Walking In Wuhan

With four days off, I've had time to think about random things: one being my favorite time of year. The holidays have their upside -- lots of snow, cuddling by fires, stories of wandering the desert with myrrh, etc. I dig April in the Midwest when temperatures rise after a long winter. But when you live in an area where the temperature differs about 15 degrees year round, you define your favorite seasons by other criteria.

Mid-August is definitely my favorite part of the year. Think about it. Baseball season is starting to wind down (or up?). Games that have seemed like formalities for the past four months suddenly start to take on more importance. If you regularly attend Oakland A's games, mid-August means abundant/cheap tickets and a preview of the guys who will be starting for other teams in 3-4 years when they're eligible for arbitration.

College football fall practices have begun. The season is less than three weeks away, and as a fan, you start to get a better idea as to whether your team is going to be good, or headed to Shreveport for Christmas. If you happen to be covering a team or do anything affiliated with a major college football program, this also signifies the last few minutes of freetime you'll have until about February.

Most importantly, NFL training camps have started up. That means crisp Sundays and fantasy football drafts are coming quickly -- and are hopefully enough to hold me over through the boredom of four preseason games.

It also means training camps. I'm a lifelong Broncos fan, and some of my best childhood memories were going to Denver Broncos training camp at the University of Northern Colorado. This was back in the 1980s -- before teams figured out that they could make some cash by charging diehard fans to watch practices. Back then, you could pretty much walk up to players as they made their way back to the locker room and ask for autographs. That's how I snagged John Elway's autograph -- hard to imagine somebody snagging Peyton Manning or Jay Cutler's John Hancock that way nowadays.

Not a bad time of year when all you have to deal with is some third-stringers working hard to make an NFL roster.

Oh, and here's proof of NFL training camp awesomeness -- excuse the Prince Valiant haircut I'm sporting in the first photo.