Cup of Coffee

September 12, 2022: Trekkin’

21 Comments

Long story, but the wife and kids will be via on their own trip coming up, which means I'll get a chance to do a little solo travel. Keeping an eye on the flight deal websites...

21 thoughts on “September 12, 2022: Trekkin’”

  1. Saturday night I went to the high school volleyball game in Gettysburg. I was sitting in the stands, minding my own business, waiting for the game to start, when the guy who's in charge of livestreaming local sports events came up to me and said, "Do you know much about volleyball? Do you want to sit in with Warren (the regular broadcaster) on the broadcast tonight?"

    I said, "Well, I don't know if I know much about volleyball, but if you want me to do it, sure. I'd be happy to."

    And so, with pretty much zero preparation, I made my internet sports broadcasting debut. I don't know how good it was--I know it was rough in the beginning, because I didn't know exactly what Warren wanted me to do. But I think it got better as we went along. I actually thought it went pretty well, if you consider the fact that I didn't really know what I was doing . Come to think of it, that last sentence is probably a pretty good description of my life. Anyway, I had a lot of fun, and I can now add "internet sports broadcaster" to my resume.

    1. If anyone wants to check out the broadcast, you can find it here. You have to go in about fifty minutes to get to the varsity game, although at forty-five minutes you can hear me doing the PA player introductions before the game.

      1. That is cool and I’m glad you said ‘yes’! It’s not an easy thing to do.
        I’ve been fortunate to be interviewed each year for a Veterans & Military Affairs public service program called Minnesota Military Radio. It airs weekly, but I’m usually on once each spring to recap Veterans legislation at the state level. The host, Tom Lyons, does a great job with guests; makes it feel more like a conversation than an interview. It’s weird to hear yourself on the airwaves (and I’m glad it’s only one time each year), but I’m glad to do it.

        We’re fortunate in Minnesota to have a Governor and Legislature who do - mostly - put partisan politics aside to get things done for Vets & their families.

    2. I still get emails from Scott’s Cheap Flights, though I’ve never actually partaken in one of them. I imagine if it’s still around in 10 years it will lead to many unplanned plans.

      1. We used Scott's to get good flights for Spain.

        At it's core, Scott's is using Google Flights^ and alerting people when they find good deals. It works great if you're like "IDK where I go, just so long as it's <$300 (or your target)" We used it the reverse "We don't necessarily care when we go, we just want to get it as cheaply as possible. There's also Kiwi, which takes it to the extreme, but I've never used it and don't think I ever will. They find the absolute rock bottom itineraries, but you have like 5 connections and 36 hours of travel time. The one flight to Spain I found that was super cheap was like MSP-BOS-ORD-JFK-Madrid or something insane with 4 US flights before you went transatlatic. It was cheap, but no way in hell was I doing it. ^Which itself is built largely on the old ITA Matrix service that Google bought out. I loved ITA Matrix. Google Flights seems to be my preferred.

        1. I found it. It was a family of four one way Minneapolis to Porto for less than $900

          Minneapolis -BWI-O'Hare-Newark-Porto

              1. bookface says this was 11 years ago today:

                if everything goes according to plan, here is my itinerary of airports i will be in tomorrow: ORD-CLT-LYH-ROA-CLT-PIT. should be good times.

        2. Nice. Sometimes they have mistake flights, which is why a former coworker ended up scheduling a $400 flight to New Zealand in the middle of the night while he was solving a server issue.

  6. I'm sure this has happened before, but I don't remember it: both managers in the Guardians/Angels game get kicked out during the same argument.

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