This has nothing to do with music but that’s OK.  It’s close to deer hunting season and this is partly a deer hunting story so it’s OK.

My roommate back in college was this British guy named Neil.  We met when we were both on the cross country and track team at Eastern Michigan University.  I quit after one year but Neil stayed because he was on scholorship.

So we were roommates and good friends and I invited him to go deer hunting with me, since he had never even seen a real gun before, let alone gone hunting, being from England and everything.  We went up to Northern Michigan to the family farmhouse and hunting land, and Neil was with me out in the blind when I bagged a pretty good sized deer. 

We took the deer back to the farmhouse and sat down in the kitchen with my dad and Uncle Steve.  We were drinking some beers and talking about the hunt and then Neil pulls out his crumpled pack of cigarettes, or “20 pack of Marlboro Lights”, as he always asked for ‘em at the gas station, and lights one up.  My dad looked at Neil a little funny and said in sort of shock, “Neil, you smoke?”  “Sure do mate,” Neil responded with a grin.  “Goes well the beer, doe’n't it?”  Well, we kept on drinking beers into the night, maybe a little bit of scotch, and Neil kept smoking away those cigarettes, like he always did when he got to drinking, which he did about 3 or 4 nights out of the week, and we had a great old time.

So, a few weeks later, Neil goes out and wins the Mid American Conference indoor championship in the mile run, and not only that, but he sets the all time MAC championship record in the indoor mile.  My dad laughed - he couldn’t believe it. 

Neil sure was the greatest.