The Champaign of trips
Some days on the beat are quiet, some days are busy and some days are absurd. For everyone who enjoyed my day-in-life series in February, here's the account from a Thursday trying to get from Denver to Champaign, Ill.
10 a.m.: The Jazz are practicing this morning at Gold Crown Field House, a nonprofit, community development project started former Denver Nugget Bill Hanzlik in Lakewood, Colo. Three or four times each season, the Jazz will practice somewhere off the beaten path. I think Gold Crown qualifies judging from the six retirees walking laps around the practice court as if it was a mall before the Jazz arrive.
I'd like to talk to Deron Williams about his return to the University of Illinois for Friday's preseason game against the Bulls. There's nothing Williams loves more, though, than being a smart ass, and he is pretty impressed with my new digital recorder. "I always wonder why [reporters] got these busted-ass tape recorders," Williams says.
I grumbled Thursday about the lack of commercial flights to Champaign, and Williams was having none of it as I raised the subject with Carlos Boozer. Now he's yelling something about there being one terminal at the airport and once flying nonstop from Dallas to Champaign. Sure. As if I wouldn't have tried to avoid taking a driving tour of Illinois tonight.
(As an aside, Williams has been pretty hilarious this season. Before Wednesday's game, he begged me to ask a question so he could do an impersonation of C.J. Miles talking to reporters his rookie season.
(I wasn't around then, but I guess Miles got a little excited whenever he was interviewed. He was fresh out of high school. Williams strung together about three run-on sentences in a row. Brevin Knight was joking that it sounded like you could go take a shower and come back to find C.J. still answering the same question.)
After wrapping up at practice, Jazz p.r. director Jonathan Rinehart walked out with me to my rental car. Talking about the schedule for Friday, we were greeted by a 72-year-old grandfather in red windpants who told us that he'd run 300,000 miles around the fields that used to be in the area in his life.
I am not making this up. He also swore that his friend across the street could vouch for him.
Not being a math major, I wasn't able to divide 300,000 by 72 by 365 on the fly and ask if he really expected me to believe he'd run more than 11 miles a day on average since childbirth. Before going back to running laps around the parking lot, he asked Jonathan and me to both punch him in the stomach just so we could be impressed by his abs.
11:30 a.m.: Normally I am the one left shaking my head at the mishaps I watch so many travelers endure. Today, I'm the one who's having issues. While fishing my plastic bag of toothpaste and shaving cream out of my suitcase, I absolutely slash my right middle finger on the Gillette razor in my bag.
Now I am bleeding everywhere. My blood is splattering on my laptop, on the white bins they give you for the X ray machine, on the metal table where you unload your stuff. I single-handedly manage to shut down one of the security lines at the Denver airport, which is no small feat. A couple of nice TSA folks get me some paper towels and Band Aids, but not before one of them gets my blood on her. Pretty gross.
Typing isn't a lot of fun right now, I have to say. I'm going to join Knight and Ronnie Price in listing myself as a game-time decision for Friday with a lacerated finger.
5:30 p.m.: I'm in Iowa! Don't ask. I was able to get a $115 one-way fare on United between Denver and Chicago, but only with a stopover in Des Moines. I'm expecting to see at least one, possibly two, and if I'm really lucky three Korver brothers at the airport.
True story about Korver: A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon a MySpace page that I was absolutely convinced was his. It had details about his life in Pella, Iowa, and in college at Creighton that were uncanny. The strange thing was, it also had a Bob Barr for President link. I asked Kyle at practice if he was in fact a Barr supporter. He looked at me like I was crazy before saying that there's like seven MySpace pages and four Facebook pages of people claiming to be him. What's funnier is that Kyle said he's actually e-mailed some of the impostors who've set up the pages pretending to be a fan asking about personal details of his life. I didn't ask what new things he'd learned about himself.
12:11 a.m.: The flight from Des Moines to O'Hare is 41 minutes from wheels up to wheels down. Then we spend another 30 minutes circling the airport waiting for a gate to open after landing. It's about a three-hour drive to Champaign with a stop for dinner and one wrong turn. I arrive after midnight, at the end of a 14-hour travel day. All for a preseason game in which Williams probably will play about 2 1-2 quarters. What's funny is that if/when the Jazz get sent to Europe during the preseason, the flight probably will be quicker than the trip from Denver to Champaign.
--Ross Siler
10 a.m.: The Jazz are practicing this morning at Gold Crown Field House, a nonprofit, community development project started former Denver Nugget Bill Hanzlik in Lakewood, Colo. Three or four times each season, the Jazz will practice somewhere off the beaten path. I think Gold Crown qualifies judging from the six retirees walking laps around the practice court as if it was a mall before the Jazz arrive.
I'd like to talk to Deron Williams about his return to the University of Illinois for Friday's preseason game against the Bulls. There's nothing Williams loves more, though, than being a smart ass, and he is pretty impressed with my new digital recorder. "I always wonder why [reporters] got these busted-ass tape recorders," Williams says.
I grumbled Thursday about the lack of commercial flights to Champaign, and Williams was having none of it as I raised the subject with Carlos Boozer. Now he's yelling something about there being one terminal at the airport and once flying nonstop from Dallas to Champaign. Sure. As if I wouldn't have tried to avoid taking a driving tour of Illinois tonight.
(As an aside, Williams has been pretty hilarious this season. Before Wednesday's game, he begged me to ask a question so he could do an impersonation of C.J. Miles talking to reporters his rookie season.
(I wasn't around then, but I guess Miles got a little excited whenever he was interviewed. He was fresh out of high school. Williams strung together about three run-on sentences in a row. Brevin Knight was joking that it sounded like you could go take a shower and come back to find C.J. still answering the same question.)
After wrapping up at practice, Jazz p.r. director Jonathan Rinehart walked out with me to my rental car. Talking about the schedule for Friday, we were greeted by a 72-year-old grandfather in red windpants who told us that he'd run 300,000 miles around the fields that used to be in the area in his life.
I am not making this up. He also swore that his friend across the street could vouch for him.
Not being a math major, I wasn't able to divide 300,000 by 72 by 365 on the fly and ask if he really expected me to believe he'd run more than 11 miles a day on average since childbirth. Before going back to running laps around the parking lot, he asked Jonathan and me to both punch him in the stomach just so we could be impressed by his abs.
11:30 a.m.: Normally I am the one left shaking my head at the mishaps I watch so many travelers endure. Today, I'm the one who's having issues. While fishing my plastic bag of toothpaste and shaving cream out of my suitcase, I absolutely slash my right middle finger on the Gillette razor in my bag.
Now I am bleeding everywhere. My blood is splattering on my laptop, on the white bins they give you for the X ray machine, on the metal table where you unload your stuff. I single-handedly manage to shut down one of the security lines at the Denver airport, which is no small feat. A couple of nice TSA folks get me some paper towels and Band Aids, but not before one of them gets my blood on her. Pretty gross.
Typing isn't a lot of fun right now, I have to say. I'm going to join Knight and Ronnie Price in listing myself as a game-time decision for Friday with a lacerated finger.
5:30 p.m.: I'm in Iowa! Don't ask. I was able to get a $115 one-way fare on United between Denver and Chicago, but only with a stopover in Des Moines. I'm expecting to see at least one, possibly two, and if I'm really lucky three Korver brothers at the airport.
True story about Korver: A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon a MySpace page that I was absolutely convinced was his. It had details about his life in Pella, Iowa, and in college at Creighton that were uncanny. The strange thing was, it also had a Bob Barr for President link. I asked Kyle at practice if he was in fact a Barr supporter. He looked at me like I was crazy before saying that there's like seven MySpace pages and four Facebook pages of people claiming to be him. What's funnier is that Kyle said he's actually e-mailed some of the impostors who've set up the pages pretending to be a fan asking about personal details of his life. I didn't ask what new things he'd learned about himself.
12:11 a.m.: The flight from Des Moines to O'Hare is 41 minutes from wheels up to wheels down. Then we spend another 30 minutes circling the airport waiting for a gate to open after landing. It's about a three-hour drive to Champaign with a stop for dinner and one wrong turn. I arrive after midnight, at the end of a 14-hour travel day. All for a preseason game in which Williams probably will play about 2 1-2 quarters. What's funny is that if/when the Jazz get sent to Europe during the preseason, the flight probably will be quicker than the trip from Denver to Champaign.
--Ross Siler
11:38 PM
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