My feelings on the final descent to the massive runways at McCarran Airport were probably similar to a child’s reaction when the castle at Disney’s Magic Kingdom comes in to view. You have heard dramatic retellings of Las Vegas trips by friends, family, or that coworker that you only pretend to like because being insincere to yourself is better than being the resident a-hole of the office. However, no words, pictures, or hyperbole can truly prepare you for the first time that capitalism’s Aurora borealis springs up from the dark desert floor.
My Frontier Airlines flight on January 30 made that landing. My trip was for business, becoming a certified blackjack dealer because it was literally cheaper to fly to Vegas, stay for nine nights, and eat, gamble, and fulfill my wish to go to Vegas while of legal age, than paying for it at the dealing school just fifteen minutes from my house. Fortunately, my flight left before Al Gore’s antithesis fell from the sky, so I had no delays, which was convenient for my first flight since January 2007.
The Akron-Canton to Denver flight was uneventful, save for the screaming kid two rows back that I secretly hoped would be shoved into the cargo bay. At least the overhead bin might have muffled the sound. I could have dealt with that.
Now that the kingdom of dairy products has blessedly vanquished the empire of raw evil and permitted Cleveland fans to savor just one Captain Crunch-pellet of justice, let’s talk misery. More appropriately, measuring misery.
In my head I had this whole opening planned out. It was going to be about Green Bay, and the Browns, and the Cavs and Indians, and hope, and all that stuff. In my head it was glorious and funny. Joe Posnanski (Hey look Joe, I even used Pozterisks!) would read it and drop me an email telling me he liked it. My friends would hear about it and email me asking if I was the Mike Kramer that wrote that wonderful article on The Cleveland Fan. Bill Simmons would call and ask me to make an appearance on his podcast. I would turn it down because I've never seen The Real World or Jersey shore so we wouldn't have anything to talk about. Craig Calceterra would invite me to join his next fantasy "Rob Neyer Baseball" league. My wife would stop considering me a failure. It would be fantastic.
When LeBron James left for Miami back in July I was amongst those who thought the Cleveland Cavaliers would be dull, uninteresting and mediocre.
