Sep 18

It’s raining like hell at 5pm on a Friday evening in September and you know what that means. Soggy radio football broadcast.

Through a quirk in scheduling I’m set to announce the Munster at Morton game by myself. I had originally planned to simply walk the sidelines and announce via cellphone. I’ve done this before and it’s a lot more fun than sitting in a press box with a dozen other media hounds blowing bad breath. But I might rethink this whole on-the-field strategy now that it’s a monsoon outside.

Speaking of monsoons… I rode the bike to the station at 445 this morning and a couple blocks into the ride it started lightning and thundering and raining huge buckets of early morning wakeup. If you stop to think about it, riding amidst lightning was probably not too safe a thing to do at that hour, especially on the open terrain behind WalMart and Cabelas. But I made it to work anyhows. A little soggy for the wear, but certainly awake and ready to go. 

It’s already been a pretty long radio day. Dave Davilla of longtime sponsor Quik Skripts came on the show and gave me a flu shot live. Alexis came on and Margaret Gomez called in to promo the Mexican Independence Day parade on Sunday. Alexis is grand marshal so she gets to ride in a convertible and wave in Spanish. I made fun of her about that and the fact that she was to sit as judge in Hammond today also. There’s a lot to make fun of someone about when you know them inside and out.

Will Glaros, perhaps the classiest guy in the Region, brought his son, Matt, and their partner, Jeff Myers, on the show. Matt and Jeff are about 30-years-old and we had an interesting discussion about getting young people more involved in the issues and fundraising and moving the Region forward. My take: there’s very few young people getting involved in things around here. Their take: gotta wait til they have kids then it happens. Good point.

After the show I zipped over to the East Chicago train station and for the first time in 11 years I caught the train to Chicago there. For 18 years I took that train almost daily to the city to make funky hand signals at the Board of Trade. Today, there was a Cubs game against St. Louis at Wrigley so every car was packed with blue and white. I ran into a guy named Steve and his daughter who’s a senior in the hotel and restaurant program at Purdue Calumet. They both listen to the show and that was kinda cool. If you’re gonna stand armpit to armpit with someone, it might as well be another Region Rat. Once in the city, I took the red line up to DePaul, and that was even more crowded. Hope the Cubs won.

By the way - Why go to the city? To have lunch with my daughter Jackie who goes to DePaul and to pick up our family trickster. Jackie has had the trusty Ford Fusion for a couple of weeks, which isn’t really that big of a deal since I ride my bike all over hell’s half acre each weekday anyways. But tonight I might start out announcing the Munster at Morton game and if the Mustangs start killing Morton too badly, as I anticipate, I might at halftime drive to another game at East Chicago or Griffith. Either way, I need a car. A lot of times in the past I rode my bike to announce football games, especially at Calumet or Griffith, Highland, Munster, Hammond High… but if the games are too spread out – and it’s raining like hell – it’s just not as much fun. 

Jacks and I had lunch at Jam ‘N Honey across the street from the big DePaul cathedral, and then we walked to Starbucks on Webster and then to the old Children’s Memorial Hospital parking garage. Children’s has moved their whole hospital out of the neighborhood, but they agreed to let neighborhood people park for free in the big five-story garage. There’s no sign or anything. It’s just that if you live in the neighborhood you know you can park there. 

On the way home I stopped at American Eagle and bought five Polos – of different colors. They’re really high quality and were on sale for 19 bucks apiece,. Maybe it’ll get my wife and sister and Debbie Wargo and Ryan Walsh off my back about wearing a Navy Blue Polo three out of five days. I like Navy. I’ve got five navy blue Old Navy Polos. It just makes it easier to walk in the closet and reach on top of the pile and know that whatever else happens in the day, I’ll meet it in a nice, clean, cheap Old Navy navy Polo.

Now I’ve got a red one, a black one, a gray one and a couple more blue ones. They’re not quite navy but almost. Pretty soon we’ll again video the morning show. Gotta be ready.

The whole time I’m writing this it just keeps getting darker and rainier. I’ll bet it’s dark enough that the photo cell on the 400-foot radio tower just turned the tower markers and beacon lights on. If you were to climb up on the roof above me, you could look to the northeast and tell if the lights are on or not. But who in their right mind would climb on a two-story roof in a lightning storm to see if tower lights were blinking?

I guess that’s tantamount to – who in the hell would ride their bike three miles in a lightning storm to do a morning radio show? I get the point. You don’t have to say anything more.