Life on the road
Headed out today for Business Trip No. 3, back to the home office in the D.C. 'burbs. Dragging a nasty cold with me, an ailment which hopped on for the ride during the last trip to Maryland and hung on with me all the way to Oklahoma and back. Certainly not the ideal way to enjoy a life-changing event.

The demons in my nose have distracted me from the joy of getting out from behind a desk for the first time since I was a globe-trotting sportswriter (well, at least, a Rand McNally Road Atlas-trotting sportswriter). The scenes are very cool:

A D.C. Metro subway packed with Georgetown University students, all dressed up in their politico-wannabe attire, loudly debating the issues of the day but interspersing "dude," "like" and "whatever," as reminders of how old they actually were.

A quarter-inch-thick sheet of ice atop the snow in Maryland, something I hadn't seen for eight years (and would do just fine to not see for eight more.)

A young woman and her year-old son waiting for a plane to Fort Sill, Okla., to see off her husband, who was being deployed to Iraq. The mother and son started their journey at 4:30 EST that morning, driving three hours to the airport in Charleston, W.Va. They changed planes in Chicago. They changed planes in St. Louis. I met them when they were changing planes in Dallas, at about 5 p.m. CST, for the final leg of their journey. The kid was handling things pretty well; he was running around the waiting area with all the vigor and energy a kid that age should have. Mom was pretty worn out, but her spirits were high, too, considering she was getting ready to send her husband off to war. Look behind her eyes, though, and you could see the fear.

Coming back from Oklahoma via Dallas, I found myself crammed into a 737 full of the usual bunch of kids getting ready for a week on the Edge at one of the theme parks -- and NASCAR fans. Entire families headed for the Daytona 500, decked out in the gear of their favorite drivers (mostly Dale Earnhardt Jr.), talking about their ticket situations ("Don't have 'em yet, but I'm ready to pay") and their accommodations (one said, "We got a place down by Disney; I think that's pretty close," obviously not knowing Disney is about 70 miles from the track, and with this weekend's traffic, that's going to be a long damn 70 miles.) I was tempted to share my knowledge of a back way to Daytona Beach, but then, I decided, they get to go to the race and I don't. They can figure it out for themselves.

And, oh yeah, my new job? Let's just say that I'm learning there's a whole lot I don't know. But that's part of the fun.