Would you rather go to dinner with Chris Berman or Kobe Bryant?

I ask because I’ve come to realize that when ESPN came along in the ‘80s, it changed out sports culture in more ways than one.
It made stars of sportscasters. Anyone who’s ever watched Berman would love to get a nickname from him. I’d probably greet him with “backbackbackback” or  “he …could .. go .. all …the way” or even “rumblin, stumblin …”

Fun guy. Big guy. Larger than life personality.

Now, what would you say to Kobe?

“Uh, hey Kobe, great season, except for Game 7 … you ever get over what happened in Colorado? How ticked are you at Shaq?”
OK, so maybe would be interesting, but I contend that sportscasters like Berman and Dan Patrick transcend sports.

And what’s been on my mind lately isn’t Kobe vs. Lebron, it’s Rick Reilly vs. Dan Patrick.

I have no idea why Reilly left Sports Illustrated, or why Patrick left ESPN. Anyone with info on that, please share it.
But each landed in each other’s spots as if it were two teams in a trade. Reilly is now at ESPN, Patrick now at Sports Illustrated.
Personally, I miss the Life of Reilly on the back page of my Sports Illustrated. It was the highlight of my weekly SI read, and now I’m buying ESPN the Magazine to get my fix.
Patrick, though, is great mornings on 1500 AM and his Just My Type writing is pretty entertaining in Sports Illustrated. Give me his radio show over Colin Cowherd, self-absorbed shock jock in the same time frame on 1420, any day of the week. (I still listen to 1420, just not his show).
The question(s) today: Are sportscasters bigger than sports stars?

Who would you pick — Reilly or Patrick?

What is the best way to take the sting out of a centipede bite?

I’ve heard of the “Hawaiian centipede” packing a wallop of a sting, but never experienced it until last night.

I’d been sleeping for about an hour when I felt a sensation above my toe similar to being stung by a portugese man-o-war or wasp. (Sadly, I’ve been bitten by both). I’ll save you all the details, but it actually bit me three times and after I failed to kill it the first time around, it returned a second time.

This time, I managed to scoop it up and do away with it, but even this morning the sting is still there.

I washed the bite area with soap and water and iced it, feeling fortunate I’m not allergic to the stings.
But is there a better way to treat centipede bites? Why are they so aggressive?

We’re on the 10th floor of our condo complex, which is sprayed for bugs every few months. Where it came from, how long it’s been there, are there more … those are all questions I’d like answered before my head hits the pillow tonight.

How do you cope with centipedes and their bites?

When the NBA playoffs ended last week it crushed me. Not because I particularly care about either team, but it signaled the start of the dead season for sports.
No football, basketball or even hockey. Basically, just baseball.
It’s no surprise that nearly as soon as the basketball season ended the talk radio stations, and my fellow fantasy leaguers, started buzzing about the upcoming season.
Smack talk is shifting into gear, plans are being made for the fantasy draft day party.
It’s so easy nowadays to do an online league, but trust me, if you can get all your friends into one room for a live draft, nothing will beat it during the season. It will fuel more interest, more trades and more smack.
So it’s the dead season.

How do you pass the time? Who’s this year’s darkhorse to win the Super Bowl? Is Larry Johnson worth a top five pick? How about Stephen Jackson?
Help!

One of the toughest assignments any reporter has is to knock on the family’s door of a victim who was killed in an accident or in war.

It’s grieving time and it often feels like an invasion of privacy.

For most of us, we muster the courage to do it because we want the victim’s family to have the chance to let the world know who was taken soon.

It’s not just a case number or “another” fatal. It was a mom, a dad, an aunt, a son, a friend.

It’s not easy for families to discuss and it’s not easy to ask the questions, but this person deserves to be honored.

Today, I’m asking all of you to share your own experiences here of losing someone you love too soon.

I’ll start: I lost my aunt to a drunk driver last night.

Rosemary Larson, 62, was coming home from work in a tiny Minnesota town on the North Dakota border when she was struck on County Road 17 by a Ford Mustang traveling at a high rate of speed.

The driver who killed her was drinking. The three people in the other car were coming back from tubing down the Red Lake river, they sped over railroad tracks, ran a stop sign and broadsided her.  One died.

The TV station’s coverage shows Rosemary’s car in the middle of the field, barely recognizable.

Rosemary, my godmother, we’ll miss you.

She raised a great family, lived on a farm with her husband Roger. He turns 65 today and they were going to celebrate  by going to the lake.

It was never just Rosemary, it’s always been “Rosemary and Roger” and “Roger and Rosemary.” They were joined at the hip the way you’d want a marriage to be.

She was close to my dad, stopping in to give him treats, checking in to share heart surgery stories (both had surgeries performed by the same doctor more than a decade apart) and they’d go to dinner or talk story.

She could have passed for a boot camp drill sergeant when I was growing up. When she spoke, you listened. There was nothing on the fence about her. If Rosemary felt one way, she let you know it and stuck to her guns. And as I grew older it became easier and easier to see she was more bark than bite.

When she smiled, it was glowing and her eyes twinkled. She would give the shirt off her back to help a friend or family member. She may have looked hard on the outside, but she was soft and sweet on the inside.

There’s so much more to Rosemary than can be wrote here.

Her’s was the second drunk driving experience that struck too close to home for me since I wrote the ignition interlock story for The Advertiser earlier this month.

A few  weeks ago, after a card game in Hawaii Kai, my friend and her boyfriend were following us home in her new truck when a drunk woman tried to do an illegal U-Turn at Puuikena Place — while never slowing down — and broadsided her.

They were fortunate: The idiot drunk hit the front wheel well and totaled the car. A nano-second later and she would have struck the driver door. Ten seconds earlier and it could have been our car she hit.

When you’re young, driving drunk can seem like a dirty badge of courage. (“Dude, I can’t believe I made it home last night. I was wasted!”)  As you get older, you realize it’s just stupid and not worth the risk to you or anyone else.

I have lots of friends who have had DUIs, and I’m fortunate that I escaped my party days unscathed and without hurting anyone.

But none of that matters right now.

Rosemary raised a family, was a good wife and friend. She accomplished much, and she was taken too soon.

Please share your stories and experiences. Lives taken too soon deserve to be heard.

I’m blaming Kim and Wes for this.

They are my co-workers and fellow bloggers who wrote about the Koko Head Crater trail and its majesty.

They got me thinking I needed to experience it.

So I did.

Twice.
You’d think I’d learn.
The first time I plopped a 20-pound backpack over my shoulders and gasped and wheezed my way up just short of the summit. My mistake: I tried to run the stupid thing before I could walk. Literally.
I ended up crawling across the little ravine and barely making it.
If I sound a little put off right now it’s not really because of Kim and Wes. It’s really because the second time I did the trail I went sans backpack, this time knowing what I was getting into.

And as I huffed, and puffed, and blew my lungs out — a fricken 6-year-old girl skipped down the mountain side and looked at me like I was a penny-less freak asking for a handout.

“You alright, Mister?”
“????”
“Can, I (gasp, wheeze, gasp) ask (gasp, wheeze, gasp) how (gasp, wheeze, gasp) old you are?”
She didn’t even wait for me to finish. Though she had long passed me, her mom sidled past.
“She’s 6,” she said. “She loves to beat us to the top, too.”
OK, so maybe I met a future Hall of Famer, I don’t know.
What I do know is it is a magnificent view from the summit and climbing Koko Head Crater gives you a sense of accomplishment and appreciation for the beauty it watches over.
What I also know is that little kids and little dogs have no idea how monumental this task can be. Therefore, I say we ban them for our own dignity.
I say this because as I walked up I turned and looked back a housewife who had started on the path when I was half way up started to close in. She was methodical. I was gassed.

By the time I made it past the ravine, she was giving me the “never give up,” speech.
No biggie. Love those strong women, and she said she’s been climbing it a few times a week for years, so maybe I’ll get to that point someday.
Or not.
Near the very, very, very top I took a quick break to suck in the scenery and the sweet, sweet trade winds.

The natural wonders were one thing, but I was focused on the little boy who was jumping down step-by-step from above and a girl and her weiner dog who were closing in from below.
See, the thing is, whern you’re getting back into shape, all bets are off on how you’ll handle a situation.
Your lungs are on fire. You’re sopping wet from sweat. You’re looking around for shelter from the sun and water sources as if you’re Bear Grylls — the survival expert who purposely puts himself into dire situations just to show you how to get out and survive — and then you realize this little kid is hopping from step to step in slippahs.
I reached to him. Grabbed at him. Lunged at him. This time, the kid’s gonna answer.
“Kid, how old are you?”
“8.”
And as he hopped away and his parents came into view, smiling, I mustered up just enough to say: “Ha! Come back in 20, no, 30 years and if you’re hopping down the steps like this I’ll buy you a house!”

He didn’t understand.  He couldn’t understand. Not at his age. He just looked at me with pity before hopping away.

“Yes,” I remember thinking, “this is what this climb can do to grown men.” It wasn’t a pretty sight, I knew that. I didn’t care then and still don’t now.

As for the weiner dog and owner, I couldn’t fend them off.

He looked me, the girl looked at me … I stepped to the side.

They didn’t pass me on the way up, but they rolled me on the way down, thereby making me the slowest walker in the history of Koko Head Crater.

But I made it.
So for this experience I say thank you, Kim and Wes.

You made Koko Head Crater sound like so much fun that I tried it.

Twice.
I sure hope the third time is easier.
Anyone got any other hiking suggestions?