Well, things were not quite as crazy as I feared a couple weeks ago with a lot of activity over a few days, but it was taxing (notice the reference to the recently past Tax Day…).
It was a lot of basketball and football for this guy, with some long hours to make things happen.
But, hey, that’s what we do so there can be fodder for a column!
The basketball was all in Indy around the various championships being played.
There were NIT semifinals and NCAA D1 semifinals on two different nights.
There was the D3, D2 and NIT Championship games on one day at Gainbridge.
Then there was the big game, the D1 title game, at Lucas Oil Stadium. I had a spectacular seat, front row and almost in the middle, working with national radio at the football stadium. It was a good seat, but not quite so spectacular, for the other places.
After the Monday night champ game, it was hop in the car and drive to Chicago to catch a 7 am flight to Los Angeles to work a spring football game on Tuesday night.
Then after the game, it was back to LAX, catch the redeye and fly back to Chicago.
From there, find my car, which was a bit of an adventure in itself, as O’Hare has greatly improved their offsite parking and how to get to and from those lots, but it was all new to me.
Then it was drive back to Crawfordsville, get to a funeral and then go cover Crawfordsville baseball that evening.
A day off on Thursday was mostly for laundry and re-arranging paperwork, because on Friday it was another 7 am flight to LA for more football Friday night, and then back to LAX to wait on a delayed flight back to Indy.
So there.
I will tell you that the best time of any day to drive through Chicago is very early in the morning.
It was about 3 am Chicago time heading up there, and the roads were still busy, but traffic was moving. I got through downtown without a fuss and right out to the airport. It took me longer to figure out where to park and how to get to the terminal than just about anything else. They are now picking up folks in all the remote lots and taking them to the rental car station, which is a nice, big, new spot. Everyone goes there to catch a train to the terminals. It actually works well, or at least, worked well for me.
I got back to Chicago at about 6 am, but there was no chance of going through downtown at the start of morning rush hour, so I used the tollways instead. While there is a lot of construction on the outer toll road, at that time of the morning, traffic was not too thick, and I got a huge blessing with a cloud cover so I didn’t have to drive east looking right into a rising sun.
Now the LA traffic.
Just a bit different. It is packed every hour of every day. I feel so badly for so many people who spend so much of their lives in their cars creeping along vast stretches of packed roads.
My Uber drivers know a few back roads and some short-cuts, but you still just have to budget a lot of extra time sitting and waiting. There is immense construction going on around LAX as they prepare for the 2028 Olympics, and it just seems everyone in California is flying out every day. There have been lots of upgrades to facilities at that airport, and everything looks nice, but man, have they spread things out, and the airlines just love to switch gates for us flying folks.
It was the first return trip last week. After going through security (which has not been a problem recently) I was directed to gate 153, and it is about as far as 153 gates can be.
I trudged all the way down, grabbed a seat and had a couple hours to wait.
Then, an hour later, I got a text from American that my gate had been changed.
I was now headed back to gate 46, which was just on the other side of security! I walked all the way back to where I started, turned left instead of right, and in about 400 yards, there was gate 46.
Lots of steps to be had at LAX.
I will be back in LA as you read these notes on Saturday morning. I flew out Friday for a Friday night game, with another game today. The trip home is Sunday. There are no trips to New York this football season like previous years because my play by play guy gave up a morning host role on one of the New York stations. He knocked about 100,000 miles off his travel this year with that move.
So I’ll keep you up to date with all things Cali for the next few weeks. There are plenty of high school softball and baseball games to take in, and I managed to catch a Wabash home game this week, and that was entertaining to say the least, with 12 runs in one inning but only a 12-11 win.
Here is to dodging the April showers.
Safe travels.
Jeff Nelson is a frequent contributor to the Journal Review and works professionally for Fox Sports working with the Indiana Pacers, Indianapolis Colts and many more professional teams.
