Life is a rush…

So here I am sitting in a hotel lobby in Ft. Worth, Texas enjoying a fine cup of the house java at the Marriott Town Place Suites.  It is early Sunday morning and once again I have time to reflect upon the activities that brought me here and how they may be different in my future lifestyle on the road to retirement.

One of the “fun jobs” I have in my current working life is that of an NCAA statistician. What that does for me is to allow me to watch football games from the press box and basketball games from near midcourt – front row. Now if you knew how much of a college sports junkie I was you would understand just how cool this is to me. And this is the single most significant thing I will miss from my working life after I retire. But the events of yesterday have allowed me to let go of even this most sacred part of my working life…

Yesterday, I was to drive from my home to Arlington, Texas to work as a statistician for the University of Arkansas vs. Texas A&M University Southwest Classic game in Dallas Cowboy’s stadium. Cool, huh!!!! Well let me tell you about that day…

It started well as my bride and I awoke and went to one of our favorite places for breakfast and hit the road well ahead of schedule. Nothing could mess up this day – right? We wanted to arrive early enough so we could attend one of two tailgates depending upon which one was closer to us… So we are nearing Dallas’s Stadium about 3.5 hours before game time which is great for tailgating.

But….. we suddenly encountered a parking lot like situation on the road leading into the area where we were to park. We could actually see the lot I had a parking pass for but it took us 45 minutes to go the 1/4 mile to the lot… compounding this was the fact that we passed by one tailgate on the way in and it looked as if it would be over a 1/2 mile hike to it and back – so we couldn’t go there… By the time we parked and got to the stadium it was evident there would be no tailgating for us…

So, up to the press box,  I worked the game, the Aggies lost… Oh well, it was expected. No problem, we will drive to our hotel in Ft. Worth and go out on the town and have fun… Well we thought the traffic coming into the stadium was bad but the exiting traffic was even worse… We get to the hotel only to find it is overbooked… they find us another one… we finally get to it about 8:30 pm and are very hungry… ask the hotel staff about where to go eat ad they direct us to a trolley that runs every 12 minutes… make that 25!!!!

So we make it downtown and learn the last trolley runs at 10:00 pm so not much time to enjoy the a dinner and some nightlife. Finally we settle on a little Italian place and order our food… 35 minutes later it arrives so we ask for it to go so we can catch the last trolley.  We get to the stop at 9:35 and hoping we haven’t missed the last run… at 9:57 we start walking back to the hotel and plan to flag a cab down when the trolley finally arrives… back to our hotel and it is nearly 10:15! We finish dinner and realize the day is shot… We really had no fun today as we were rushed in everything we tried to do with no time to enjoy it at all…

So what does the long story really mean and why am I writing about it? You see working games such as this one is the highlight of my current working life. However, when I reflect back about this event and I realize that we were rushed the whole time while just trying to have a little fun!!! So now I am better prepared to shed this vestige of my working life as well and I truly look forward to life without a rushed schedule…

… hurry up March 2011…