Day 1 of the trip is a travel day which pretty much sucks no matter who you are. As much as I could theoretically travel in style and pay $10,000 a ticket to fly on some baller plane and have my own bed, I will probably never feel rich enough to actually pull the trigger on doing something like that. Heck, it has only been 5 years since $10,000 would have seemed like enough money to retire on to me. No way, no how am I going to blow big bucks on a plane ticket so I have been going coach all the way and wow does it suck.
I started in Portland, Or with a 5 AM wake up call (after going to bed “early” at 1AM) and a couple hours later after a commute to the airport I was on a Continental flight to Newark, NJ in the middle seat, obviously. Somehow I paid extra when I was booking the tickets over the phone to get an aisle seat, but still ended up in the middle seat next to a woman, ironically enough, who swears by the same naturopathic Dr. that I see. Small world.
After 6 long hours in the middle seat being dead tired yet having to sit perfectly upright crammed in like a fucking sardine (shit, as I write this maybe I am talking myself into buying the $10,000 ticket next time), we deplaned and I was in New Jersey where I quickly made my way to a restaurant to watch Tiger Woods at the Masters and pound a few beers at the bar served by a classic New Jersey type named Ciro. It was there that I met Jared Tendler, who is traveling with me on this trip to make sure I don’t go on uber tilt and donk off my whole roll in the Big Game haha.
Ciro quickly reminded me of the way they do things in Jersey which is often their way or the highway. I was absolutely starving so I ordered a burger and fries (hey, I have to leave America in style) and since the restaurant was also a high end steakhouse, I decided to get the filet mignon skewers as an appetizer.
Well, Ciro apparently decided that I had ordered too much food and about 15 minutes later he brought out my burger and said, “I canceled your filet skewers; you weren’t going to eat all that meat. Enjoy your burger.” I’m thinking, “Wtf? Thanks for making up your mind on my order haha.” I wasn’t upset or anything. I actually find stuff like that pretty amusing. It takes some balls, but he was dead set in his mind that I had ordered too much and guess what? He was right. I barely made it through the burger and the filet skewers would have just added to the bill. So yeah Ciro for having the balls to risk pissing off a customer only to make LESS money.
As I write this I am about an hour from landing in the Heathrow airport. The folks at the Big Game were kind enough to send a driver to pick Jared and I up and take us to the hotel. That is huge because if it were up to me to get us from the hotel to the airport and have to drive in some mini car on the other side of the road, I am pretty sure that wouldn’t work out too well. Not to mention I am pretty much dead tired. I got 4 hours sleep and then when I arrive at my hotel in London, it will be around 8 AM which really sucks since I am going at it 24 hours straight after only 4 hours of sleep the night before only to arrive early in the morning! How is my sleep schedule doing?
One way or the other I am going to make it to the big boxing match later tonight (I have no idea who is fighting except that my friend Matt Amen knew all about the match) which I am pretty pumped about. I have some sweet tickets and I feel like you can pretty much never go wrong with getting to watch a bunch of guys beat the shit out of each other amongst a rowdy English crowd haha. I have gone to a couple of huge boxing matches at MGM in Vegas and had a great time. I am hopeful that it is even more enjoyable in the UK as the culture over there may just be a little more fun to be around than the Vegas crowd. I love the way they all rallied around Ricky Hatton. I guess the crowd just seemed more like a bunch of fun guys who want to drink a lot of beer and watch a fight, although that is only my perception. In Vegas I feel more like the crowd just wants to watch the fight (before and/or after) snort lines of coke and beat their girlfriend. That is definitely the one thing I did not like about Vegas fights. I simply do not feel safe around the people who go to those fights. Maybe if I can get super baller one day I can go there in style like a guy like Denzel Washington would do and get a security team around me haha. Fat chance.
I am going to keep my blog very updated the next week or so fyi. I will get some pictures to put in the blog. Maybe I can get one of Isildur to post, but it may be one of those situations where he only lets me take a picture of him on the condition that he gets to kill me haha. I will see what I can do, but if nothing else I will get some other cool shots up in my blog quite a bit this week, as well as a recap of what is going on.