Pimpin' Blueland!

So I decided to wear my "Welcome to Blueland" t-shirt that they gave out on the first homegame of the season. Everyone on campus looks at me like I'm crazy or weird because I'm wearing a Thrashers shirt and the season is over. So what?!? I still love my Thrashers, and despite the fact we didn't make the playoffs, it still was one HELLUVA season, and I don't care if it's the dog...excuse me...Dawg days of summer...I'm still going to wear my Thrashers gear and wear it proudly. Anyone that just stops wearing Thrashers stuff because the season is over...well... they are just bandwagon fans.
But, wearing this shirt always reminds me of that first game back... the first game back after the lockout. The total awesomeness of seeing ICE on the floor of Philips Arena. I was thinking to myself: How the HELL did I live without THIS for an ENTIRE YEAR?!? Man. It was SO great to have hockey back! It almost seemed like during the entire year when there was no hockey that it was just a weird skew in the timeline, like the alternate 1985 in Back to the Future II!
That first game back... the lines outside and in CNN Center were insane... and the emotion of the crowd and the players was incredible. It was great to just have hockey back in Atlanta!!!!

But, as I noticed all season, 99% of the time, during intermission, Thrash would shoot out t-shirts to the crowd. But 99% of the time, it was ALWAYS... ALWAYS on the corporate side of the arena. In other words, he would always shoot t-shirts mostly to the crowd on that side...leaving no chance in hell for people on the other side to get t-shirts. Oh well.

I also remember, one day we were eating lunch over on Broad Street and Thrash was out mingling with the lunch crowd. This was a few days or weeks before the season had started. He came over to us and my girlfriend snapped a really cool photo of Thrash eating my head off with his beak. There was even a homeless guy singing for money, but he could sing really well, and Thrash went over to sing and dance with him... it was really funny. I told Thrash I was a season ticket holder, so he gave me a huge high five and a huge thumbs up. I was the only one on Broad Street with a Thrashers shirt on, so he really loved me that day ;-)

Ahh, the fond memories of the first Thrashers game after the lockout: The crowd was electric and it was a kick ass moment in history.

I'm already looking very much forward to the first game of the 06-07 season!!

Anyone have a flying DeLorean with a Flux Capacitor? ;-)