First of all, I've never seen so many rental cars at IAH before. Amazing, yet sad.
Secondly, I could have flown to Midland tonight on Southwest and come back on Sunday for under $200. Or I could have flown in the morning and come back Monday morning on a direct flight and it would have been right at $100.
Also, again, sad.
Lots of blame to go around, for sure. And I have no desire to discuss any of that here.
I unfollowed a couple of Facebook just on the tenor of their comments - not necessarily the content.
I know that I've done worse to others, and it's not fun. However, I have to extract myself out of drama wherever it occurs, if I can.
If dialogue were less venomous, and the cheering section less boisterous, I would probably be more receptive to hanging in there to hear more, but it is what it is.
I read. I see. I can form my own opinions on things.
Bottom line, though, is that these are all needless deaths.
I may have jeopardized one of my last announcing gigs today - even though I'm retiring for the most part.
However, I've always said I'm a journalist first and if I have something to report, then that's what I do first.
Well, I learned that a major event in our community would indeed not be rescheduled for 2020. A week ago when it was postponed, all were left with the impression that it would return although the event producer's post making that announcement did say "venues".
An elected official at about 2:15 p.m. made the comment on an hour-long business talk program with a lot of the discussion being COVID-19 related items in the community.
I was stunned with such an admission before the event producer announced it.
This wasn't like I had obtained information in confidence. Those are things that I never violate. If I did, I would never get to do the things that I do.
This was on a Facebook Live segment that 100 people - at the time the statement were made - were watching.
I would be surprised if I were the only one that had any reporting interests of any kind.
I made a couple of tweets, made a post on my Facebook page and reached out to a contact I have in the endurance sports community.
That contact triggered a few phone calls and I was told that the announcement that I heard was being made public by the event producer.
Beyond that I received information from my contact that is off the record, but some of the things that I learned were mildly shocking.
Ten years ago, the said event came to our community and through a set of circumstances I broke that story much to the chagrin of the event producer; however, I had the blessing of the publisher of the publication where the story ran.
I think it is interesting that there's an expectation - or maybe it is more a hope - that when you're dealing with a public entity and you know that there are public reporting requirements that must be met that you "hope" that nobody pays attention too much.
Then and now, information that was traded and shared was based on what was in the public domain. Nothing that was off the record.
I felt a bit guilty, but if it wasn't me - and people even today still expect me to be somewhat on top of things, it would be somebody else.
So needless to say, it was a little bit of an interesting day.
If you're reading, I trust that you're doing your best to stay well and take care of yourself.
And, oh, me and two colleagues of mine are working on getting something done in the next month or so that I hope people will enjoy and appreciate. I'm excited about it. It is something that we talked about probably 10 years ago that we're going to finally make come to fruition.
Stay tuned for more on that.
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