On the Road Again
There was a time, really not all that long ago, when I would be feeling pretty rugged about now.
The ride up was smooth. Listened to a book by Elmore Leonard on CD. This one was Up in Honey’s Room. Like most of Leonard’s work it was deliciously irreverent. Helped melt away the miles.
I got to the hotel in plenty of time to get into some trouble, but didn’t have the get-up-and-go. I took a stab at finding some live music, but not that much of one. I drove over to a roadhouse about five miles from the hotel that I’d come across on the internet, but there was no scene when I got there. I asked the guy behind the bar if there would be live music, and he said no, it would be a D.J. playing Latin Music.
“Live music don’t pay the bills,’’ he said.
The one real action around here that I knew of was last night’s concert by Robert Earl Keen, Todd Snider and Bruce Robison, three of my favorite Texas singer-songwriters. By the time I realized they were playing in Annapolis, the show was sold out. So I found a decent meal at an oriental restaurant and repaired back to the hotel to watch TV and sleep. How boring is that?
Boring but prudent, something I’ve rarely been accused of. At least I’m feeling chipper as I sit in the press deck of Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium looking at the names of the Naval campaigns on the side of the stadium. This is about my sixth or seventh trip here, and I’m always reminded of the Bill Dooley story from the time he brought the Deacons here to play Navy in the late 80s or early 90s. Dooley would say pretty much anything to get his team fired up. In the pregame spiel he started ranting about how Navy doesn’t respect the Deacons, and he can prove it. “They’ve already got your name up there as another victory.’ Somewhere between Okinawa and Sicily was Wake.
Jim Grobe was right this week when he said that Academy games are cool.