Surfing with Sabers in Hawaii – Buffalo FAMbase — #BillsMafia

Once again, the Sabers are pulling out the golf clubs early and hoping an older (but wiser?) Lindy Ruff can give a young, talented team some tough love and enough responsibility to become relevant again. With that in mind, I thought some of you long-time Sabers fans might appreciate a look back at my past experience in Hawaii with Sabers that were almost always relevant.

When Ch2 stole the Sabers TV rights from Ch7 in the late 70s, I didn’t realize what an incredible adventure awaited me. As an intermission host, I traveled with the Sabers and worked with play-by-play manager Ted Darling and color analyst Pat Hannigan to introduce each broadcast and conduct interviews between periods with Sabers players and opposing players.

This included live interviews with the likes of Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Mario Lemieux, Phil Esposito and many others.

One aspect of the job I didn’t expect was surfing in Hawaii with Sabers Danny Gare, Terry Martin, Derek Smith and game player Ted Darling, where at one point we thought we had lost Captain “Tickets” Gare , but I will come back to that shortly.

Here I would like to thank the sponsors Atwal Eye Care and BluTusk Tech. Atwal, the official vision specialist for the Buffalo Bills, performed cataract surgery on both eyes several months ago, and the result was fantastic. In fact, it’s life-changing.

BluTusk Tech of Orchard Park specializes in bringing old Mac computers back to life. No need to spend thousands on a new one if you don’t need it. Great people too!

Regardless, Darling and the three Sabers players were offered a free 2-week trip to Hawaii as part of a Sabers travel package with a group of about 25 Sabers fans. I didn’t receive the entire gift, but I got a 50% discount! This was back when I was single, and it’s kind of ironic that about six years later, Debbie and I got married and honeymooned in – you guessed it – Hawaii.

What a great setup it was. We spent the first week at the Ilikai in Waikiki in Honolulu, then spent a second week on Maui in small cabins right on the edge of some 40-50 foot cliffs by the ocean. The cliffs were literally about 50 feet from our rooms, and the most peaceful sleep imaginable is listening to those big waves pounding the rocks right there.

The Ilikai was then relatively new and a luxurious 5-star hotel. They had tennis courts on the roof and we played tennis every day. By the way, Darling was a very good tennis player.

One day – we were just on Waikiki Beach – we decided to go surfing. I had never done it and never will again, but it was an exhilarating experience. We have all struggled. It was also hard work paddling your surfboard to where the big waves were breaking. I guess the most I managed to stay upright on my board was 2-3 seconds. If this.

So we’re all laughing at our you-know-what about how bad we really were, and I’m watching Gare as he tries to ride a huge wave. It disappears completely. I count the seconds, and after maybe 5-10 seconds, Gare’s board comes straight out of the wave, a good 20 feet in the air, but just the board. No Station.

We were all quite close together and immediately started paddling furiously to reach Danny, when suddenly he came out of the water panting and coughing, but very much alive. So what does he do? Back up like you’re falling off a horse, right?

Not really. Gare immediately lay down on his board and paddled as fast as he could back to the beach, and swore up and down that it was the last time he would surf for the rest of his life.

So the Ilikai also had a huge, beautiful pool, and we’re up there soaking up the Hawaiian sun, and who do we see just across the water from where we had taken our lounges ?

Angie Dickenson. For you young people reading this, Angie was a STAR, who played a detective in the popular TV series Police Woman, and also had several films under her belt. She, Alan Arkin and a few other actors whose names I can’t remember were there filming a movie. Angie was probably in her forties then and quite stunning.

So I hope Danny (Tickets) doesn’t mind, but he apparently thinks Angie might know who a 50-goal NHL player is and would like to meet him. He walks up to her with a big smile, and she smiles back for about 1/2 a second, and that’s it. Needless to say, the stings we all gave Gare after he was totally slaughtered were intense. To his credit, Danny laughed as hard as any of us.

When we left Honolulu for Maui, the vacation totally changed. Now, instead of tennis, we played golf at the beautiful Kaanapali Golf Resort, offering incredible views of the Pacific and other islands.

This is a moment I will always remember. We are ready to play on a par 3 hole surrounded by ocean and crashing waves on 3 sides. You have to carry water to reach the green which is downhill. It was such a breathtaking view that I said, “Wow. This is amazing!” T (Terry Martin), a left-hander, approaches the ball and responds, “You got that right. I don’t know if a 6 is enough.” I look at God’s face and T worries. not having enough club.

Too bad…

Another cool thing we did in Maui was renting a jeep and hiking the Hana Trail, which is a winding 50 mile drive along the coast. It’s almost like being on another planet, and I understand it’s become a little more commercialized now, but it was great. Once we got there, we arrived just in time to see the park police removing naked swimmers from one of the natural pools.

Interesting.

And finally, I became the designated driver because everyone was heavily armed with cans of Bud, and a few days after Hana, we were driving through a very remote part of the island when a quick storm hit. Before I could even be stopped so we could put the canvas roof back on, Gare and Smith manually moved it forward, and the metal bar at the front of the roof hit me directly on the top of the head. I saw white flashes but managed not to crash.

It was just an incredible trip, and the Sabers fans – just great people – had many opportunities to interact with the players and Ted and his wife Sheila, and it was a bummer when it ended.

Good time.

Thanks again to Atwal Eye Care and BluTusk Tech.

Editor’s Note: Haha…Angie Dickinson shooting Danny Gare is too funny for us old farts. Thanks as always to Ed Kilgore for sharing his memories on our blog. You can also find Ed on Xwitter @Kilgore2Ed.

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