There are certain things in life which can be considered constants. The first cup of coffee in the morning always tastes better than any subsequent ones, the weather is always beautiful while I’m at work, and the Arizona Cardinals always blow big hairy chunks. It has forever been so and I assumed it would always continue to be so. Except this year, the Arizona Cardinals somehow managed to make it to the Super Bowl.
Now back in my day; that simply wouldn’t have happened. When I lived in Phoenix (and for many years before that), the Arizona Cardinals / Phoenix Cardinals / St. Louis Cardinals / Chicago Cardinals / Racine Cardinals / Normals (Normals?) and the Morgan Athletic Club have historically been the worst, or close to the worst team in the National Football League. While other teams cycled through boom and bust years, going through successful decades followed by unsuccessful decades and back again, the Cardinals managed to retain their distinguished status as the league’s most irrelevant team. Year, after year, decade after decade, forever and ever, Amen.
They did win a playoff game once. And it was against the hated Dallas Cowboys too! But one playoff win in 60 years is hardly the stuff of which dreams are made and few people living in Phoenix gave them much of a thought. In fact, such is Phoenix’s demographics, with a high proportion of residents originating somewhere else; there were frequently more fans in the stadium supporting the visiting team than the home side.
That single factor was the reason behind my sporadic attendance at Cardinals games. Playing in their own stadium with the majority of the crowd cheering for the other team? I just felt sorry for them. So, I went to 1 or 2 games a year but the one I never missed, was when the Cowboys came to town. Given that most of the population of Dallas now lives in Phoenix, and given that they’re among the league’s most obnoxious fans, well it just stuck in my craw. I didn’t own any Cardinals clothing (my sympathy for them didn’t extend that far) but I would dig out a red t-shirt and wear that so as the TV cameras swept around the stadium showing a sea of blue shirts, I would stand out as the lone Cardinals fan way up there in the cheap seats.
Another big advantage of being a football fan in Phoenix during the 90’s, was that the local indifference meant the Cardinals never managed to sell out the stadium. So it was easy to drive over on the spur of the moment and purchase a seat in the nosebleeds, wait until the game was underway, then head down to the more expensive section to enjoy the rest of the contest like a rich person.
And I saw some good games too. With me in attendance, the Cardinals beat several defending Super Bowl champions and a good number of other teams that on paper and over the course of the season, were far superior. In fact, of the 15 or so games that I attended, I saw the Cardinals get beat precisely zero times. That’s right; the world’s worst football team won every game they played with me in the stands. Looking back, it’s a mystery why I didn’t think to write to the organization and suggest they give me a free ticket to every home game. That would be 8 wins guaranteed each season, which is 4 or 5 more than they usually managed.
But I didn’t and sometime around 1999, I decided that enough was enough. The NFL’s revenue sharing policy meant that even perennial losers like the Cardinals received a healthy income and apparently this was perfectly satisfactory to the Cardinals’ ownership. While most other franchises were passionate about putting a winning product on the field, they were happy to save money by paying the lowest salaries in the league and putting up losing seasons, year after year after year. Having seen yet another crop of promising young players traded away in exchange for yet another batch of washed up has-beens and never-weres; I decided I was done giving even a few dollars a year to this joke of a team and Phoenix resident or not, I looked around for another team more deserving of my respect.
At that time I had no idea I would soon move to Colorado so perhaps it was kismet that led me to choose the Denver Broncos. Or maybe it was the fact that they were coming off two consecutive Super Bowl wins but either way, this was a team worthy of my support. A team who knew how to win.
Of course, you know where this story’s going. In the 9 years since I awarded them my allegiance, the Broncos have won precisely one playoff game, prior to getting their heads kicked in during the NFC Championship game. A game for which I was in attendance. My lucky-charm winning-when-I’m-in-the-stadium streak apparently didn’t transfer along with my loyalty. This year the Broncos managed to blow a 3-game divisional lead with 3 games to go; the first team in history to do so. Hence, they missed out on a playoff berth again and once more, they’ll be watching the Super Bowl on television.
But amazingly, the Cardinals will not. The world’s worst franchise, perennial bottom-dwellers and league running joke have finally got their act together and put out a team that has not only performed admirably throughout the season, but has chugged (comparatively comfortably) through the playoffs. For the first time in their history, the Arizona Cardinals will take the field next Sunday, to participate in Super Bowl XLIII (that’s 43 in case you weren’t sure). I still can’t say I feel any particular fondness for the team but they’ll be playing the Pittsburgh Steelers; the team that administered the Bronco’s above mentioned head-kicking-in. So I can’t support them.
I wonder if I still own that red t-shirt.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Mad Max and Me
I couldn’t understand why the booking clerk was laughing.
“No, I want to stay for 2 or 3 nights.” I told him, “So I can take a look around.”
“Trust me,” he replied, handing me my bus ticket. “One night will be plenty long enough for Cooper Pedy.”
I wasn’t totally convinced but admittedly, I didn’t know too much about the place. I knew it had opal mines, and that Mel Gibson had pranced around the area as Mad Max in “Beyond the Thunderdome” , and that the locals lived underground to escape the scorching heat. But other than that, I wasn’t too sure what to expect.
And stumbling off the bus, tired and creaky after the overnight run from Adelaide, I have to say I wasn’t overly impressed. As was usually the way, the touts were there to meet us, in the hopes that we would agree to stay at their particular hostel. However, these ones were uncharacteristically pushy and aggressive, which didn’t give a great first impression of the place. The second impression wasn’t much better. And as for the third…
But I’m getting ahead of myself. There were only 4 of us disembarking - Barbara (a German), Jenny (a Swede) and Dee (a Brit), so following the least obnoxious of the touts, we booked ourselves in to one of Cooper Pedy’s more upscale boarding houses. In keeping with the underground tradition, it was basically just a long corridor dug out of the hillside, with 8’x4’ “rooms” at intervals along each side. A curtain served duty as a door and a narrow cast iron bed completed the furnishings.
I felt a lot better after a short nap and 3 hours later, set out on an explore. The girls had signed up for a ½ day tour of the opal mines, but I was going freelance. The Stuart Highway, which runs from Adelaide on the south coast, to Darwin on the north, had only been paved some 4 years before my visit and people tell me that Cooper Pedy had gone up in the world during that time. I can only imagine how desperate it must have been prior to that because it appeared to be little more than a wasteland as far as the eye can see.
Which admittedly, wasn’t very far, being as we were, in the throes of a dust storm, filling the air, as well as my eyes, nose and throat with gritty sand. Time to follow the locals, I think, and head underground. First port of call was a mine, right off the main street and outfitted with a hard hat, I was soon following a line of middle-aged folk into the bowels of the earth. The hard hat proved to be my best friend because I couldn’t take more than a few steps without smacking my head on the roof. The whole thing was interesting enough, but didn’t take too long, so after a quick hike up one of the few hills to check out what passes for a view, I headed to one of the show homes.
Three ladies dug this one by hand, over the course of 5 years, taking the time to smooth the walls to a marble like finish. They were still working on it but the place already had 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and all modern conveniences including that essential of Aussie suburban life, a swimming pool. It didn’t have any windows, but it had a swimming pool.
By the time I made it back above ground, the dust storm had abated so I took a quick hike up another hill to check out the town’s only visible attraction, “The Big Winch”. The what? Well, it’s a big bucket, the type of which is used in mining. And it’s perched on top of a hill. And uh, you walk up the hill and look at the bucket.
So that was pretty much it; I’d done the place. Interesting enough, such as it was but I could certainly see why the guy who sold me my bus ticket laughed when I said I wanted to spend a few days here. But, as I was here until the next morning I decided to pass the rest of the time sitting in the shade by the hostel, drinking beer and chatting to the girls, now home from their tour. I would have been quite happy spending the rest of my time doing just that, Barbara was fun and Jenny was nice to look at but no, Dee wanted to go to the bar.
I use the term ‘bar’ loosely because it was basically just a big barn that happened to sell beer. Cooper Pedy’s tourist industry was still in its infancy back then and the overwhelming majority of the residents were miners. Men for whom life held little pleasure other than drinking and fighting and uh…that’s about it. They certainly enjoyed little contact with the female of the species so when I walked in with three of them, every nut-job in the place (and there were a lot of nut-jobs in the place) looked me over, decided I was no competition, and set about trying to take them off me.
If I’ve learned nothing else during my time on this planet, it’s that there is no more dangerous situation for a young man to find himself than in a bar with three good looking females. OK, Dee was nothing to write home about but Barbara was kinda cute and Jenny was drop-dead gorgeous. There wasn’t a guy in there who wasn’t filled with thoughts of romance and if taking me out back and snapping me like a twig would smooth the path of true love, well then I didn’t think any of them would be overly concerned.
The thing is, by cracking jokes, buying an occasional round and keeping my back to the wall, I was managing to do a passable job of keeping things on the level. Nobody was swinging punches and if I could hold it together for another ½ hour or so, we could leave with honor intact and nobody (OK, me) would get hurt. But then one guy got a bit overly familiar with Dee and she decided that the best way to handle that was to scream abuse at the lot of them. And they screamed back. Not at her of course, but at me. Oh, the things they were going to do; it would make your hair curl.
But, I declined their kind offers to see how far a pool cue would fit up my arse and decided an early night was in order. Hustling my harem out the door with my bowels dissolving I almost dragged the three of them down the street as the natives bombarded us with beer cans while serenading us with oaths and epithets.
6am the next morning found us standing bleary eyed and shivering on Main Street as we waited for the bus to rescue us, and for once, I was happy to be up that early. I haven’t been back to Cooper Pedy, and I’m OK with that. I haven’t been back to Adelaide either, but if I ever get there, I hope I meet that booking clerk again so I can shake him by the hand.
If it weren’t for him, I’d have been stuck there for two more bloody days.
“No, I want to stay for 2 or 3 nights.” I told him, “So I can take a look around.”
“Trust me,” he replied, handing me my bus ticket. “One night will be plenty long enough for Cooper Pedy.”
I wasn’t totally convinced but admittedly, I didn’t know too much about the place. I knew it had opal mines, and that Mel Gibson had pranced around the area as Mad Max in “Beyond the Thunderdome” , and that the locals lived underground to escape the scorching heat. But other than that, I wasn’t too sure what to expect.
And stumbling off the bus, tired and creaky after the overnight run from Adelaide, I have to say I wasn’t overly impressed. As was usually the way, the touts were there to meet us, in the hopes that we would agree to stay at their particular hostel. However, these ones were uncharacteristically pushy and aggressive, which didn’t give a great first impression of the place. The second impression wasn’t much better. And as for the third…
But I’m getting ahead of myself. There were only 4 of us disembarking - Barbara (a German), Jenny (a Swede) and Dee (a Brit), so following the least obnoxious of the touts, we booked ourselves in to one of Cooper Pedy’s more upscale boarding houses. In keeping with the underground tradition, it was basically just a long corridor dug out of the hillside, with 8’x4’ “rooms” at intervals along each side. A curtain served duty as a door and a narrow cast iron bed completed the furnishings.
I felt a lot better after a short nap and 3 hours later, set out on an explore. The girls had signed up for a ½ day tour of the opal mines, but I was going freelance. The Stuart Highway, which runs from Adelaide on the south coast, to Darwin on the north, had only been paved some 4 years before my visit and people tell me that Cooper Pedy had gone up in the world during that time. I can only imagine how desperate it must have been prior to that because it appeared to be little more than a wasteland as far as the eye can see.
Which admittedly, wasn’t very far, being as we were, in the throes of a dust storm, filling the air, as well as my eyes, nose and throat with gritty sand. Time to follow the locals, I think, and head underground. First port of call was a mine, right off the main street and outfitted with a hard hat, I was soon following a line of middle-aged folk into the bowels of the earth. The hard hat proved to be my best friend because I couldn’t take more than a few steps without smacking my head on the roof. The whole thing was interesting enough, but didn’t take too long, so after a quick hike up one of the few hills to check out what passes for a view, I headed to one of the show homes.
Three ladies dug this one by hand, over the course of 5 years, taking the time to smooth the walls to a marble like finish. They were still working on it but the place already had 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and all modern conveniences including that essential of Aussie suburban life, a swimming pool. It didn’t have any windows, but it had a swimming pool.
By the time I made it back above ground, the dust storm had abated so I took a quick hike up another hill to check out the town’s only visible attraction, “The Big Winch”. The what? Well, it’s a big bucket, the type of which is used in mining. And it’s perched on top of a hill. And uh, you walk up the hill and look at the bucket.
So that was pretty much it; I’d done the place. Interesting enough, such as it was but I could certainly see why the guy who sold me my bus ticket laughed when I said I wanted to spend a few days here. But, as I was here until the next morning I decided to pass the rest of the time sitting in the shade by the hostel, drinking beer and chatting to the girls, now home from their tour. I would have been quite happy spending the rest of my time doing just that, Barbara was fun and Jenny was nice to look at but no, Dee wanted to go to the bar.
I use the term ‘bar’ loosely because it was basically just a big barn that happened to sell beer. Cooper Pedy’s tourist industry was still in its infancy back then and the overwhelming majority of the residents were miners. Men for whom life held little pleasure other than drinking and fighting and uh…that’s about it. They certainly enjoyed little contact with the female of the species so when I walked in with three of them, every nut-job in the place (and there were a lot of nut-jobs in the place) looked me over, decided I was no competition, and set about trying to take them off me.
If I’ve learned nothing else during my time on this planet, it’s that there is no more dangerous situation for a young man to find himself than in a bar with three good looking females. OK, Dee was nothing to write home about but Barbara was kinda cute and Jenny was drop-dead gorgeous. There wasn’t a guy in there who wasn’t filled with thoughts of romance and if taking me out back and snapping me like a twig would smooth the path of true love, well then I didn’t think any of them would be overly concerned.
The thing is, by cracking jokes, buying an occasional round and keeping my back to the wall, I was managing to do a passable job of keeping things on the level. Nobody was swinging punches and if I could hold it together for another ½ hour or so, we could leave with honor intact and nobody (OK, me) would get hurt. But then one guy got a bit overly familiar with Dee and she decided that the best way to handle that was to scream abuse at the lot of them. And they screamed back. Not at her of course, but at me. Oh, the things they were going to do; it would make your hair curl.
But, I declined their kind offers to see how far a pool cue would fit up my arse and decided an early night was in order. Hustling my harem out the door with my bowels dissolving I almost dragged the three of them down the street as the natives bombarded us with beer cans while serenading us with oaths and epithets.
6am the next morning found us standing bleary eyed and shivering on Main Street as we waited for the bus to rescue us, and for once, I was happy to be up that early. I haven’t been back to Cooper Pedy, and I’m OK with that. I haven’t been back to Adelaide either, but if I ever get there, I hope I meet that booking clerk again so I can shake him by the hand.
If it weren’t for him, I’d have been stuck there for two more bloody days.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Traveling on Business is never a "Trip"
I’ve written before about the uh…challenges I’ve experienced while visiting Dallas; my least favorite city in the U.S. I’m not going to go over them again, suffice to say that I seem to experience problems every time I visit. And this time was exactly the same, only more so.
The first problem was that my flight was at the undoGly hour of 6:00am. Living as I do, some distance from the airport, this would have required me to get out of bed at 3:30am, obviously a ridiculous proposition. Instead, I booked myself a bed in a hotel just a few minutes from the terminal, thus gaining an extra hour of sleep. Even so, that’s no time to be getting up. Like most normal people, I don’t function well in the mornings so I took care to unpack nothing. My clothes for the day were on a hanger and all I had to do was get up, shower, dress and tootle over to the airport. With luck, I would be aboard the plane before I’d woken up.
Except I forgot that two things I should have unpacked, were my toothbrush and razor. The few minutes it took me to run down to the car to fetch it from my made me a little late. Not enough to be a problem – that didn’t happen until I locked the car keys in the room and had to get the night clerk to let me back in. Still not drastically late, but enough to give that little stressful feeling that if anything else went wrong, I could be in trouble. No worries though; I found a parking space close to the terminal, there was no line at check in and security looked to be a breeze.
Until they ran my bag through the x-ray and discovered my Swiss Army Knife. I was momentarily thrilled because I’d lost it a while ago but then it dawned on me that while they may have found it; they weren’t going to give it back. It would only have taken 20 minutes or so to run back to the car with it, but that was 20 minutes more than I had to spare and with sadness, I watched it go into the bin.
The flight was just boarding as I huffed up to the gate and in no time, I was parked in my seat and sipping pseudo-coffee. The pilots seemed to know what they were doing and before I was much further along in my book, we were touching down at Dallas-Fort Worth. It looked as though the glitches were over for this mission. Once on the ground I gave Dear Wife a quick call to get her out of bed (it was still very early in Denver) then hopped in a cab to head over to meet a client. Yes, I had an extra meeting to squeeze in before going to my own company’s office to start the 3-day conference there.
The clients’ office is based in a hotel, albeit far more upscale than the one in which I’d spent the previous night, so as we pulled up, bell-hops scurried forward in the hopes of being allowed to touch my bag and thus earn a tip. Shaking them off, I was soon through the revolving doors and heading for the escalators out the back. At this point I thought of another call I needed to make and started patting my pockets to find my cell phone. And I patted, and I patted and I stopped walking and rummaged, then I put down my bags and searched in earnest. But to no avail.
The taxi firm couldn’t have been less helpful but after calling my phone a few times, the cab driver eventually answered and reluctantly agreed to bring it back. Despite my priming the hotel staff and giving them a number at which I could be reached, the poor guy still sat in the lobby for 15 minutes before some got around to letting me know he was there. He ‘did’ get a tip – a big one.
He would also be able to tell his friends the story of how I then got myself stuck in the revolving doors with a member of the L.A. Clippers basketball team. I was going through the doors, he was in the segment behind me and must have pushed a bit too hard and the thing jammed, trapping me inside for what seemed like days, although it was probably only a minute or two before the security guard came and released me. I’m no basketball fan and have no idea who this guy was but he thought the whole thing was funnier than I did. And he didn’t even offer me free tickets, or a wad of cash, or anything.
Anyway, back to the client meeting, which overran by about an hour. This was OK because we were covering some good material but it meant had now missed the start of my own company’s meeting and as I still had another long cab ride to get there, my hopes of squeezing in lunch beforehand, went out the window. Especially because the cab ride took longer than planned because we couldn’t find the bloody office.
My company’s corporate office employs literally thousands of people, housed in multiple buildings across a large campus. I’d been before, more than once and knew that our meeting wasn’t in the first building off the highway, but another, some 3/4 of a mile away.
Except I got it into my head that I was supposed to be in the other direction and had the driver take me to a different set of buildings altogether. We cruised for several minutes before asking a passing office worker for directions. That would have been a good plan had she not sent us off even further in the wrong direction. The second office worker we asked cheerfully pointed to a large building in the middle distance and as that had my company’s name emblazoned on the outside, I paid off the driver and raced up to the door. To find it locked. Because my company hasn’t used this building in some time and it’s currently sitting empty. And now my cab was gone.
So, here I was, stuck in a faceless office complex, miles from anywhere and with no way of knowing how to get to my own office. My newly found cell-phone was of little use because all my co-workers had their own phones switched off. I know, because I tried calling every number I had. I ended up walking into the reception area of a completely different company to see if they could call me a cab and wondering how long that would take to arrive. One thing was sure, I was verrrrrrrrrry late, sweaty and only a short step away from hyper-ventilating.
Fortunately, I struck gold with two employees who bent over backwards to calm me down. They summoned their own security guard who bundled me into an SUV and in moments, had me where I needed to be. It took another 10 minutes to find the right conference room, a few more to track down a chair (and I dropped that, with a clatter that woke the cubicle dwellers!) But eventually I was ensconced in the meeting room, scarfing down the candy and peanuts and wondering what I’d missed.
Dallas and a 4:30am start all on one trip. I should have known better.
The first problem was that my flight was at the undoGly hour of 6:00am. Living as I do, some distance from the airport, this would have required me to get out of bed at 3:30am, obviously a ridiculous proposition. Instead, I booked myself a bed in a hotel just a few minutes from the terminal, thus gaining an extra hour of sleep. Even so, that’s no time to be getting up. Like most normal people, I don’t function well in the mornings so I took care to unpack nothing. My clothes for the day were on a hanger and all I had to do was get up, shower, dress and tootle over to the airport. With luck, I would be aboard the plane before I’d woken up.
Except I forgot that two things I should have unpacked, were my toothbrush and razor. The few minutes it took me to run down to the car to fetch it from my made me a little late. Not enough to be a problem – that didn’t happen until I locked the car keys in the room and had to get the night clerk to let me back in. Still not drastically late, but enough to give that little stressful feeling that if anything else went wrong, I could be in trouble. No worries though; I found a parking space close to the terminal, there was no line at check in and security looked to be a breeze.
Until they ran my bag through the x-ray and discovered my Swiss Army Knife. I was momentarily thrilled because I’d lost it a while ago but then it dawned on me that while they may have found it; they weren’t going to give it back. It would only have taken 20 minutes or so to run back to the car with it, but that was 20 minutes more than I had to spare and with sadness, I watched it go into the bin.
The flight was just boarding as I huffed up to the gate and in no time, I was parked in my seat and sipping pseudo-coffee. The pilots seemed to know what they were doing and before I was much further along in my book, we were touching down at Dallas-Fort Worth. It looked as though the glitches were over for this mission. Once on the ground I gave Dear Wife a quick call to get her out of bed (it was still very early in Denver) then hopped in a cab to head over to meet a client. Yes, I had an extra meeting to squeeze in before going to my own company’s office to start the 3-day conference there.
The clients’ office is based in a hotel, albeit far more upscale than the one in which I’d spent the previous night, so as we pulled up, bell-hops scurried forward in the hopes of being allowed to touch my bag and thus earn a tip. Shaking them off, I was soon through the revolving doors and heading for the escalators out the back. At this point I thought of another call I needed to make and started patting my pockets to find my cell phone. And I patted, and I patted and I stopped walking and rummaged, then I put down my bags and searched in earnest. But to no avail.
The taxi firm couldn’t have been less helpful but after calling my phone a few times, the cab driver eventually answered and reluctantly agreed to bring it back. Despite my priming the hotel staff and giving them a number at which I could be reached, the poor guy still sat in the lobby for 15 minutes before some got around to letting me know he was there. He ‘did’ get a tip – a big one.
He would also be able to tell his friends the story of how I then got myself stuck in the revolving doors with a member of the L.A. Clippers basketball team. I was going through the doors, he was in the segment behind me and must have pushed a bit too hard and the thing jammed, trapping me inside for what seemed like days, although it was probably only a minute or two before the security guard came and released me. I’m no basketball fan and have no idea who this guy was but he thought the whole thing was funnier than I did. And he didn’t even offer me free tickets, or a wad of cash, or anything.
Anyway, back to the client meeting, which overran by about an hour. This was OK because we were covering some good material but it meant had now missed the start of my own company’s meeting and as I still had another long cab ride to get there, my hopes of squeezing in lunch beforehand, went out the window. Especially because the cab ride took longer than planned because we couldn’t find the bloody office.
My company’s corporate office employs literally thousands of people, housed in multiple buildings across a large campus. I’d been before, more than once and knew that our meeting wasn’t in the first building off the highway, but another, some 3/4 of a mile away.
Except I got it into my head that I was supposed to be in the other direction and had the driver take me to a different set of buildings altogether. We cruised for several minutes before asking a passing office worker for directions. That would have been a good plan had she not sent us off even further in the wrong direction. The second office worker we asked cheerfully pointed to a large building in the middle distance and as that had my company’s name emblazoned on the outside, I paid off the driver and raced up to the door. To find it locked. Because my company hasn’t used this building in some time and it’s currently sitting empty. And now my cab was gone.
So, here I was, stuck in a faceless office complex, miles from anywhere and with no way of knowing how to get to my own office. My newly found cell-phone was of little use because all my co-workers had their own phones switched off. I know, because I tried calling every number I had. I ended up walking into the reception area of a completely different company to see if they could call me a cab and wondering how long that would take to arrive. One thing was sure, I was verrrrrrrrrry late, sweaty and only a short step away from hyper-ventilating.
Fortunately, I struck gold with two employees who bent over backwards to calm me down. They summoned their own security guard who bundled me into an SUV and in moments, had me where I needed to be. It took another 10 minutes to find the right conference room, a few more to track down a chair (and I dropped that, with a clatter that woke the cubicle dwellers!) But eventually I was ensconced in the meeting room, scarfing down the candy and peanuts and wondering what I’d missed.
Dallas and a 4:30am start all on one trip. I should have known better.
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