This morning Grant and I flew from Oakland to LA and then LA to NY. I got the assignment to cover the 49ers-Jets game late and went through Orbitz to get a good price, hence the strange itinerary. When we landed at JFK my friend Stuie was waiting for us. Stuie and I have been friends since we were 9 and I love him. It’s wonderful to have a friend this long. He drove us to our hotel on the Upper East Side and I treated Stuie and Grant to dinner at a neighborhood Italian place, very nice. Stuie drove back to his place in Queens and I meant to go to sleep — we got up at 4:30 a.m. Pacific time — but heck I’m in New York and I want to live life. So I took Grant to a corner wine bar, what a concept, and we sat outside and talked and looked until about 11 p.m. Eastern time, drank a South African Pinotage and talked about an Elmore Leonard story both of us read on the plane, a Western story called The Big Hunt. Great short story. And now we’re back in the hotel and I’m saying over and out. Talk to you tomorrow.