Betting During The Bye Week

Ahhhhhhh, November...a lovely time of year on Cape Cod.

If you go to the Cape, locals will tell you that just after Columbus Day is the best time to visit. The roads are clear, the restaurants are happy to see you, we get our fall foliage late, and the stores are having sales so the owners can snowbird off to Florida.

The New Yorkers are also gone. That's not a dig on the Rotten Apple, just a reminder that Boston and NY don't play together very well, and a good place to see that illustrated is on any Cape Cod road. One of the few non-war things Boston and NY agree upon is that we are also happy that the Connecticut people are gone.

Note that the "Cape Cod is better in late October" theory isn't based around laying on a beach or seeing girls in thongs. That's actually best done Before Labor Day.

Once November rolls around, however, things start to get Pretty Vacant down here on the sandy spit. Late October through mid April is Storm Season where this Beast is from, and that pretty much rules the roost. There really isn't that much else to do here, other than wager heavily on football.

I used to even bet the high school games, although that generally goes poorly for me in a karma way. My girlfriend wasn't thrilled with me betting on high school games. When my last newspaper column was terminated, the reason for the termination was (something I said in) a high school betting article. The last time a priest yelled at me, it was when I was loudly betting $500 in the bleachers on a field goal attempt at the 2008 Duxbury/Marshfield game on Thanksgiving.

Some things, as they say, are best left to the professionals. With that in mind, let's go through this week's NFL schedule and see what looks wageriffic.

11/9 1:00 ET Dallas -7 Jacksonville
At London 45.5

This game may have already happened, I get confused with English games. I generally don't bet any game that doesn't happen on American soil, although I run more action than I would care to admit through Liberia. Put me in a corner, and I'd take Dallas and the under.

Dallas, 28-16

11/9 1:00 ET At Detroit -2.5 Miami 43.5

There are maybe a thousand Tale Of Two Cities tangents to be made here, but we'll stick to football unless I think of something funny. Detroit is getting Megatron back, and that should be enough to beat the Fish by at least a FG. That will knock Miami back to a pair of games off our tail.

Detroit, 27-17

11/9 1:00 ET Kansas City -1.5 At Buffalo 42

As nice as the recent Pats resurgence has been, it's a bit scary to think that we are one little bump in the road from Buffalo tying us for first place....assuming that they win the game while we're on the bye week, which is this one. Unfortunately, they are Buffalo for a reason.

KC, 17-14

11/9 1:00 ET At New Orleans -5 San Francisco 49

Until Provincetown gets a team, this is sort of the de facto Gay City Super Bowl. Always bet the over in those situations.

49ers, 28-27

11/9 1:00 ET At Baltimore -10 Tennessee 44

I think Tennessee has been bad since we beat them in the playoffs back when Jeff Fisher's beard froze, have drafted only one impact player since, and that guy is now coming off the bench in New York. You really have to EARN those double digit point spreads, especially if you aren't exactly playing the 86 Bears or anything.

Baltimore, 21-10

11/9 1:00 ET Pittsburgh -4 At NY Jets 47

Disclaimer: Raised Catholic. If Big Ben throws 6 TDs again, he'll have a 6-6-6 line over the last three weeks, will become the Anti-Christ, and part of me is wondering if any of his victims is maybe carrying around or- God forbid- nurturing a Demon Seed. If TMZ is still into sports, they should have someone tracking those women.

Pittsburgh, 34-14

11/9 1:00 ET Atlanta -2.5 At Tampa Bay 46.5

The only hillbilly joke I know is too evil to say here, but it ends: "I didn't say i was gon' take you to Florida, I said I was gon' Tampa with you."

Atlanta, 27-10

11/9 4:05 ET Denver -11 At Oakland 50

Boy, would I hate to be the team that plays Denver after that soul-stomping they took in the nor'easter last week.

Denver, 54-14

11/9 4:25 ET At Arizona -6.5 St. Louis 43

I bet that someone in Sam Bradford's group of friends has a quiet bet made as to whether Sam is injured simply watching this game.

Arizona, 10-7

11/9 4:25 ET At Seattle -9 NY Giants 44.5

The Giants are the only NY team that I don't actively hate, and watching them fall apart is almost-but-not-quite payback enough for those Super Bowls. I may require an LT-style legbreaking sack of the Manning whelp, and even then I might only be happy if Chandler Jones does it.

Seattle, 30-10

11/9 8:30 ET At Green Bay -7 Chicago 53.5

It's sad that the State Farm guys raided both Saturday Night Live and Cheers, and the funniest person in any of their commercials is the anonymous girl who is like, "Oh, you're a dancer?" when Aaron complains that someone is stealing his Discount Double Check touchdown dance in their very first commercial of the series.

Green Bay, 35-21

11/10 8:30 ET At Philadelphia -6.5 Carolina 48

Ahhhh.... if there's one thing that can get me through a bye week, it's the prospect of Dirty Sanchize starting a Monday Night Football game against a good defense that has had a week to prepare for him. I could start doing Dabs now, never stop until kickoff, and would still not be high enough to excuse how hard I'll be laughing if he gets the ball hiked off his face, or if he runs into the goalpost like Alan Alda in Paper Lion.

Carolina, 18-17

Nor'easter Update, And The First Snow of The Season Is Falling

It's not a terrible storm, but it definitely gets one's attention.

November comes in like a lion, as a rough nor'easter is whaling on eastern Massachuetts. There are numerous power outages, localized flooding, and tree branches down everywhere.

Our big problem is the wind. We're getting 40-65 mph gusts. My power keeps blowing out in Buzzards Bay. I'm not alone, as there are thousands without power across Cranberry County.

The worst of it is on the Upper Cape, where the majority of the outages are happening. The epicenter seems to be a Bourne-to-Barnstable swath. See for yourself with the NSTAR Outage Map.

There was also a tree across Route 6 East between exits 5 and 6, but I assume that someone has cleared it out by now.

Thanks to Eric Murphy for the camera work up in Brant Rock. That's local landmark Arthur and Pat's, up to their knees in the Atlantic.

We still have several Warnings out from the National Weather Service, including a Gale Warning, a High Wind Warning, and an about-to-expire Coastal Flood Warning. The coastal flooding should be done by 10 AM or so, so worry only if your beach faces north.

We also have a Special Weather Statement to the effect of eastern Massachusetts being due for 1-2" of snow in the early afternoon hours. This is more for Plymouth and Bristol Counties than Barnstable or Dukes Counties.

Remember, the first snow of the year is a sort of holiday, where none of us are used to driving in snow and we crash and skid a lot. We look sort of like when Georgia gets snow, although by the second snowfall of the season, we're all experts again.

Overall, on the scale we use here, this storm was a straight C. Keep in mind, the Perfect Storm was only an A- on this scale, as an A+ would be something we'd need Noah for. A grade of C is a pretty good storm.

The nastiness is heading to Maine, where I'm already being told that there is a fishing boat missing/sunk.

The weather should stick around long enough to make a muck/mess of the Patriots game this afternoon. Of note is the fact that legendary weather wuss Peyton Manning is in town, and he most likely sighed in despair when he woke up this morning and heard that wind howling.

We'll be back with an update if it is necessary.

UPDATE: Fuck a duck! It's snowing right now!

Southeast Massachusetts Fall Foliage

Gettin' My Peep On...

Southeastern Massachusetts is technically New England, but it is very different from the Vermont-style New England. This is especially true for foliage.

Much like how one doesn't go to Vermont to watch an ocean storm, one also tends to avoid Southeastern New England when planning foliage drives. God planned it that way. It's the Berkshire's revenge for not having beaches.

It's tough to blame someone for this. You would be much better served going to New Hampshire for their peak foliage season than you would be going to Plymouth on Halloween.

No offense to Cranberry County, but we have several factors working against us when it comes to foliage. With the Vermont/ocean storm comparison, it's fairly simple: Vermont doesn't have an ocean. With SE Massachusetts, it's more complex.

For starter's, we have the wrong kind of trees. While it gets worse the closer you get to the coast, the main problem is that our dominant tree is the Pine. Pine trees are cool, but they don't turn red like a Maple tree does.

Part of that problem is the sandy soil, part of it is the higher coastal winds. Pines grow in sandy soil, and pine needles catch less wind (and take down less tree branches) than trees which have broader leaves. Even in optimal conditions, we have difficulty providing a God Shot for a leaf-peeper.

We also have the wrong time of year for peak foliage. Vermont and Maine peak in September. Cape Cod peaks after Halloween. That is a month and change of October weather, which we're just about to get to.

We have the wrong weather for fall foliage. SE Massachusetts has almost no chance of making it to Halloween without a rain/wind event that blows the leaves (and especially the broad, colorful ones) off of the trees. Generally, by Devil's Night, you need to look to the ground if you want to see colorful leaves in Falmouth.

Don't believe me? Look!

However, all is not lost. You can get your peep on in Cranberry County. You just have to know where to look.

You're not going to get any sweeping mountain views. Our lakes tend to be surrounded by pine as well, at least the ones I visited. SE Massachusetts foliage viewing is best done more by marathon driving where you look for little bursts of color.

If foliage were football, New Hampshire would be a dynasty team like the 60s Packers or the 70s Steelers. Massachusetts, she's more like a Pop Warner team that tries really hard and makes a cool play now and then. This is especially true the further east one goes.

We apologize for that, and will try to make up for it with beach days and cranberry bogs. We want you happy when you're here.

We tried a few different Peep Drives. We tend to go Rural when we Peep, although we some some excellent but not-that-nature-looking red trees outside a Shaw's Supermarket. Here are the basic routes we took, always starting from Buzzards Bay:

- Route 195 to Fall River (Fall River isn't really known for their foliage, but we needed some Lizzie Borden House shots for the Halloween article), then Route 81 or something into Tiverton, RI (Cranberry County crosses state lines now and then, when it suits us), then Route 6 back to B-Bay.

- Route 495 to Route 105, which we followed into Halifax, then Route 106 to Kingston, followed by 53 and 3A to the North Hill Nature Reserve in Duxbury, followed by Rte 3A back to Bourne, and Rte 6 back to Buzzards Bay.

- Route 495 to Rte 58 in Hanson, then a sort of Route 27/36/14 mix where we were mostly scoping out numerous Pembroke lakes, then 3 South back to the Cape.

I should add that we are providing a valuable public service. There's a storm coming, and that storm will probably be All She Wrote for foliage in Massachusetts. We didn't have much foliage left after the last storm, and this storm looks to be equal or greater. The season will be over tonight, when the winds pick up.

We'll do a storm article after the storm starts, we're too new to be breaking news to anyone yet. Maybe after we get some followers...

Anyhow, we were out as late as Friday afternoon taking pics, so we got the grand finale for a leaf peeper in this part of the state.

Cranberry County does have some nice scenery. While we lack the sweeping mountain views, we have farms, hills, forests and shorelines where the colors make their stand.

If we were Maple Syrup County Magazine, you'd be much better off today. We aren't, however. We'll make up for it with ocean storm photos tonight, I promise. I'll head out to a north-facing beach at high tide, see what I can do with a phone-cam.

We're not really awesome writers, nor are we awesome photographers. Our chief skill is being centrally located, having free time, and our willingness to drive into the heart of the story. Leaf-peeping is an easy-if-lengthy process, but storm chasing has put me near death more than once.

It's that kind of mindset that eventually leads us to a Black Tree.

Note the high tech camera work visible in the rear view mirror. That tree was actually blacker IRL than it came out in the pic, but that's how the cookie crumbles, kids. The leaves will probably blow off of it tonight.

But enough talk of Storms and Black Trees. We are here to see color, not the absence of light.

Before I forget, the pics, in order from the top, are Duxbury, Hanson , Marion, Middleboro, Monponsett, Carver, and Monponsett one more time.

This pic below is, and I'm working from memory here, Plympton.

We'll be doing a whole article or three on the cranberry harvest, we only have that shot in there because i was playing with photo editing.

Plympton is one of my favorite towns. It has nothing at all to offer aside from peace and quiet. When I was teaching, I gave the kids a Mapquest assignment to find the most isolated house in what we are now calling Cranberry County. Several of the kids, independent of each other, drew their focus onto some farmer in Plympton who was a mile from his neighbors... who, I might add, were pretty isolated themselves.

Plympton has some cool farms, which I'd take my ghetto students to when I wanted them to see cows or corn growing. There are about 10 kids (adults now) from Cambridge and Roxbury who have disproportionate knowledge about an isolated cow town that they most likely will never visit or encounter again. It's probably for the best.

This is a tree from Bournedale, It's in front of a beautiful lake, but you'll never see it because the tree is on a treacherous corner and there is nowhere safe to stand near it... short of inviting ourselves into someone's yard. I shot this out of the window of a moving car.

Sometimes, a journalist has to work from a car. This is especially true when writing Fall Foliage articles. We'd rather give you a wide-ranging tour of the region, rather than one where we walk a lot in a single forest. We tried that in Duxbury, and saw not one color aside from green.

That's even more true for snow pictures, as we'd have to work a lot to cover 100 yards in a blizzard. We'd also kill the camera, which is what we did in that blizzard last year. That's why you see Jessica shooting a phone out the window in the Black Tree shot up above.

Our two upgrades will be a waterproof camera and an old-school Jeep Cherokee for the beach work. That's probably going to have to wait until Christmas, however.

Once we get better gear, we'll go further North for our leaf peeping. However, I love this corner of the state, you just have to work a little harder.

We did go crazy with the cam in Bourne. We're based in Bourne, and we're generally armed with a camera as we move around our daily business.

Bourne, and especially the village of Bournedale, are very good for foliage. We'll finish up there.

- SB

Welcome Aboard!

Welcome to Cranberry County Magazine!

There isn't really a Cranberry County anywhere I'm aware of, and I did Google it for a hot minute. It's just the best description of our coverage area. I'm a little bit South Coast, he's a little bit South Shore, and we live on Cape Cod.

Location is everything. In a snap, we can be heading up Route 3 to Duxbury, or speeding towards Fall River, or rolling out to the edge of the Cape. Any real geographic designation only limits us, and we're already rather limited.

If you had to spot us on a map somewhere, start just where suburbia starts getting too crowded before Boston, and cut Southwest in a manner that only gets urban in a corner near Fall River and New Beffuh. Everything beyond that is St. Elsewhere, although part of the appeal of Cranberry County is that it can mean whatever we need it to.

We plan on hitting the ground running in these next few days, and among the subjects we'll touch upon will be Fall Foliage, Halloween, the Bridgewater Triangle, Cranberry Harvests/Recipes, and perhaps even some local political coverage.

We're also weather geeks, as our Fall Foliage lead-off article will plainly demonstrate soon enough. We'll be out on the roads during blizzards, we'll be down at the beach for coastal flooding, and we'll make every effort to embed ourselves into any tornado or microburst that might befall the blessed land of Cranberry County.

We have an impressive journalistic resume. The first article we worked on together (at another website) nearly put us in jail.  We've been hit by hurricane surf,  brought near a nuclear reactor, been spoken to by detectives, had crazy people charge us, and we once made the newsmobile spin around on a snowy road not once, not twice, but three times.

We'll do our best to keep you informed and entertained. We may be more Edutainment thn anything, but you'll have a good read whenever you come here.

Welcome aboard!