Stories on the run

Thirty-three hours door to door.

Wow. That’s ridiculous.

After my unexpected “layover” at the Holiday Inn Express in Spokane, I drove home to Pullman this morning and just got in. Unfortunately, I have to work more today. I’m going to drop off the face of the planet Sunday and not answer any phone calls on my work cell.

My mother questioned my eating habits Friday as I traveled. Breakfast sandwich from Dunkin’ Donuts, bagel with cream cheese and a cookie in Chicago, a sugary Snapple there as well, take-out Chinese at Sea-Tac … you try to eat well when you’re stuck in airports all day. Even the salads are high in fat.

Now that I’m home, I’ll have to go grocery shopping. I have little food, as I have been putting off a trip to Safeway since I’ve been traveling three weeks straight. Gotta stock up on real food.

Happy Saturday, everyone.

SPOKANE — I suppose I can’t claim the title of Worst Day in History. That might go to the Japanese on Aug. 6, 1945. Or to the Jews on Kristallnacht. Or perhaps to the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, especially those munching leaves on the Yucatan Peninsula.

But if I were to make a list of the top 10 worst days of my life, these past two traveling days (to and from Charlotte, N.C.) would make the cut.

A note: I have made a point of not swearing in my blog, so you can use your imagination.

As you can see by the above dateline, I am in Spokane tonight, not Pullman. What welcomed me back here in the Inland Northwest was just the capstone on a horrendous day of sitting in airport terminals and flying aluminum tubes. (more…)

CHICAGO — That’s right, a Chicago dateline. I’m sitting at O’Hare International waiting for a flight to Seattle.

I’m heading home because the Cougars lost Thursday night. In fact, they got whooped by North Carolina. 68-47? That was WSU’s lowest point total of the year. And I think what has everyone bummed is not that Washington State lost — we expected that — but that it played so poorly.

Nevertheless, the Spokesman-Review crew — we put together quite the report on the loss, as evidenced by the screen shot above I took Thursday night (Friday morning?) before I got to sleep. That’s a picture, however, so you’ll have to follow the following links to find my stuff.

Here’s my quick post-game article, which I had plenty of time to write during the game because it was so obvious the Cougars were tanking. And here, after some worrisome technical difficulties (my computer didn’t originally capture the WSU press conference — you know, the biggest one of the year — so I had to capture it from a beta tape a few hours later), is my post-game interview video.

That technical delay explains why I got to sleep at 2:45 a.m. I woke up three hours later so we could leave the Charlotte Marriott at 6:20 to get to the Greensboro airport. Our flight left at 9:50 a.m., and now I’m here in Chicago.

The route from hell.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Traveling for the NCAA tournament is not as fun as it seems.

My day Tuesday started in a snowy Pullman, warm and cozy in my bed, not wanting to get up. But I had to; I was traveling that day to Charlotte, N.C., where the Cougars are playing in the Sweet 16. A good reason.

Easy enough, right? It’s 2,650 miles from Pullman and Charlotte. We’re not talking about transatlantic travel on the Titanic, here. That would be a 4 1/2-hour flight direct — you know, if Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport had a long enough runway for a big enough jet.

Naw. I left my Pullman apartment at 8:30 a.m. PDT. I got into my Charlotte hotel room at 3 a.m. EDT. That’s 17 1/2 hours. (more…)

DENVER — So, I was home for two days but I only just found enough free time — on my second night in Denver — to update my blog. I’ll link to what I did back in Pullman.

I flew back to Spokane, and hence Pullman, after a drive, on Saturday. And on Sunday, I had to do a preview story for WSU spring football, which started Monday. Access was going to be a large problem — access to coaches and players. I wrote a temporary brief for Monday’s paper with the assumption I wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone, and sent it in to the Spokesman.

Sunday afternoon was the WSU basketball team’s NCAA selection party at Bohler Gym on campus, a larger extravaganza than I had anticipated. With limited battery life (I was charging it on the court in between shooting), I took enough footage to piece together this video (also linked from the picture to the left) on the party and the Cougars’ reactions to their surprise No. 4 seeding in the NCAA tournament (which is why I’m now in Denver).

As luck would have it, while I was there I spotted football coach Paul Wulff and grabbed him, knowing I wouldn’t otherwise be able to talk to him for my spring football story. He was very pleasant, and invited me with his family into the football office, where I did a quick (8.5-minute) interview. The results are this story.

On Monday, I headed over to campus at 2 p.m. in anticipation of Wulff’s 2:30 press conference, which went off without a hitch. Then I strolled over to Rogers Field (the practice field below the WSU library) to watch the first day of practice. All three hours of it. Standing up, in my dress shoes, as the weather got steadily colder. There, I interviewed a few players and got enough to put together this story on the first day of spring ball.

Of course, it was St. Patrick’s Day (I spent an hour — yes, one full hour — ironing my only green dress shirt, which I hadn’t worn since last spring precisely because it was wrinkled beyond recognition as a shirt), so that night I met up with the Evergreen crew for some celebration. Not too late, though, because I had my 12:30 p.m. flight to catch out of Spokane en route for Denver. (Noon doesn’t sound very early, but I had to leave Pullman at 9:30 to get to the airport, which required a 7:30 wake-up time — which is early for me.)

Anyway, now I’m in Denver, one day after arriving, updating from my 10th-floor room in the downtown Marriott. A nice hotel, to say the least.

There won’t be any pictures of breakfast this morning as I prepare to fly to Denver. But I fly out of Spokane around midday today and get into Denver about 7 p.m. MDT.

Why am I going to Denver? Well, because the Cougars are dancing there, of course.

Why haven’t I really updated my blog since coming back to Pullman? Because I’ve been so gosh darn busy.

In short, I will be posting again from the mile-high city. And, of course, expect some pictures and video from there.

LOS ANGELES — It’s 9 p.m., but it feels so much later. Part of it is that it gets dark earlier in Southern California, due to the fact that it is farther south than Pullman. Part of it also is that I got up at 6:30 a.m. today. Long day.

I just got back from drinks and dinner with the L.A. contingency — my Aunt Patty, Uncle Jeff, godfather Lorne and his wife, Miriam. We went to Ciudad for dinner, a Latin-fusion restaurant right across the street from my hotel. It was delicious — I had Andalucia Strip Steak, which was essentially chunks of steak (medium rare, of course) along with some awesome veggies and potatoes. It was great to see my relatives and catch up.

I forgot to mention in my last post that the SuperShuttle driver was a small, red-haired gentleman with a Russian accent. One thing I have noticed so far here is the cultural diversity. Tons of Asians, Latinos/Chicanos/Hispanics, blacks and Eastern Europeans. It’s a nice change from the overwhelming whiteness of Pullman and Spokane I’ve lived around for years.

LOS ANGELES — I’m writing this post from my 21st-floor hotel room at the Westin Bonaventure, which is smack-dab in the middle of downtown. It’s a beautiful day here, at least in the 70s and sunny, only marred by the thick layer of orange smog that perpetually blankets Los Angeles.

The top two pictures to the left are the view from my hotel room.

In 30 minutes, I will be meeting my aunt and uncle for a drink before grabbing some dinner with them and some family friends (my godfather and his wife). Those are my plans for tonight; tomorrow is a different story, since the Cougars do not play tomorrow.

Other than nearly missing my flight from Spokane to Portland (I got a late start leaving Pullman, probably due to the delicious breakfast you can see below), in my haste through the Spokane airport I left my keys at the security checkpoint. I didn’t notice it until I was waiting for my flight from Portland to LAX. Rest assured, I just called Spokane International and they have my keys.

At the Portland airport was Horizon’s new WSU plane, at left. (The Washington one was also there, though parked out of the way near a hangar, and the Oregon State plane was in Spokane.)

By the way, LAX is a complete zoo. It took me forever to figure out where to catch my SuperShuttle and catch one going downtown. Of course, since it’s a shared-van service, it took more than an hour to get to the Westin because we had to drop off the other passengers first.

I’ve been to L.A. plenty of times, but its vast expanse blows me away every time. To get downtown, we took three freeways — Highway 1, the 105 and the 110 — before getting off on Figueroa Boulevard (or street or avenue or whatever). Once here, though, I realized the Westin Bonaventure is one of the deluxe downtown hotels — the lobby itself is breathtaking. I’ll take some video sometime this week.

This is just about the most creative thing I can do at 6:30 in the morning: make breakfast. I figured, since I’ve got a day of traveling ahead of me and the last trip I took left me starving, that I should make a hearty meal.

My flight leaves Spokane at 10 a.m., so I have to leave Pullman about 7:30. That flight goes to Portland, where I catch a connection that arrives in LAX at 2 p.m. Of course, I’m flying Horizon, so it’s quite possible that I might not get to Los Angeles until 9 at night.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m headed to L.A. to cover the Pac-10 basketball tournament for the Spokesman. I’m staying at a nice hotel downtown (the designated media hotel), and we’ll have a shuttle to and from Staples Center.

Obviously, I will continue to blog from the City of Angels. Probably more-so, in fact. And I’ll be doing a Where I Work video. All this and more coming up on the next all-new episodes of “Stories on the Run”!

KENNEWICK — A brief post from my room at the Fairfield Inn by Marriott, a discount hotel that tries to make up for it by attaching “Marriott” to the name. It’s really not all that bad — my room is very nice, just the hallways are kind of dark and dreary. Anyway, my drive from Pullman to Kennewick was thankfully uneventful, considering my brakes need replacing.

There is a mall near the hotel (it seems there’s one everywhere I travel) for plenty of entertainment for my down time between basketball games this weekend. The Toyota Center, where the NWAACC tournament is held, is just a short drive south. If only this tournament were in Hawaii.