While You Were Sleeping

Yup, I think we’re finally at that point.

As a 30+ year viewer of televised football, this has been creeping for the past decade.  When the experience of watching a football game is much better at home than sitting in the stands.

If you combine ticket prices that can range in the hundreds for some NFL and college games, the costs of food and parking, traffic issues, mouthy fans against the current economy, this may really not bode well for the NFL and for some major college programs.

Go down the numbers.  Bear with me here.  Two weeks ago, my doting 7-year-old son & I drove east to South Bend, Indiana to watch Nevada at Notre Dame in person.  We had the chance for a once-in-a-lifetime football experience (Notre Dame tickets can be very hard to secure) plus the priceless bonding time for the two of us.  No surprise, to those who know me, but we did the trip “on the cheap”.  Less than $250, including tickets, food, gas and even renting a car for the weekend.

Break down what that trip could have been:

- $300 a ticket.  We were on the 50.  That’s what prime tickets were going for in the open market.

- $40 to park

- $30 for food

- $50 for gas

- 60 cents for the I-80/I-94 tolls near the Indiana border, Illinois side.  I’m nothing if not detailed here.

That’s $720.60 for two people. 

This very week, for $720.60, you can walk into just about any store in Eastern Iowa that sells LCD televisions and leave with a 42″ screen.  Possibly a 47″.  Maybe even have enough to pay for the NFL’s Sunday Ticket or the College Football Gameplan.

Throw in rude fans, a long walk and — I hate to say it — I’m happy with a couch, two pizzas and a long, tall beverage of my choosing.  On college football Saturdays, I can still flip between 12 or 13 games instead of committing myself to one game for an entire Saturday.

My wife would probably even be pleased to know that, if I enjoy the early games — at home with my stomach full of copious caloric intake — I still have the desire to handle menial domestic tasks, like mowing or clearing leaves. 

This leaves some of these NFL and college programs in a real pickle.  With the current economy, are we at the point where some longtime fans will now pick up on the notion that it’s a better experience “at home”?  The NFL has loaded up its product with so many commercial breaks that games are, often, anti-climactic.  Even the Big Ten home games are reaching this point, with stretches of inactivity after punts.

I heard one radio talker put it best this week:  ”The NFL is a blue-collar sport with white-collar ticket prices.”   

Of course, hardly anyone wants to admit this line of thinking that home is better.  It’s always about, “we’re going to the game!”.  My son & I always cherish the pictures that we’ve taken from the games we’ve been to since moving here last April.  Two games at Kinnick last year, one at the UNIDome, our game earlier this month at Notre Dame plus a surprise LSU-Arkansas game over Thanksgiving 2008 on a family trip. 

The pictures and memories are fabulous.  I don’t put any Facebook pictures of me watching a game in my living room.

The only trouble is that, the actual experience just may now be better…at home.

In the midst of the end of Cash For Clunkers, some thoughts on my old car that I keep firing up each and every day.

Do you drive one of these?

The engine rattles a little bit or maybe a little bit more than that, you may find a french fry from 2002 under the console, the A.C. quit working sometime around when John Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination.

I’m a proud driver of a P.O.S.  My piece of…steel.

It’s a 1998 Toyota Corolla.  Midnight blue.  140,000 miles and I’m hoping to hit 200,000 before I push, pull or drag it into a car lot for another car.

The plan is, by that time, I’ll be pushing 40 and just getting all fitted for my Midlife Crisis car.  Let’s just say that it won’t be a 1998 Corolla.

The circumstances behind the arrival of the 1998 Corolla are out of riveting fiction.  A 16-year-old blows through a stop sign and totals my wife’s car.  She was more shocked than anything else but then we had to go car shopping.  Tired of the constant mechanical troubles with her three-year-old car, we zoomed over and checked out a used Corolla.

Even for a “used” car, we shelled out $13,000 for the 1998 Corolla when we signed on the dotted line in September of 1999.  That was a ton of money for us — especially when you factor in the Financial Apocolypse of Y2k.  (What?  You didn’t squirrel away money and head for a secluded cabin in the Minnesota Northwoods?)

Here is the true beauty of driving and old car with a current Kelley Blue Book Value of, drumroll please… $1,025:

- Dents?  What Dents?  We have all had the friends with the new car or SUV that is about 50% of their salary.  They wash the cars every three days, scan weather radar to check for any hail, refuse to park next to other cars at the mall and, in the words of Ferris Bueller, “spend their time rubbing it with a diaper”.  I would feel comfortable driving that Corolla in the Baja 500, the nastiest off-road race in the Western Hempishere.  Provided I got the A.C. fixed, of course.

- The Glory Years With No Payments.  We haven’t had any payments on Bad Blue in years.  With a $1,025 KKB value, I imagine that we should be about five years since the payments ended and that’s about right.  I think of people shelling out $379 or $445 - maybe even more - for their vehicle.  For many people, no car payments would equate to about $4,000 or $5,000 a year.  That’s substantial.  You could feed a kid — or even really save for college for a few years if you can even go four years without those payments. 

Of course, many people find it necessary to drive late-model cars.  If my commute was longer than three miles, I probably would take a look at something that is not more reliable — this Corolla has been fairly trouble-free — but something more, ahem, “upscale”.  Managers, realtors, sales specialists and many other professions also have a quiet, unspoken need to ‘present an element of success’.  I definitely understand that.

Yet with the constant push, even aided by the government, to trade in these “clunkers”, I kept thinking of me and my Corolla.  We’ve been through good times and desperate days — three moves, four cities and two children.  Years ago, it was still the ‘primary vehicle’, the car that we took each of our two children home from the hospital in.  That’s trust.

Now, it’s different.  We’ll put new tires on it and quietly hope that will take care of the power train deficiencies, even though we know it’s not the case.  My wife, who originally picked the Corolla, now treats the car like the old green couch that used to be in the living room and is now in the basement. 

That’s fine as well.  

Still, I hope that the experience with the Corolla also rubs off on my two children.  I’m now nine years from having to figure out a way to afford insurance for a 16-year-old.  No, I have no plans to still have the ’98 Corolla in working order when my son turns 16.  That would be a 20-year-old car.  (Side note: Classic cars are different because of generational shifts.  When I got my driver’s license on Friday, November 8, 1990, a 20-year-0ld car would be a ‘70 Chevy Nova — a true classic design, much more so than a 1998 compact.  I’d NEVER do that to my off-spring).  

Besides, now that I pass a decade with the Corolla, I am pushing for another four or five years of ratting down the roads of Cedar Rapids in it.  Then, I’ll finally be ready with the cliche of the Midlife Crisis car.  Silver, sporty but still less than the $13,000 we paid in 1999 for this car.

Yet before I sign the contract, at age 40, to drive away in the cliche, I’ll stop by the grocery store to mark the end of care-free car ownership.

I’ll make sure to pick up diapers.

It’s a point where I cringe nearly every day.

You see, on the days that I am here at KCRG, Monday through Friday, we will often come across stories from partner news sources that trumpet the ‘end of the recession’ or ‘is the economy bouncing back?’.

Who am I to say the economy is or is not bouncing back?

Yet can we wait until the season of economic panic is over first?

I come at this with, what I consider, a common-sense approach.  No, I don’t have armies of economic data to back this up.  Just a guy who spends his weekdays driving around his neighborhood and far too much time on his weekend walking around retail shops.

I’d like to think I have a decent sense of what is going on.

First, the economy may be coming back and stepping away from the dramatic drop in jobs, stock price and confidence that hit one year ago.  Look back to that point.  It was a scary time for many in this country.  People were thrown out of work, with many unprepared, professionally and financially, for what was to come.

Yet now the reports are coming out that we are coming “back from the brink”.  Are we?  Really?

Many sharp and driven people are still out of work.  For many years, if you possessed these two characteristics in the workplace, you were not only employed.  You moved up.  It was not that long ago when employers complained that there were no good workers to hire because all of the sharp and driven people already had decent jobs.  Who among us doesn’t know a handful of people who fit those great criteria, have lost their job in the past fifteen months and are still out of work.  Once I see those friends of mine back “doing what they do well”, then I’ll truly think we are back.

Show me spending numbers that aren’t ’tipped’.  Each month, housing numbers come out and we all try to decipher what those mean.  July’s numbers showed that housing values actually held in many places.  Of course, Iowa’s numbers tend to not be as extreme as homeowners didn’t benefit from the 2001-2005 run-up, nor get pinched in the resulting drop.  Yet do remember that the government is kicking in $8,000 in a tax credit for ‘first-time homebuyers’ until December 1st and these same buyers are able to take advantage of a slow market.  Add in 30-year mortgages this spring that could be had for 4.5%.  When there is a significant push from government and market forces, the numbers should reflect that.  Show me the numbers this February or March, once the $8,000 tax credit is expired.

Same for cars and trucks.  With the cash-for-clunkers program now finished, the sales numbers will reflect an uptick in activity.  I mean, who wouldn’t want to trade in their old beater for $4,500 towards a new ride?  Especially in an economy where money isn’t moving as fast as it did in the rather carefree days of 2003?   

Are businesses ready to spend money again?  When business owners and managers feel threatened, financially, they react by not spending money.  That goes for advertising to get their message out, building a new warehouse or factory, hiring more workers.  Right now, the business climate remains one with an uncertain future.  Will their taxes go up?  What role will businesses play in health care for their workers?  Until these managers and owners are convinced of a clear picture for their ‘bottom line’, I expect light treading instead of the boom hiring of a few years ago.

Just take a walk in the aisle.  Instead of just reading the hard numbers from Washington, go take a look where you live.  We just purchased a home here in Cedar Rapids back in May so I have to spend far too much time walking up and down aisles of home improvement stores.  We don’t spend much on our projects (mainly paint and other minor expenses) but my feet do feel all of the steps, moving from the paint section to millwork to brick pavers.  Here is what I notice:  not many other shoppers when I’m at Menards, Lowe’s, Home Depot on a Saturday afternoon.  Yet when I’m in the grocery stores or the gigantic discount stores, I do see plenty of people and long lines.  If you really want a decent snapshot, go check out the car lots, the home improvement stores and the grocery stores.  

Just as I’m sure that, today — whatever day you read this — we will see more stories about whether or not the ”economy is back”.  I’ll hold off any grand proclamations myself, until I see some authentic, positive movement.  For me, that means when homes and cars are moving, even without the not-so-gentle nudge of tax incentives.  Once the smart and driven people in my life are back in the system…I’ll consider it back.

The economy will come back but some caution is welcome for this.

Just came across a solid website for all of us out there with little ones.

When you go out to eat, the final bill adds up in a hurry.  $10 for mom, $10 for dad and each child runs about $5 for a ‘kid’s meal’.

But what if those kids meals were free?

http://www.mykidseatfree.com/

I didn’t realize all of the national restaurants that are running these deals.  The element here is that most are running them quietly and without too much mention.  The site will actually show all of the Iowa, or Cedar Rapids/Marion/Iowa City/Waterloo/Dubuque/Wherever You Live eateries where children can eat free.

Take advantage of it, if you choose.

This is to actually assume we had a true summer to enjoy.  I can’t complain with mine — plenty of travel in the region.  Some throughout Iowa, back to Wisconsin for the book tour for my recent novel.  I enjoyed a trip to Milwaukee to take my son for his first Major League Baseball game.  Even managed a Little League baseball team, right into our first-round playoff loss.

A very successful and pleasant summer overall.

Yet a few rules have emerged for me for our first, non-flood affected summer in Iowa:

- Try to convince the kids that they cannot go to Noelridge or Cherry Hill pools unless it’s at least 85 degrees.  They’ll shiver within 20 minutes of the first jump.

- Always keep some extra dollars aside for the impromptu ice cream breaks. 

- On that note, try to convince your wife not to befriend the local Ice Cream Truck driver.  As it blares out, “The Entertainer” over and over on our street, I also know that forking over $1 for that icicle will only guarantee more of the truck until winter.

On that note, 33 days until the first full weekend of college football season.  Not that I’m counting or anything…

This voyage was full of family and full of stops, from Cedar Rapids to Altoona, with plenty of visits along the way.

The week’s Our Town program was actually taped in reverse.  While we “started” at Adventureland USA in Altoona and ended up in Walcott on Friday night — for the programs, mind you — our second day of trips was a steamy and sticky Friday, June 26.

Our 130+ miles of RV-laden goodness started with a 9 AM visit to The Chocolate Haus in Amana.  For this leg of the tour, we were able to bring my wife and young children along which, for this first stop, kicked off a day full of sugar and long drives…always a superb combination for a Clark Griswold-style outing along the Interstate.  Chocolate-dipped marshmallows awaited the kids and we feasted on chocolate-covered gummy bears for the rest of the trip.  (Tip: put the bears in a cooler or refrigerator before eating — they taste far better when chilled.  Just trust me).

A shopping mecca came on Stop Number 2, the Tanger Outlet Mall, just north of Williamsburg along I-80.  I’m always amazed that people make these retail outlets as destinations, given that most are outside of metro areas.  Yet, on this Friday in June, cars and trucks filled the large parking lot by mid-morning.

Quite possibly the favorite stop of the day:  Grinnell, Iowa.  Grinnell has a vibrant downtown for a city of 9,000 people.  We took in lunch on the square before a 45-minute walking tour of about six blocks.  Yet I would say that Grinnell will be on the ’must-stop list’ for when I take my son to Ames this fall for a Cyclone football game.

Have you ever been to the Iowa Speedway?  If so, probably as a fan.  The rise of the track into a location that can host Indy Car racing has been quick.  If you ever get the opportunity to see the ’inside’ of the track, here is what will strike you the most… just how steep the banks are.  I once read that, at Daytona, a car has to be zipping along at about 80 MPH just to keep from sliding off the track.  The Iowa Speedway may not have that level of banking required but you will feel it, in the legs, when you do walk up the track.

The final stops for Day 2 included visits to the Maytag Dairy Farms - that’s just north of Newton - to see nearly everything that makes up the process of blue cheese before hitting up Prairie Meadows Racetrack & Casino in Altoona.

Day 3 was a half-day, if you will, for the production of the Our Town Road Trip RV series.  My family was able to take in the opening hours on a Saturday Morning at Adventureland USA.  This was our first trip and — I must say — I was extremely impressed by the cleanliness and layout of the park.  The workers, many of them in the ;’seasoned demographic’ were unfailingly friendly and helpful to answer any questions we had.  Now that I’m inching closer to 35, I have to hold off the rides that I could go on, dozens in a day, in my youth.  Yet Adventureland brought the right mix of rides across age groups — even for our cautious kids.

Make your own adventure this summer — or next.  When people automatically look to Chicago or Minneapolis, do remember that plenty of potential memories can be made right here, in a short day’s drive.

What a week!  (Actually, it was stretched out across a couple of different weeks, here and there, but that’s beside the point.) 

We had an outstanding few days zipping up and down Interstate 80 for the KCRG-TV 9 Our Town Road Trip, in the Ketelsen RV.  Very well done, all the way around.

As my week of Road Trippin’ finished up on TV-9, here is the “real time” review of our voyage:

Thursday, June 25:

- Started out at Coralville Lake for a buzz around the lake.  After 17 months here in Cedar Rapids, this was actually my first trip to the beach as we headed out with the Chief Warden.  This provided an outstanding primer for my initial voyage (literally) around the ideal water spot only a half-hour for most people in Cedar Rapids and Coralville/Iowa City.

- Walking Around Downtown Iowa City.  Sure, it’s easy to have an image of downtown in Iowa City as the place to go after Hawkeye home football games or on a weekend evening to enjoy a beverage or two.  Yet what I really took from the experience was just how kid-targeted parts of the Ped Mall really are now.  The IC Public Library is just off the Ped Mall and, a few days later, I did take the kids to the Splash Pad in the heart of it.  The Splash Pad wasn’t as dynamic as our ‘regulars’ in Cedar Rapids and Hiawatha but it was a destination for the afternoon.

- Wine and History in West Branch.  By the afternoon hours, the sun beat down on the Road Trip RV as we pulled into the Wallace Winery, just three or four miles west of West Branch on the Herbert Hoover Highway.  The winery isn’t even ten minutes from Iowa City.  If you’re into wine (I’m not so I won’t even try to fake it here), WW did feature a diverse selection.  Wallace Winery is also two miles off I-80 so not too far, either. 

Final stop on that Thursday was a brief tour stop at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum.  I’m a student of history and have been since I was about 7 or 8 years of age.  I can now add ‘Hoover’ to my fairly unimpressive collection of Presidential Libraries of Clinton and LBJ.  Definitely worth the trip, especially for Iowa’s only president.

More to come on Day 2 of the Voyage Down I-80, starting in Cedar Rapids and working all the way to Altoona.

I’ve been hooked for a few months now and fully understanding the world’s obsession with Facebook.

This may be the most pronounced “social invention” of the past fifty years.

Facebook has made finding people possible and sharing your life, your family, your pictures, your victories and your frustrations.  No more mass e-mails that proclaim, “Elmer Has a New Job!”.  That’s what the Facebook page is for.

I have also discovered a delightful sidebar to all of this, courtesy of Facebook.

My friend’s name is Paul.  We’ve known each other for 25 years but, as he so eloquently puts it on his Facebook page, “I have broken ears”. 

He can’t hear a thing.

Went to summer camps together, went to school together.

Long ago, Paul and I shared a passion for basketball — and other sports.  Yet because Paul could not hear, our ‘conversations’ rarely got past four or five lines.  I tried to delve deeper but, apparently, I didn’t try hard enough.  We often sat on the bench together — me because of a lack of talent and Paul, well, his ears were broken.  He didn’t play basketball onto the varsity level just because of those ears.  He had the talent and the smarts but, in that sport, you really need that sense of hearing.

As with many Facebook “reconnections”, Paul and I went our separate ways.  I went to Wisconsin, he attended Gallaudet and that was that. 

Only with this miracle site called Facebook have people come back into my life.  I’m sure that I’m not alone when I write that we can divvy up the Facebook contacts into:

- People we are sincerely thrilled to hear from again.

- People we don’t find too offensive and will tolerate.

- People who may be good contacts if we ever find ourselves out of work.

Paul definitely fits into the first group.  Not because we had a deep friendship decades ago but because this is the ideal medium to keep up with his life.  We shared many common interests but just never had that common path to be able to talk about it.  Now, of course, we still can’t really talk but at least we can write.  This also means that, finally, we can also dig a little deeper than in the past — and talk about our jobs, our lives and what we are trying to do in the future.

Well done, Facebook.  This is the great equalizer. 

Just please, please try to refrain from more changes on the user pages.  The older, crankier Facebook demographic (hey, I’m 35 in a few months) don’t like change — although we can adjust.

It’s easy for those of us in the media to get fairly ’steeled’ or numb when covering all of the awful news stories.  Car crashes, farm disasters, drownings in lakes and rivers.

When coming back from visiting my wife’s parents in northeast Wisconsin last Saturday, we came upon a stretch of US Highways 18-151, just west of Madison.  I went to school at Wisconsin, so I’m fairly familiar with those highway miles.  We’re heading west, counting the hours and minutes to Cedar Rapids, when we encountered empty eastbound lanes in the other direction.  That’s rare.  18-151 is a fast road.  65 is the posted limit.  You can drive it in a comfortable 70 or 72 without feeling any loss of control.

The tow trucks on the other side of a foothill told the story.

I was commandeering the minivan in a clump of vehicles.  We all slowed to about 55.  We all looked left.  My wife caught her breath.  The kids looked up from their coloring book and Game Boy.  A mangled SUV told the story.

Windshield smashed into the front row.

“Whoever that was probably didn’t make it,” I remember saying under my breath.  Then it was back on to doing 70 but taking more than a few minutes thinking about our own mortality.

My resourceful wife then shuttled through her phone to try and find the news on what happened, if any was out there.

Two dead, both from Dubuque.  Here is the latest update on the story as I’m writing this.  Including a 13-year-old boy who was a Boy Scout.

At the time, we only knew that two had been killed and didn’t know where they were from.  Apparently, an RV zoomed through the median and hit the SUV where the victims were in.  Once the early facts came in, my wife and I took far too long lightly debating what, if anything, we could possibly do if we were in that second that required a half-second decision. 

What would I do?

I’d like to think that, if I couldn’t steer out of the way, I would, in a half second, be able to whip around the driver’s seat, take both hands and press them against the chests of my two children to lessen the impact on them. 

Take me but leave them.

I found myself in a similar spot nine years ago, when we lived in Duluth.  Childless and driving to the grocery store, a speeding car was running through a red light while we were on the green.  Seeing that a crash was inevitable, I reached out my right arm and, with all my might, I yelled “HANG ON” to my wife and put all of my strength in keeping her in her seat.  The car smacked us at 40 MPH before driving off.  Only our bank account was hurt.

At least I had about two seconds before impact.

Saturday’s deadly crash put a damper on the final three hours driving home.  My wife and I both knew that could have been us.  It wasn’t — as the crash actually happened about four hours before we even got to the scene, which shows the enormity of it all — but it was in our heads.

Then the flashbacks hit.  To the bodies I had seen as a news photographer in Topeka a dozen years ago, often on Friday or Saturday nights when I’d even be ahead of the police getting to crash scenes after bar time.  My first news shoot, was a deadly crash outside Topeka on a 90-degree Saturday in September.  19-year-old kid stared into the sun on the Interstate, on his way to see Mom & Dad from college.  I still remember the mess on that concrete pillar along I-70. 

Being 22 and not having any kids then, it doesn’t affect you as much as when you’re almost 35 and a father. 

It just has to.

I think of the handful of kids in the state who die in farm accidents — truly, accidents.  This is a part of doing what I do that I hope I’ll never be able to fully “detach” from.  It does make us human but it doesn’t mean always we enjoy it.

Take it easy out there for your summer travels and, as miserable and as fatalistic as it may sound, make a plan just in case you’re on the road and see an RV or a bus coming at you, full speed.  Maybe you get that half-second where you can make a lifelong difference for those you love.

- Chris

While reading this story a handful of times this morning (Thursday), I began to think more and more about this new technology from Sprint.

http://www.nextel.com/en/services/gps/family_locator.shtml

Apparently, a parent or adult can set up phones that can not only locate another person through the cell but also have a 7-day tracking history of that person’s whereabouts.

Is that great for families?  Or too Big Brother?

I must admit that I’m extremely intrigued by the possibilites here, especially as my 6-year-old son has asked, more than once, for a cell phone.  (It was such the rage in first grade).

There is also a part of me that wonders if this is part of a business playing to the “Helicopter Parent Generation”.  I’m 34, almost 35.  Goodness, do we hover over our kids.  I try not to but I know I’m almost just as guilty as the next Honda Odyssey-driving, latte-chugging mom. 

Yet if fear is a base need for picking up one of these tracking devices, when does it stop?  When they are teens?  Leave for college?  A few years back, I heard about a device that can be installed into cars and trucks that do not track where, exactly, a car has been but will offer a readout of the driver’s speeds, braking and other driving history.  I’m still ten years from having a teenager driver in my home but I would absolutely install that.

Without question.

However, tracking on cell phones for up to 7 days?  Any parents who has gone through a missing child, whether for a minute or much longer, would probably feel some ease at the Family Locator.  However, let’s not be 100% naive and also see what this device could really be used for.

Adults.

They usually need to be tracked more than children.

- Chris