For anyone curious as to why I write the blog, it’s a simple reason, one of two things really: either I want to make my point heard if I have an opinion on a subject or to make sure that my memories live on, mainly so I can look back at them. I like sharing my experiences with people, and I’ve been lucky to have a lot of different things happen in my life that are worth talking about. At least I think so anyway. For those who disagree, there’s always the back button to click to another site. Thanks for the pageview in the meantime.

Quite a bit of the fun stuff to happen in my life came about because I worked in college athletics. That was a really good stretch. Take out K-12 and college which put me at 21 years old, and out of the last 24 years, that ride in athletics totaled about 17 years. Starting as a volunteer at Upper Iowa for almost two years, then a year as an intern at Southern Illinois followed by more than three years at East Carolina, 10 years at Nebraska, and two at Georgia State, it was a helluva fun run at work, and an even better time in my personal life.

That fun wasn’t contained to just the five states I worked in. All told, the travels I was privileged to take with teams — mainly basketball, football, baseball and volleyball over the years — amounted to 27 states added to my personal travel list, all because of working in athletics. When I was done counting it up, Hawaii and Alaska were almost forgotten but made the list complete. I never could have forgotten the one other country athletics took me to with a spectacular two-week adventure to Australia in August of 2004.

That’s what made me think about writing this blog as the college football season started Down Under this past weekend with Hawaii and California playing in Australia. American university football in Australia seems odd to me, but maybe that’s because I’ve been lucky to see the Sydney Roosters and Penrith Roosters faceoff in front of more than 27,000 fans while we were there with the Nebraska basketball team on a summer tour.

With so many of my friends from the athletics world getting started on another season, it made me think back to the great times we had on trips together. Media relations staff, trainers, managers, coaches, administrators. Once you hit the road, so many times everything and everyone just blends together and after a season on the road, it’s more like a gypsy family looking for fun in new places each night. That’s one of the things I miss the most, the feeling that there’s always something new awaiting you on a road trip with people who turn out to be some of your best friends.

That free-spirited feeling of roaming the country — hell, the world even — didn’t end with my career on campus. The memories linger like the smell of a good whisky. So, since I can’t join my friends in their travels this season (other than one road trip to see Nebraska and Northwestern play next month), I figured I’d wish them well in bettering their own travel lists this year and have some fun of my own rating the best places I’ve been over the years.

Here are some of my top road destinations by category over the past two decades:

Best convention city: New Orleans, with a close second going to Boston, St. Louis and Cleveland
I went to eight CoSIDA conventions over the years and none of them disappointed. There was plenty to do and see in each city from coast to coast, but New Orleans had to be my favorite. One week before the convention started, I had gotten the call that I landed my first full-time job in athletics and I was going to head to East Carolina later that summer. Instead of heading to New Orleans to interview for jobs, I was now heading there to celebrate my new career destination. Once arriving in The Big Easy, I quickly adapted to the culture and met my new boss that evening. Actually, it was about 3:30 a.m. on Bourbon Street and I was sitting on the curb, wearing khakis and a polo talking with a homeless guy for 40 minutes about how he had just gotten out of prison the month before, when my new boss walked by and said to his buddies, “I think that’s my new assistant there sitting in the gutter.” Thanks, Norm, for still taking me on.

Best named bar: Betty Ford Lounge in Portland, Ore.
It’s closed now, but when we went out to play Oregon in basketball in 2006, it definitely made an impression as one of the most impressively named bars I’d come across. There were four of us — me, our radio color analyst, trainer and manager — who went out to eat that night and then ended up hitting the district. Betty Ford was the first stop in a long, long evening that others told me included meeting a guy named Pete (I believe) who had a pet parrot on his shoulder and may or may not have been wearing an eye patch. There could be more to this story, but if so, I’ll have to let someone else relive it because it’s pretty grainy as far as my memory goes. It was that good of a night.

910H6615Best district: Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego
The trip to the 2009 Holiday Bowl was something else. A week before the football team left for the game, me and Sugar Mama went with the basketball team to Las Vegas for a tournament. After the team headed home (barely making it because of the nasty snowstorm), we stayed to spend Christmas in Vegas and then drove over to San Diego on Dec. 26 to join the football team. A couple nights in the Gaslamp Quarter made it worthwhile, especially the steaks at the aptly named Strip Club. Turning in that expense account to get reimbursed for food was the most interesting of my career.

Best street food and music scene: 6th Street in Austin, Texas
It has bars, honkey-tonks, restaurants, food trucks. It has everything you could want for a fun time. I never had a problem heading down to Austin to play the Longhorns because I always knew we could get some good food and drinks and have a great time in the evening or afternoon. Just roaming the street on a Friday night, popping in and out of bars to see who’s playing and what’s the special made for some of the most chill road trips. Got to give them props for making people feel welcome.

Best road food: Hickory Park in Ames, Iowa
When you’re on the road with basketball or football, there’s typically get-away food waiting in the locker room for the visiting team, mainly pizza or subs. In Ames, the wings we got after basketball games were stellar and we always made sure to get barbecue and shakes — I got a chocolate malt with extra malt — at Hickory Park for the bus trip. I loved the people working at Hilton Coliseum and sometimes we even had some really fun games, but there’s no question the best part of the trip over there to Iowa was the food, hands down.

Best place to catch a cruise liner: Miami
First major trip traveling by plane while working in athletics was with baseball at East Carolina when we went to a tournament at Miami (Fla.). I’d never been to Miami so we made sure to make the best of it, playing four games in three days and staying out until all hours of the night seeing the sights. Literally, that was all hours of the night as the first two nights we got back to the hotel at 6 a.m., just in time to get two hours sleep and then head to the field for batting practice before the first game of the day. Scoring the game was not easy those afternoons, to say the least. The second night started at a placed I think was called World Mardi Gras with seven bars under one roof, and ended in a fast BMW and parking in Fort Lauderdale near a cruise ship that someone proceeded to try to sneak aboard. I’ll let you guess at who that someone was.

Australia 10011Best foreign road bar: Rattle ‘n Hum in Cairns, Australia
My amazing luck had few boundaries when I was working in athletics as I also got to see a foreign land when I got to go with basketball in 2004. It was memorable because I quit dipping on that trip (and have not had a chew since then, despite still dreaming about it all the time) and because of the incredible fun we had in Sydney and Cairns. Walking the shore for miles with our trainer and video guy in Sydney (including taking this now-idiotic picture where I was sitting suspended on this ledge about 80 feet above the jagged rocks below) was something I’ll never forget, just like the night in Cairns that we spent getting stamps at Rattle ‘n Hum. The bar was minutes from our hotel and on the first night we stumbled in there and realized that it only took 20 stamps to get a free t-shirt. You get one stamp per beer. I took home my t-shirt on the second night (mainly because the first night we didn’t get in there until after midnight) and still have it today.

Best road bar: Eskimo Joe’s in Stillwater, Okla.
If there is one place in all my travels, which admittedly are not the most extensive, that encapsulates college life and is the atypical place that you should enjoy at least once in your life, if not once a year, it’s Eskimo Joe’s in Stillwater. That little outpost town sure knows how to put on a good time and Joe’s has the beer and cheese fries to make it last all night long. The cups on the header picture for this article are from my cupboard tonight. There are still three others of the same color I didn’t get out and that have made the travels with us across moves to three states and six addresses. Joe’s made going out on the town fun, and that’s just from an outsider’s perspective. I’m guessing the locals think it’s a pretty sweet place too. The last time I was there was in 2012 when I was covering the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City and headed up to Joe’s to meet a friend. It was lunchtime but I couldn’t help but order a beer and take another souvenir home. I hope I’ll get to again some day.

If you have some amazing places you’ve been over the years while on the road for work or fun, put them in the comments as I’d love to add to my list for the future.