to hang with the boys well - actually out-hang a lot of them.  But this weekend, she seemed...tired.  Very unlike her usual energetic self.  It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that we unraveled the mystery of her massive wide-mouthed yawns - she was pregnant!  We were absolutely shocked.  Nope, we weren't trying to have a baby at the time.  I should've known that the odds of slipping one past the goalie were greatly enhanced after being deployed for six months.  And so this is one of the first pictures of Carol with the little "Pinto Bean" inside her.  We nicknamed the baby Pinto Bean because when we found out Carol was pregnant with CJ, the doctor informed us that the baby was currently the size of a pinto bean.

BTW, that's our good friend Speedy on the right.  He spent most of the game looking at the red-headed cheerleader on the sideline through some binoculars.

Here is Knobby, Fran and Whip.  Fran was kind enough to let us load up in her minivan for the trip.  I gotta say, those things aren't sexy but man are they convenient.  Fran was always a ball to be around.  Our seats at Fruit of the Loom Stadium weren't great.  Matter of fact, our seats were almost the furthest away from the field that you could possibly be.  I say almost because that specific honor belonged to the people just two rows behind us.  Of course we had to turn around and tell those people that their seats really sucked.  That made us feel a little bit better.

Anyway, even though my team is struggling - and has struggled for the last decade or so - I am absolutely ready for some football.  Go Dolphins!