Erik 2017
This year has been filled with so many exciting, challenging and crazy experiences. I’ve traveled to 12 different states, not counting Florida, been on the road almost every weekend, covered football games, covered a basketball tournament, worked on the media production side of things covering a major conference, took a vacation to NYC, and spent 20 (unplanned) straight days away from home. These are just some of the wild experiences I’ve had this year.
While continuing to work at my job at Leads On Demand, I became more involved with The SkyBoat, a non-profit sports new organization that I’ve been working with since early 2016. I’m now the Senior Sports Editor so I not only write articles and broadcast live commentary, I edit the articles that the other writers submit. It’s great because I’m able to hone my editing skills while also getting to help less experienced writers improve and develop their writing styles. I’ve also covered more events than I did last year; far too many to list, so here are a few of my favorite events I covered and trips I’ve taken this year. . . .
The first major event I worked this year was the 2017 College Football Playoff Championship. Through The SkyBoat, I was given the opportunity to work directly with the CFP staff as an intern for the week leading up to the Championship Game. I worked primarily in media credentialing with a couple of friends while others worked fan events and concerts. It was fantastic to get work directly with the CFP staff and learn what kind of things go into running events for a championship game week, as well as the game itself.
The SkyBoat had roughly 12 people go to Tampa for 10 days to cover all of the events leading up to the game, work with the CFP, and a couple members also covered the game itself. It was a crazy 10 days! All 12 of us stayed together in a house roughly 45 minutes from where the pregame events took place in downtown Tampa. We were kind of all cramped together in the house, but it made for a lot of fun and was a great bonding experience as we were always working and hanging out with each other.
During the week, I’d typically be up at 5am, work from 7am to 10pm and then maybe, get to sleep around midnight but usually later. Even though it may sound tiring, it didn’t really hit me until after, as I was constantly on the go so I didn’t have time to notice. It was so much fun to work and hang out with the awesome people at the CFP and The SkyBoat during that time so I didn’t really care! I made some great friendships during that trip that I will always cherish.
Probably the craziest trip that I took this year was to Dallas in September with my friends Craig and Chris to cover the University of Florida Gators face-off against the University of Michigan Wolverines at AT&T Stadium. What made this trip crazy was that we originally planned to be gone about a week, since we were driving out there, but we ended up being gone about 20 days because of Hurricane Irma!
The game itself was pretty awesome experience as I’ve never been to AT&T Stadium, or “Jerry World” as it’s more affectionately called. It was a sight to behold. It felt almost like a new, very expensive cathedral when I was on the field. The light shown in through the glass onto the field, with the players on the field and the crowd screaming made for an electric environment. It’s probably the coolest stadium that I’ve covered a game in.
We had made plans to stay an extra two days after the game to visit areas around Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington. Some of the places we visited were the Dallas Zoo, the Fort Worth Water Gardens and the Grassy Knoll where president John F. Kennedy was shot. When we were about to head back to Florida though, we began to learn that Hurricane Irma was likely to make landfall right after we’d be getting back, or even potentially, right when we got back. At that point, we decided to play it by ear and slowly make our way back to Florida while visiting sites along the way.
On our first day out of Dallas, we drove through Austin, visited the state capital and even stopped to watch a movie being filmed. As both Craig and Chris are photographers and Craig was a film major in school, both were interested in the film shoot so that was pretty cool for us to see. On the way to San Antonio, we stopped and visited with Chris’s family who lives near San Antonio so it was fun to hang out with his family and see where he grew up.
When we got to San Antonio, we tried to visit the Alamo but it had just closed so we couldn’t see inside of it but we did get a few pictures. We also walked along the Riverwalk, which was pretty cool as it almost felt like you weren’t in Texas anymore. It felt and looked somewhat like pictures you see of Venice and the canals.
When we were looking for a hotel room, we came to a realization. We realized that we were all pretty much out clothes since we only packed for a week’s stay! It was around 8pm now so it was a mad dash to run a Google search for laundromats that were open. We luckily were able to find one and we ended up being there until roughly 10 pm doing laundry. It was definitely one of the stranger experiences I’ve had. Watching all sorts of interesting people coming and going made doing laundry quite entertaining.
Next up was finding a hotel room late at night. It was a bit stressful but we were able to find one that was just on the outside of downtown San Antonio. When we go into our room though, within the first five minutes of being there, we saw bugs flying and crawling all around the room. We immediately turned around and checked out. We finally lucked out and found a nice room at a hotel on the Riverwalk.
We spent the next day visiting some really cool caverns in San Antonio that were hundreds of feet underground and driving to Houston to stay the night. While in Houston the next day, we drove around several neighborhoods that were devastated by Hurricane Harvey just a week before we visited. It was extremely sad and difficult to see all of these houses with piles and piles of stuff out on their front lawns. Things from cupboards to drywall, refrigerators, washer and dryers, ovens and so much more littered the streets. What was most difficult was seeing things like family pictures and toys in these piles and realizing that so many people lost important items that no doubt held many memories for them.
Eventually we made our way through Louisiana, spent a night in New Orleans and we even stopped at the renowned Café du Monde and had coffee and beignets. We drove around for a bit and stopped to take pictures of sites and then we started making our way up to northeast Alabama where my family has a cabin and we waited out the hurricane. It just so happened that my mom was stuck up at the cabin and couldn’t get back to Florida either. Hurricane Irma was touted as the Hurricane of the Century so in all the hysteria leading up to the storm, gas was no where to be found more than four days before the storm even hit. We couldn’t get home if we wanted to.
By the time Irma hit, it would be a good few days before we even could head back home. The roads were a mess. We waited it out some more, changed our plans, attended the Packers vs Falcons game in Atlanta, then travelled up to Louisville for the weekend and covered the Clemson Tigers vs Louisville Cardinals football game so it all worked out. By the time I got home, I had been gone for 20 days and driven 6,000 miles!
In addition to my crazy travel schedule and work at both Leads On Demand and The Skyboat, I studied and took my GRE Test and applied for graduate school next fall. I have applied to one school so far but I’m probably going to apply to a couple more and see what happens. At this time next year, I hope to be writing about being in graduate school!
I’ve had a fun and crazy year and though it has been stressful at times, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve been able to make great new friends as well as strengthen and grow existing friendships. Hopefully the rest of the holiday season and 2018 are filled with even more fun and exciting experiences!
Stay caught up with me at my blog Starting At The 17.
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