Here at Sun Devil Stadium, Tempe, Ariz.
I would like to brag about how fast I got here, driving from the IE ... but I don't want the Highway Patrol of two states on the lookout for me.
Quite a bit of traffic, actually, but very little of it was trucks. So none of those agonizing minutes stuck behind one truck trying to pass another.
Pretty much, I could go as fast as I wanted ... and so did everyone else ... and if you don't stick out as ridiculously fast ... you have a pretty good chance of not being singled out for a speeding ticket.
It's about 330 miles from our office to the parking lot across the street from the stadium. How early was I? So early I parked on the bottom level ... and was about the fifth person in the so-high-I-can-see-New Mexico press box.
But that's OK. When you're early, you can scout out things, make sure your wifi connection is up, poke around, do some blogging.
The tougher trip will be the one back, after the game. I'll be lucky to be on the road by 11 p.m., which puts me in the IE some time after 3 ... if I stay awake. I have brought three diet Cokes with me, just for the caffeine. I've made it every time before, and this is about my 12th time trying this routine. Though it's a bit tougher when you're alone, as I will be.
Oh, and for those of you worried about whether I ever got Thanksgiving dinner ... well, no. I had a turkey sandwich on the drive out. That sorta counts, doesn't it? But the food they're serving here ... looks like chicken fajitas. Which is nice, but it's not Thanksgiving.
But I'm here for the football.
Oh, and a colleague of mine from the Riverside paper ... flew ... but got here two hours later than I did. Fog at Burbank led to some sort of issue with his plane in Ontario ... and he would have gotten here faster had he come with me. The way airports are these days ... I think any trip of 300 miles or less is definitely a better idea via car. Unless gas hits, like, $5 a gallon.