Chuck the Writer gets back on the road again

This is going to be the eighth weekend that I will drive to various cities in the Premier Basketball League, in an effort to take action photographs and keep a photographic record of the action in the PBL's second season.

This weekend the plan is to actually hit two cities on one day. The Rochester Razorsharks are hosting the Mid-Michigan Destroyers at about 2:05 pm Saturday, while the Buffalo Stampede will welcome the Manchester Millrats on Saturday night at around 7:00 pm. I need to get to the MMich-Roch game, because I have yet to acquire head shots of the Mid-Michigan Destroyers (including their scoring sensation, Odgra Bobo, who is currently 2nd in scoring average in the PBL this season). I've gotten head shots of the twelve other teams in the league, so now's a chance to add the Destroyers to the list.

As for Buffalo-Manchester, the Stampede have added some new players and gotten rid of others, so I need to do an "update" and get new head shots of guys like Chuck Reed, Gallo Cham and Derick Payne.

Next week is another trip to Montreal, to photograph the Montreal Sasquat'ch against the Wilmington Sea Dawgs on Saturday. This is important, in that the Sasquat'ch lineup is entirely different from the last time I photographed them, so I need head shots of virtually the entire team.

The only other "scheduled" trip I need to take is on March 14, when the Halifax Rainmen come to Buffalo to play the Stampede. Halifax's lineup includes two players I haven't gotten shots of yet - AJ Millien, currently the league's leading scorer (he was with Augusta but was released before Augusta got close enough to a city for me to photograph them), and John Strickland (he played with the Albany Patroons a couple of seasons ago, he's a big beefy presence on the floor but his free throw shooting is scarier than Cloverfield).

The playoffs will be coming up soon after that, and hopefully I'll get to some of those rounds, as well as to the finals. Not discounting anything any team has done, I just hope that whoever does make the finals, that it's within driving distance for me (i.e., Rochester, Manchester, Vermont). Not that I wouldn't discount a finals between Battle Creek and Halifax, but those are going to involve plane trips (one-way from BC to HFX is over 1,400 miles - or 22 hours of straight driving).