I overpack for every trip … yet still often manage not to bring something I need. This trip to Phoenix was, as I wrote Friday, a pleasant surprise, as I wasn’t expecting to travel until the WNBA finals started. So I was a little rushed in packing … meaning I only had like 24 hours to do it.
So I forget my toothbush, which I can’t even believe since it’s usually what I’m most obsessive about, but that’s remedied easily. However, I also forgot to bring my parka, and I’m not going to buy one here. I’ll just have to do without it.
Why, you say, would anyone need a heavy coat in Phoenix in September … or ever? Because they keep this media room in the US Airways Center mighty chilly. I am reminded of this stupid thing kids used to do on my school bus called “freeze out” _ when they would open as many windows as they could in the winter. For what reason? None, of course, since kids usually don’t have to have any reason for doing silly stuff.
Somehow, even though most of us thought it was idiotic (and uncomfortable), we didn’t immediately start screaming to tell the bus driver, since that kind of tattling seemed to break the standard kid “code” we followed. You might think we wouldn’t need to alert her anyway, since it should have been pretty obvious to her pretty quickly. But it always seemed the driver would take an inordinate amount of time to actually notice “freeze out” was going on. At which point she’d suddenly yell, “Are you kids crazy? Do you all want to get pneumonia?”
Anyway, I don’t think I’ll get pneumonia, but I will say I wished I’d packed a jacket. Because I had a feeling Phoenix was going to extend my stay here, and maybe I should have guessed they keep interiors so cool here in the desert. That way when you walk outside, for a few seconds it actually feels really good to be in 100-plus degrees.
I had a hunch, and I’m sure plenty of other WNBA followers did as well, that LA would win Game 2, but Phoenix would come back to take the decisive Game 3. So now the finals start out here on Tuesday, and I’ll just hang around for that game and the second game of the finals on Thursday.
In the previous post where I wrote about the importance of letting editors know you appreciate coverage, I did not originally put in an address to write to for ESPN.com. I’ve added it now in that post, but I’ll put it here, too: it’s for the ombudsman.
I did a column after Saturday’s game on the end of Lisa Leslie’s career, and ESPN.com linked to that off its front page. Which always means that there are guys who find it necessary to click on the story and comment about how no one cares, how women’s basketball is a joke, and nobody watches the WNBA, blah-blah-blah.
Of course, the very fact that they are spending time commenting on how “no one cares” is proof that they’re actually scared to death that people DO care, because that’s really threatening to some of them. It shouldn’t be that hard of a concept to get across that if you aren’t interested in something, don’t click on it. Because no one is going to make you read it. There are only about a billion other things on the site for them to click on.
Anyway, more and more I’ve seen other readers tell these “who cares?” nitwits, “Obviously you care enough to come here and comment on it, don’t you?” There’s not much logically they can say to refute that.
Upcoming on ESPN.com, I’ll have a story looking at the Mercury-Fever finals, although more insight will come about that on Monday, when we’ll have a chance to talk to both teams here in Phoenix. I also spoke at length after Saturday’s game to LA’s Tina Thompson about her future, and I’ll have an upcoming ESPN.com story on that, too.
But for right now, I just need to go outside and get warm again.
Do you want to borrow a jacket…I’m sure I own one although it’s probably covered in dust from neglect!
lol. It hasn’t been that cold in there all summer long. I think they cranked up the a/c in the media room for you out-of-towners
You are the best!