Weekend Roundup
It was a huge 29-13 victory for the Bears last night in Indianapolis in what was a bit of a re-match of Super Bowl XLI. The scores were even similar, although reversed. For once Chicago looked like they were prepared to play. Last year against tough teams they tended to get away from the running game and start passing, which ended up in more turnovers and a defense that was on the field too much. The offense stayed with the run last night and Matt Forte (Cedric who?) had a great game. Orton was solid with no turnovers, and the defense was revved up and blitzing all night. It seemed like Peyton Manning was not at his best, and they did have a few injuries, but still the Bears weren’t gifted anything. The whole game was fun to watch, and it felt like a breath of fresh air after the foul smell of the past year and a half.
On Saturday Sara and I went to the Iowa game against Florida International, which was a 42-0 win. I thought the team played well, although it’s hard to tell how good they will be against ISU next weekend as well as all the usual Big 10 power-teams. We actually had decent seats and the weather, while cold in the morning, warmed up nicely during the game. As has become our tradition when we go to our one game a year, we parked at the mall and rode the Hawkeye Express to the stadium. Before the game we cruised the food vendors for brunch and Sara had a Pork Producers sandwich plus a corndog while I had a classic meat-on-a-stick and a 1/2lb pork tenderloin.
As for the Belgian Grand Prix, what can you say? Hamilton drove a superb race to make up for his early spin, catching and fighting with Raikkonen over the last few laps. I was yelling at the TV as they passed and re-passed each other, dodging other cars and going off the track as it began to rain and they were on dry tires. In the end Raikkonen crashed out on the second-to-last lap, giving the win to a deserving Hamilton. Or did he? Unbelievably, after the race the stewards made an atrocious decision to penalize the McLaren driver for cutting the chicane when he was trying to pass Raikkonen. Replays clearly showed that Hamilton ceeded back the position he gained before re-passing the Ferrari driver into the hairpin, to no avail. The end result was that he was demoted to third behind Massa and Heidfeld, although McLaren is appealing the decision. Looking back at the race it wasn’t surprising to see the stewards make that call (after all this is Formula 1, where all ties go to Ferrari) but it was extremely disappointing. If Lewis is to win the championship this year he will have to do it despite the governing body of the sport trying to tie his hands behind his back because he doesn’t drive for the red team.