Found myself this morning thinking that I’m getting to the age where I need to make a bucket list. Not because I feel my time is short, but because there are fun things with fun people I wouldn’t mind doing one day. It mostly involves going to sporting events, and it’s not so much the games themselves. More the people I would go with.
I don’t know that any of these will ever happen, but I have this strange belief that if I write them down, maybe I’ll remember them and possibly do something to make them happen. Here are five that immediately come to mind:
- Haven’t been to a Virginia Tech football game in person in years. I’ve gotten so used to having a computer nearby to fill in the parts of my memory that are ever fading every day, so to solve that, I need to go with Damian Salas (@vthokie) and Clark Ruhland (@Hokie20). It’d be like sitting next to a mainframe with a database of everything that’s ever happened in Virginia Tech sports history. Damian knows all the stats. Clark knows most of the same, but can remember what the uniforms looked like those days.
- I’m a big Washington Capitals fan, but need to go back to Roanoke one day and see the Rail Yard Dawgs with Sammy Oakey (@fabfourfan) and Chip Grubb (@hokiechip). Sammy is such a fan, it would be fun to hear him overflow with his passion against opposing players (as well as anything involving the Beatles). Chip is a master of keeping Sammy in check when he becomes too boisterous in his opinions. And of course, if those two are there, wonderdogs Stella and Ragnar have to be there too. Ragnar would probably be the star of the show.
- Would also be nice to watch a game with Ricky LaBlue (@rickylablue). Any game for that matter. I kind of adopted him as my internet son many years ago and have talked to him hundreds of thousands of times via Twitter, text and phone, but have never met him. Had a chance at this year’s Military Bowl, but torrential rains not seen since Noah led them two by two into his boat kind of stopped that. Told him once if he ever got married, I’ll be the tall old man with sunglasses on who slipped in the back door at the last second.
- In my decade plus on this medium, I have learned that Dave Fulton (@davefultonwrang) and I were in the same place 738 times during my time of covering NASCAR racing, and somehow never met. It would only be fitting the he and a few others from back in the day got together, watched a race, and told some incredible lies/stories from when racing was really racing. With him buying the drinks, of course.
- The fifth – and the one that has the highest probability of happening – is to go to a Nationals game with Tim Hogan (@hokiedad55), although it needs to include all of his children and his grandson Frank. Frank’s only an infant, but I yearn for the day he stops all of us and says to Tim “Grandpa, they still play 162, don’t they?”
The real point of this senseless rambling is there are so many great people on X that have become a part of my routine and to a certain extent, my family. We’ve just never met and probably never will.
Which would be a shame…
Sounds like I might need to borrow my wife’s credit card for that 739th meeting – at Martinsville Speedway I suggest. What worries me most should that ever happen is that I might see one of those old racing faces – even yours perhaps – and suddenly think to myself, “Good grief, I remember that jerk – I just didn’t know his name!” 🙂
Should that get together ever occur I’d need to seriously brush up on my lies and remembrances beforehand to be sure I change the names to protect the guilty!
I like the idea.
Martinsville Speedway would be a perfect venue. 🙂