I’m covering the start of a sled dog race this weekend. That’s perhaps the most Alaskan event there is. If anyone who had never been to Alaska was asked to say 10 words about the state, I guarantee one of them would be Iditarod. The other two would be Anchorage and Juneau. Then maybe cold, igloo and Eskimo? That’s if that person had on his thinking cap.
Before going to Montana, people told me I should get a cowboy hat to fit in. As stereotypical as that notion may seem, it would have worked – though I also would have looked quite foolish and probably a bit like this guy. When I covered the rodeo in Montana, I really felt as though I was taking advantage of my surroundings. Every bucking bronco reaffirmed that I had fallen into cowboy country. In London I had the opportunity to cover several football matches. That’s soccer, obviously. Nothing felt more British than watching a bit of “footie” as thousands of angry fans made passive-aggressive remarks when Liverpool went ahead one-nil against Arsenal at the Emirates.
These are three fairly location-specific experiences, which started to turn the wheels in my head.
Let’s say I was from the Midwest or the West Coast and landed a reporter job in Albany or anywhere in the Northeast for that matter. I’m racking my brain and really can’t think of anything that the reporter could cover to have the quintessential “Northeast” experience.
In part, I think that’s because when you are from a certain place, nothing about it stands out. It’s just part of who you are. To pull a few highlights from your hometown seems too introspective, too limiting. It’d be like picking between your mom and your dad or your brother and your sister.
It’s easy to assign associations with a foreign land. The quintessential experience is really just a stereotype based on limited information. It’s an easy jump from A to B.
Of course, now I’m trying to think of what I would “need” to cover if I took a job in the Midwest. Farming? Na, too vague. Again, my mind is blank.
Maybe that’s how it should be. I’ll just go and cover the sled dog race and chalk it up to experience. Or do I mean Alaskan experience?
Note: I don’t usually write about sports in this blog, but this season has been the best New York Jets season since my senior year of high school. That was the year I taped the San Diego playoff game so I could watch it in its entirety after the winter dance. My friend Pat and I were sitting in Dunkin Donuts after the Snow Ball when I looked through the window and saw the Jets game being shown in the neighboring bar. Realizing the game was still live, and likely in overtime, I rushed home to catch the end. Those are the kind of lasting moments New York Jets football – especially playoff football – has given me in my short life. In case you forgot or never knew, after beating the Chargers, the Jets lost the next week to Pittsburgh, blowing two chances to kick the game-winning field goal that would have flown them to the AFC title game.
I had three lovers’ spats with the New York Jets this season. They were the kind of arguments during which I vowed to break up. I told them I didn’t need them any longer. The first came following the Oct. 18 Buffalo game when Mark Sanchez finally cemented himself as a rookie instead of as the next Namath. The Buffalo loss followed a heartbreaker to Miami, which some of my readers might recall.
It was the Sunday of the Buffalo game that I accepted the job in Alaska.
“How you doing?” my current boss asked when I called him to tell him that I was on my way.
I told him I was doing well, just a little bummed because my favorite football team lost a tough game. He laughed.
“Sounds like you need a change of scenery, bud.”
Yeah! I thought. Change of scenery! Screw the Jets! I don’t need them!
But then the Jets pounded Oakland the next week. (I couldn’t resist at least checking the score.)
When we lost to Jacksonville in the final minutes the following week, I had it. I was in Alaska. The Jets were four time zones away. Who wants to wake up at 9 a.m. and listen to football, anyway? So the next week I went for a hike instead of listening to the Patriots game. This was our second fight. I took some time to clear my head, to remove myself from the tenuous relationship.
When I came home to find out the Jets lost to the Patriots, I was happy. Good. That’s what you deserve, I told my love. After the Patriots loss, BobWischusen, the Jets radio announcer, declared the season dead.
“Even if they win out, it’s hard to believe the Jets will win enough tiebreakers to make the playoffs,” he declared. Our fate was sealed.
Except it wasn’t. The Jets started winning. And winning. And winning.
There’s a phrase that circulates near the end of every NFL season:
“Control your own destiny.”
It means that a team’s fate is in its own hands. If it keeps winning, it will qualify for the playoffs, no one will knock it out. Lose, though, and it becomes a game of chance.
The Dec. 20 game against Atlanta, was seemingly the Jets’ chance to control fate. Up seven to three with seconds remaining, the Jets were one play away from victory.
Atlanta had the ball fourth down and goal from the six yard line. Stop them from scoring, and the Jets win. But the Falcons’ quarterback, Matt Ryan, dropped back and found his tight end Tony Gonzalez in the endzone to claw the victory out of the Jets' grasp.
“Obviously, we’re out of the playoffs,” Jets head coach Rex Ryan declared after the game. Mathematically, that was a misstatement. But the Jets and all their fans knew, especially with undefeated Indianapolis lined up as the next foe, the season was done – again. Beyond a miracle, the Jets season was a lost cause.
I went skiing during the Colts game just like I went hiking during the Patriots game. I didn’t want to sit around indoors and watch my lover rip my heart out. I wanted to be outside, enjoying Alaska. Forget the Jets.
When I got back into my car after skiing, I turned on my phone and saw a text that let me know the Jets had beaten the Colts. I laughed to myself. A good win, but what would it matter?
Until I got home and learned that in addition to the Jets winning, all the right teams had lost. The Ravens, the Jaguars, the Dolphins, the Broncos. That meant one thing:
The Jets were in control of their own destiny.
As most know, the Jets crushed the Bengals (37-0) in the final week of the season to make the playoffs. And, as the Jets and Giants are moving to a new stadium next year, the game was also assuredly the final one to ever take place at the Meadowlands.
The next week the Jets beat the Bengals, again, in the first round of the playoffs to set up this week’s game against San Diego. The winner goes to the AFC Championship.
Sure the Jets are a wildcard team. But so were the Giants the year David Tyree beat the Patriots. So were the Steelers when Big Ben won it all. And the Jets have the best running game in the league along with the best defense. That has coach Ryan claiming the Jets should be favored in all remaining matchups.
Yeah, the same coach Ryan who a few weeks ago said the season was busted.
The crazy thing about this weekend is that if the Jets somehow win and if the Ravens beat the once invincible Colts, the Jets will miraculously host the AFC title game. Just like the New York Jets, the Meadowlands might be granted a new life.
With the way the Jets are playing, they seem to be very much in control.
This was the longest year of my life. I started it in Medford, Mass., at a party at my good friend’s college house and ended it in Kenai, Ak. So it was therefore my longest year by four hours.
How did I spend the extra four hours? That depends on where you add them on. Were they simply the four hours between 12 a.m. and 4 a.m. Eastern Standard Time Jan. 1, 2010? If that’s the case then I really didn’t do anything special with the hours – just had another drink or two with some of my coworkers.
But I don’t consider this a year of wasted time, so I refuse to accept that thought.
When I was in Montana, I posted about climbing life’s mountain. I wrote of being at the base of a long ascent. Well, on Jan. 2, 2010 I found myself near the top a ski resort unlike any other I have ever been to. The top section of the mountain is a glacier where you can ski in any direction you choose. And those who dare to can climb a few extra hundred yards for a few extra turns in some fresh powder. I decided to make the climb.
It isn’t the snaking down through the powder that meant the most. I actually fell about halfway through because my skis got caught up in a rough patch of snow. Falling in powder so deep is more like flying in the “Toy Story” sense – falling with style.
No, it’s the climb I’ll remember and the deep burn in my chest that came from hiking in plastic ski boots with my skis and poles flung over my shoulder. When I got to the top, at least the top where everyone else had decided to stop, I slammed my skis into the snow and flopped down into a bank to admire the view. The mountain looks back into the Cook Inlet, whose backside is guarded by other snow-capped mountains. It’s like a dreamland. Really, I can’t explain it. It’s like the land on the snowflake that the Grinch and the Whos live on.
I sat there looking down, my heart still beating hard and my breath still returning to normal, and then I looked up. There was still more mountain above me and behind me. If I wanted to keep going, there was terrain to cross. It might have been without the ski resort’s permission, still, it was there. But instead of climbing on, I just sat there and tried to steal my breath back from the view, satisfied with what I saw below me.
