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Bronwell Blog: Off-season update

July 6, 2007 - American Hockey League (AHL)
Houston Aeros News Release


Aeros equipment manager and resident comedian Rick Bronwell continues his Aeros.com blog, even in the off-season. Rick loves hearing from his fans...rather, Aeros fans...so e-mail him now!

Well, we're back. It's time for another episode of the Blog. I wanted to let you guys know what I've been doing this summer. It's been awhile since I checked in.

My family went on a little vacation.

But first, we bought a new car. We traded in the Trailblazer and bought an ‘07 Honda Odyssey minivan. I'm officially included in the minivan club. It's a specialized group of people that get together twice a year and share stories about driving cross country and to the soccer games. I love it. I like it 100 times better than the Trailblazer. We have so much more room. On our trip, driving around, it definitely made a huge difference.

We left on the Saturday that Gary Allan was playing at Cynthia Woods. Heather and I went to the concert, and the kids went to Janet's house (Bryce and Miles' mom...the kids that help us out on gamenights). It was a great show. Cross Canadian Ragweed opened up, and Mickey and the Motorcars. Cross Canadian Ragweed rocked out. Joey Tetarenko and his fiancée Sarah came up, too, and we chatted and hung out.

We drove the 45 minutes home, picked up the girls and finished packing the van. We were going from Houston to Salt Lake City to visit my family. We have three cats to bring with us. We get the girls (who were sleeping) in the car. It's 1:30 or 2 a.m. We throw the three cats in, and a litter box in there too. All of a sudden we smell...poop. Apparently one cat decided, in our brand new car (it was four days old at this point), that she decided to relieve herself in the cup holder and then drop some tootsie rolls in the carpet. So we got to clean that out and try to get the smell out, so we didn't have to smell it for the 24-hour drive to Salt Lake City.

About 2:45 a.m., we finally roll out. We stopped at 8 p.m. the next night and stayed in Colorado. There's not much to stop at or see along the way, especially Kansas. We got to Salt Lake City at 5 p.m., two days after we left. We spent seven days there. My family lives southwest of Salt Lake. It rained pretty much the whole time. It was weird being in the cold, too.

So then we were driving to Montana, only an eight-hour drive, to see Heather's family. That's nothing for us. We spent 10 days in Montana. Then we rented a U-Haul, so we had to put a trailer hitch on the van. That was a pain. We had to get Heather's twin-sized bed from when she was a kid for Ashleigh to have now. We headed back to Salt Lake City for a couple of days and drove back. And every time we get ready to leave, the cat is up to it again. We had the carpet cleaned three times.

We usually leave on our summer voyage sometime in late June or early July after the trainers meetings. But we had to leave early because Heather got a job at Lifetime Fitness as a daycare person. She loves it. She can bring the girls to work. It's nice to have some extra income, since we haven't had a car payment in five years. If you ever see a purple Odyssey around town, give me a honk. I'll give you a honk back.

What's going on around the rink? Not much. We had a toilet go bad. A urinal's leaking. We're waiting for a plumber to fix that.

In the summer I'm usually here Monday through Friday, from 8 or 9 a.m. to 2 or 3 p.m. I take the weekends off and spend the time with the family. I feel like I should be here more. I'm doing little stuff. There are holes in the carpet. We had the equipment sale. It was a complete success. We sold out of everything we had. Thank you if you're reading this and you bought something, especially now that we have our tighter fitting equipment coming in. It should be fun to see how that pans out. Apparently, the players love it. They pull the moisture away from the body. You pour water on the jersey and it rolls right off. I think it'll be a good addition as long as the jerseys are the right size. We sized them up all up with the new gear before they left town.

We were trying to cell CD's at the sale. We didn't sell one. We had 50. But I heard someone say it was awful music. I had to laugh because I was standing right behind them.

The schedule grid came out a couple weeks ago. I'm pretty excited about Springfield and Providence. I've never been there. It'll be nice to see buildings I haven't seen, and to see different parts of the country. Even though it's all the same out there. I'm kidding.

My assistant, Donny White, is going to Mississippi. We kicked him out. Good luck to him in Biloxi. He'll be really good there. He's too good to be an assistant here. That's four guys in four years now that have gotten head jobs somewhere else after being assistants here. We're pretty excited about the fact whoever comes here as an assistant, we're going to train you very well to make sure you can do it on your own. It's a thankless job. I couldn't do my job if it wasn't for him. If he's reading this (and he does, religiously), thank you for the job you did, and I wish you much success in Mississsippi. And he knows anytime he has a problem, he can call me. I'm proud of him. Just don't try to do a Blog. Stay tuned for a new Donny.

I talked to new head coach Kevin Constantine the other day. I had him when I was a stickboy in Kansas City back in the mid 90's. I told him I worked with him then. And I described myself as a stickboy, a 15-year-old kid with long hair, and I would headbang in the room because the players would ask me to. Back in that day, we listened to AC/DC before every game. I had to pull my Angus Young air guitar out. It originated back then in KC. I don't remember much of Kevin because I just worked gamenights. But it was funny to talk to him about Kansas City. I'm really excited about working with him and trying to find out his intricacies, to make sure everything's good on the road and at home too.

Minnesota signed some rookies last month - Cal Clutterbuck, Morten Madsen and Matt Kassian. Although the Wild team didn't do so well at that Traverse City camp last year, those guys looked pretty good. They seemed like good guys. Clutterbuck's quick, really fast. Madsen's a gritty guy. He reminds me of former Aero Marius Holtet. All Norweigans are born of the same cloth. Wait, Stanzel tells me that he's from Denmark? I'm still going to call him the Norweigan. He's goofy like that.

With Omaha leaving, the travel will be a lot better this year. With them in the league, it really messed us up a lot. You can't really bus from Chicago to Omaha, it's seven hours, so we'd always fly it. But it's a small plane so I'd have to drive it anyways with the gear. Omaha's a great town, with a lot of great places to go out and eat, but Quad Cities is nice too. You have a team every 90 minutes or two hours now it seems. That could transfer over on the win sheet. Not having to get up at 5:30 a.m. and take a 40-minute flight from Chicago to Omaha, and worry about making the small plane, and getting the gear there, it'll all be a lot easier. I think we have a lot of promise and good times and wins to be had.

I had some fans wondering where I'm at. So, here I am! And I'd like to remind you to send me feedback throughout the summer. We'll be back later this month.

Rick, Just wanted to let you know, you have fans too! :0) I am so insanely excited for the season to start up. I have been bored here without my hockey. :0( Take Care- Ash

Mr. Bronwell, The Aeros just got a great coach. The fans, the players and media will see great hockey coaching out of Kevin C. We love him here in Everett Washington and now your team will have a following of fans from the Great northwest. Kevin, his players and staff turned a non hockey town here in Everett into a bunch of loud and crazy hockey fans. We look forward to watching your next season.



American Hockey League Stories from July 6, 2007


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