Love, hockey, and mugs - a love story

Susan and I first met in a bar.

It was spring 1993. My beleaguered and beloved Toronto Maple Leafs had somehow caught on fire, made the NHL playoffs, and knocked off two top teams and improbably had made it to the third round. Since I did not have cable, I realized that I was going to have to find a sports bar to watch what could have been history in the making, and so I found myself at the Irish Pub in Ashland, Oregon in the midst of a huge crowd of rabid basketball fans.

The Portland Trailblazers were doing extremely well that spring, and much to my chagrin, the three television sets in the bar were all showing the Blazers game. As I sipped my beer, I noticed that nobody was watching the tv in the middle of the bar. Everyone was watching the game on the sets at either end of the bar.

Summoning up my courage, I asked the bartender to switch the middle tv set to the hockey game. She was incredulous. "I'll get killed if I turn the Blazer game off!" she said. "Look around," I said. "Nobody is watching that tv behind you!" She looked at the crowd, leaned towards me and said "OK. I'll put it on hockey, with no sound. If I get one complaint it goes back to the Blazers game. Got it?"

Fortunately not a soul there noticed the game had been switched. By the end of the evening I had made several new friends who had also come in to see hockey. We started meeting at the bar to watch subsequent games, and one night a lovely gal came along with them. We have pretty much been together every day since we met all those years ago. Alas, the Leafs did not get the Cup that year, and it turns out that they have never come closer to winning it since then.

One Christmas Susan gave me a Leafs mug. Perhaps one of these springs I will fill it with champagne and raise a toast to a Leaf's Stanley Cup victory, though it's now looking more and more likely that  my days will be over long before the Leafs win the Cup again. Clearly, though, I owe the Leafs my loyalty for life - I never would have met the love of my life without their surprising performance in the spring of '93.

A year ago, I made Susan this personalized love mug and it's become one of her favorites. Last night, we watched a hockey game, and just before we went to bed Susan told me that she had been looking at my blog and thought that I should do a post on her love mug. So here it is Suz, a lovely mug for a lovely, lovely soul.

A Potter's List

I took some time this morning to come up with a list of all the steps I take to make a mug, plus a few other extra things I have to do more or less on a daily basis in running Mug Revolution.

The next list I make is going to be my Christmas list!

But I think I'll rest up before doing that, for some reason I feel somewhat tired after reading through the list...

Cycling Stories

It was my great pleasure recently to add a new mug to the "Mainstay Mugs" section at mugrevolution.com - The Cycling Mug. This was a particularly rewarding project to take on, as cycling has been and continues to be a very important and enjoyable part of my life.

In the early 90's, I was going through a pretty tough divorce. My kids were very young and I had long periods of time without seeing them, even though my ex and I lived in the same town. The whole concept of visitation rights, lawyers, and the court system were pretty overwhelming and I found myself being pretty bummed out.

The biggest part of the problem for me was that I had moved to Oregon from Toronto, and virtually all of my friends in Oregon had been friends with my wife first...loyalties entered in to the picture, and you can guess the rest. Needless to say, I was suddenly very alone.

As time went by, I started thinking about bicycle racing, but dismissed the notion as I thought I was too old to start racing. (ahh, what I would give now to be back in my early thirties again!) However, the thought persisted, and in time I decided to join a racing club in Southern Oregon.

At first I was terrible, but I found that I had found a fantastic group of new friends, a lot of whom I am still very close with. With the support and encouragement of the cycling community in the Siskiyou Wheelmen, I had a two wonderful years of road racing in the lower categories. My goal was to upgrade to a higher category, which I did after winning the silver medal for the State of Oregon road race in 1994. (Trust me, it sounds a lot more prestigious than it really was.) From that point on, racing was sheer agony for me as I could never make the adjustments and new demands that higher competition demanded. A painful non-cycling related injury cut my second season short, and not long after I moved to Bend, Oregon, and never raced competitively again.

I still love cycling, and often ride my bike around town while doing errands. I even take mug orders to the post office via the bike whenever I can. I've done several week long cycle tours over the years which can only be described as amazing. And I love how much I can eat without penalty when I'm putting in the miles!

Now that you know some of my cycling background, you may be able to understand my excitement with The Cycling Mug. It's pretty cool that I had help from a graphic designer friend on the design, and she just rode her bike across the U.S. this past summer! Check her blog out!

I should market the mug with this tag line: "This mug is designed and made by cyclists, for cyclists!"

Now all I need to do is come up with a logo mug for potters. "Made by a potter, for potters." Or would it be better to come up with a "Passion Mug"? "Made by a passionate craftsman for passionate people!" Hey, not a bad idea...

If you're a passionate cyclist or want to get a mug for someone who is, you can take a look at the product page over at the website. Check over on the Facebook Fan Page for a discount coupon code, available until Oct. 31st, 2010.