Sunday, November 14, 1999
Each roadtrip offers a winning way to forget Bengals
BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A good thing about covering the Bengals now is, nobody can say I don't have a real job. You don't think that's work? Fine. Give me your Sunday afternoons and your rake, you take my seat at Lethargy Field, and we'll see who has the better day.
Covering the Bengals speaks to the advice my father gave me, when I was a hung-over 21-year-old desperate to blow off waiting tables at the country club:
“That's why they call it work.”
People were incredulous when I said I was flying to Seattle last Saturday to write about the Bengals. “The 6,000-mile L,” a colleague suggested, referring to the round trip and the team's inevitable loss.
I had a great time. I'd do it again this weekend. I don't go for the games. Who goes for the games? The games are awful.
I go for the trips. Sunday is the penance I pay for enjoying Saturday. This applies to all working road trips.
I'm a terrible companion on the road. I change my mind, I'm never on time. I'm selfish. I want to do what I want to do. It's usually what nobody else wants to do.
Come with me to Memphis if you want to get in the car and drive a couple of hours to Clarksdale, Miss., to the Blues Museum. Tool down Highway 61, a two-laner straight as truth, past cotton fields on either side, virginal and still. We'll spread the gospel of John Lee Hooker from the speakers of the tape machine. Can I get an “Amen?”
I didn't think so. Sports writers on the road like to eat great meals and talk about sports. I like drive-thrus and anything but sports.
At the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, I once saw an alligator eat a duck. It was cooler than anything I've ever seen at a football game.
Join me in Phoenix if you like the idea of absolute silence. We'll drive into the Superstition Mountains until we get lost. Then we'll sit on a million-year-old hill and listen to a quiet so profound, you can hear your blood move.
In Jacksonville, I go to fine and ancient St. Augustine an hour down A1A. That's where I sit on a second-floor porch of a bar on the Intercoastal Waterway, drink Red Brick Ale and dwell on the privilege of 70-degree breezes in December.
Every city has something worth doing. In Pittsburgh, they run a trolley up the side of the hill across the river from downtown. The Duquesne Incline pulls you to the best city view in America. In Kansas City, you can go to Independence, Mo., and visit the humble home of Harry Truman, the last great American president.
I ought to pay the Enquirer for the trips to San Francisco. At Mama's on Washington Square, I once shouted “Norm!” at an unsuspecting George Wendt, while the former Cheers bar hound was sipping a morning espresso. He gave me a look you could shoot from a rifle.
I drive across the Golden Gate to the Marin Headlands, down to Rodeo Beach, where surfers glide and gigantic waves smash the cliffs. It's a perfect place, 20 minutes from downtown and a metro area of a few million people. Almost nobody goes.
I take a ferry into San Francisco Bay, to Angel Island, deserted but for eucalyptus trees and the memories of the Chinese immigrants detained there at the turn of the century. If you go there with me, you buy the sourdough bread and the Monterey Jack cheese. I'll buy the beer. We'll walk.
As for Seattle last weekend, the game stunk. But the view from Queen Anne Hill on Saturday was great. I drove up a long road, to a little patch of grassy park. Below, downtown Seattle seemed to levitate in a foggy shroud, its buildings like bumps in a linen tablecloth.
I read the paper in the drizzle. But not about the game.
Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.