As we go into the holiday season, I just wanted to tell this story so perhaps when things get hectic over the next couple of weeks; perhaps we can take a deep breath and think about what’s really important.

As many of you know, I like to ride my bike. I have a lot of friends who are in the bike community and like to ride with them when I can. If not, I’ll be out by myself. Either way, it’s fun, and can be a good workout.

Last Saturday morning I got up early to catch the group ride out of Champion Cycling in Mandarin. The ride goes right by my neighborhood so even though it leaves at 7:15 from the shop, I usually leave around the same time and catch the “bunch” on the road. It was perfect when I left, a really beautiful golden sky as the sun came up.

What I didn’t know is the sun was catching the edge of a big front so when I got about two miles from my house, the bottom fell out. I ducked under a tree, put my stuff in a plastic bag and tried to wait it out, waiting for “the bunch.” But in about a minute I was soaked and no sign of the riders. So I figured I’d rather be soaked riding than standing there, so I headed back on the road trying to find the group. Of course, they took a detour and I never did find them, but since I was already soaked, I figured I’d put some miles in.

Almost two hours later after wind and rain and questioning my own sanity, I was pretty close to home when my back tire went flat. “Perfect,” I thought, as I fumbled for my phone looking for a ride. For some reason, I happened to look up and not 50 feet from me a guy was standing in front of his pickup truck in running shorts waving and asked, “Do you need help?”

He obviously had just finished the Mandarin 10K also in the rain. “Where you headed,” I asked, a little warily. “North,” he said. “Can you drop me at Champion?” I wondered. “Phil’s place?” he said with a laugh and finished, “sure.”

So I threw my bike in the back and he drove me the couple miles up to Champion Cycling. He told me his name, said he rode out of the shop on a regular basis but lived in Arlington. Phil knew him, “Grey truck?” Phil asked. No big deal right? Nice guy did me a favor.

But on Tuesday night I was at Starbucks in Lakewood and happened to be on the phone when I pulled up as a guy pulled up next to me on a nice Harley Road King. As I continued my conversation, the guy got off his bike and walked over and knocked on my window. I rolled it down and motioned that I was still on the phone. He waved and backed away. But stayed right there. When I finished the conversation, I rolled the window down and said, “What’s up?”

He walked towards me; one hand supported by a cane, and said, “Hey, I know you!” “Thanks,” I said, “nice bike.”

“Yeah, I like it,” he answered. “I rode up here from St. Augustine,” he continued “and when I went to put gas in my tank I realized I left my wallet at home. Can you help me out with a couple of bucks to put gas in the bike?”

“Sure, let’s go across the street to the Shell and fill it up,” I offered.

I was somewhat stunned, not because somebody was asking me for money, because that happens all the time. But rather I couldn’t get the image of the guy helping me out on Saturday out of my mind.

“Gee, God,” I chuckled to myself, “this is kind of fast!” I’ve always believed in “Paying it Forward,” but I laughed at the quick, “payback.”

The guy mumbled something about high octane and I could see that he was uncomfortable with my offer, so I got out of the car and said, “Hungry?” He demurred, adding “Sam, it was hard enough asking you for money for gas.”

So I said, “Come on, let’s get a cup of coffee.”

He gladly followed and after ordering coffee, we sat and talked for about 20 minutes before I had to get to work. I put enough money on the table to fill the tank of his bike and buy a decent meal on his way home. “Is that enough,” I asked. He said, “Man that’s plenty,” so we shook hands, I wished him well and back to the station I went.

Still no big deal right?

Except last Saturday I was up early again for the morning ride, but it was freezing out, so I put it off for an hour before heading to the road. About halfway into it, I saw the front tire going flat, (different tire, different bike) so I pulled over to fix it. Of course, TSA took my CO2 cartridges out the last time I traveled with my bike, so I was stuck.

Again, I fumbled for my phone and again, a guy appeared not 50 feet away at the intersection, rolled down his window and said, “Do you need help?” I almost laughed out loud but couldn’t get the images of the last week out of my head of being helped and trying to help.

So I threw my bike in the back of his Pacifica, said hi to his teenage son in the back seat and accepted the ride, once again up to Phil’s place at Champion Cycling.

He went out of his way to drop me off and all I could do was again say thanks, shake his hand, wish him luck and tell him how kind his offer was.

And of course, all I could think about lucky I was to be in a place where people were so kind and generous and hope to be able to replay that again in the future.

So for the holidays, when things aren’t going exactly how you’d want them to, look around, there might be somebody who needs a little more help than you do.

I know I will!

I used to think I liked politics. And maybe I did from afar before talk radio and cable television revealed the raw nerve that’s always hanging out when it comes to getting elected. Maybe it’s always been this way, but we just didn’t know it. That why the word “political” has such a negative connotation anyway.

I’ve figured out it’s not politics that’s interesting to me but rather the result of the political process. In a word, leadership. And that’s where Barak Obama and the Democrats find themselves following the election.

It’s much different to be the party of dissent versus the party of leadership. To be a counter-puncher always reacting to what the other guy does is sometimes a comfortable place to be. At this point though, the Democrats have had plenty of pent up anger that they’ve directed at President Bush over the last eight years. But for those who wanted change, the question is, “Now what?”

Do they have a true socialist leaning agenda or will Obama force them to govern more from the center? If he truly wants to be a consensus builder as he said in his speech Tuesday night, he’ll have to be willing to compromise to get things done. The Republicans can play defense, having weathered the onslaught of seats in the Senate, holding onto just enough to avoid a veto-proof, filibuster-proof majority. While he was coy on some of his relationships and his “big-picture” thinking during the campaign, Obama will now have to reveal what he actually believes in and bring ideas to the table and sell them to the American people.

In 1960, America elected a young, telegenic leader who energized an entire generation with ideas like the Peace Corps and the space program. That’s the challenge for the new President. He called for a “new spirit of service” telling Americans that it’s work and sacrifice that will get the job done. “I hear your voices and I need your help,” is what he told the crowd at Grant Park.

It might be the same message he was promoting as a candidate but it’s not the message his followers were hearing. Many Obama supporters believe he’s going to fix everything and they won’t have to participate. That’s why he’s spent the last week or so lowering expectations, trying to get people to have a realistic idea of what is going to happen.

“It might not happen in a month, a year or even in one term,” is how he phrased it in Chicago on Tuesday night. But with control of the White House the House and the Senate, he can push his agenda forward without any delay. But only if he can get the people to buy into it. Democrats are already talking about re-implimenting the Fairness Doctrine that would essentially silence critics, especially on the radio. Even if they voted for Obama, will his followers absolutely support that?

Obama was a fantastic candidate: telegenic, lucid in his thoughts and tight with his message. He stayed on course during the campaign hammering on the economy and the action in Iraq and Afghanistan. He stayed away from abortion, immigration and other issues that are “no-win” strategies for any candidate. And he won. In a way, it reminds me of the ending of the Robert Redford movie “The Candidate” where he runs against the establishment and wins as a long shot. In the final scene he mouths to his campaign director the words “now what?” And that’s what American’s are now thinking: “Now what?”

As a candidate, Obama was able to talk in generalities about policy but as President, he’ll need to have specifics. I’m not worried about his lack of experience simply because there’s a whole Democrat machine standing at the ready, poised to take their places in Washington. And he’s smart and motivated. The important thing to look for will be whom he chooses as his top advisers. Who’s close to him? Who will he take his advice from?

He’s a smart and resilient politician, proven through a tough primary campaign against the Clintons and followed by a winning run for the Presidency against the Republicans and John McCain. Now he is the President for all Americans, a very different role than being the candidate for one party. If he wants to be that, he’s up to that challenge, but that’s the big question: Does he want to be that or is his view much more narrow? We don’t know because we don’t know much about the man or where he’ll take us. He talked about the “humility and determination to heal our divides,” which is just what it’ll take to get a lot of people with different ideas to get moving in the same direction.

Obama quoted Lincoln a lot on election night, noting that Lincoln was from Illinois and was elected President in a country during a far more divided time. “We have the enduring power of our ideals,” he said, calling on all Americans to unite behind our common goals instead of focusing on our differences.

“America can change,” he said. And he’s right. The encouraging thing is it doesn’t have to change much. It just needs the right leadership.

Here are some other random thoughts about the election (since this is a sports site and I don’t expect to be writing about politics very often).

Now that we’ve elected a black man as President (I know he’s half white, half black) does that signal the end of racism in America? With Blacks being only 12% of the total population, Barak Obama needed an awful lot of white voters to cast their ballot for him in order to get elected. Does it mean racism is dead or has it been overblown by those who have made a living on the “politics of race?” Has the media given so much credence to those who have used race as a leverage to get what they want that it became part of the landscape that we accepted even though it wasn’t there at the purported level?

With so many blacks voting for the first time (even though first time voters comprised 11% of the total the same as in 2004) will they return to the process in the future if a black man is not a candidate? In my role as the “interactive reporter” during Channel 4’s coverage I heard from a lot of people on both sides of that issue. Many were happy that people had joined in the process and an equal number were angry saying, “where ya’ been?” I hope that those who sought change see that becoming part of the process is the thing that brings about that change.

And finally, I though John McCain’s concession speech was the most gracious and finest exit from a campaign I’ve ever seen. And that’s a double-edged sword. It was almost as if that’s the speech he expected to give all along. That would be disappointing, except that he certainly did his part to try to put the two sides together.

I don’t know if I could have enjoyed the Olympics more than I did this year. Part of it was the mixture of taped and live events that television was able to bring to the east coast of the US because of the 12-hour time difference between here and Beijing. NBC did a masterful job of blending the competition in with the US’s efforts in nearly every competition.

Some, like swimming, we dominated in so it was easy for the network to focus on both objectives at once. Other sports, like say women’s pole vault has mostly non-US athletes involved (although we won silver in that event) but NBC was still able to bring the event to life with out over dramatizing the whole thing.

There are a lot of things I don’t like that NBC Sports does with their whole television philosophy but they had these Olympics figured out. I guess it’s not their job to point out that the host nation is one under communist rule and the people are oppressed but I think on a regular basis they did go a little overboard politically pointing out how wonderful China was.

I think it’s a fascinating culture with a rich history and according to all reports from friends who were there, the people were very friendly. Perhaps, much like people think of Americans when we travel, I’d like their people, it’s jus the government I disagree with. Nonetheless I got caught up in all kinds of sports from the standard swimming, gymnastics and basketball to table tennis, open water swimming and team handball.

I do like it that they put all kinds of sports on all kinds of networks. My son made a chart for me so that just about any time of day I could tune in to see some kind of competition.

That’s one of the other things I really enjoyed about watching these games. It’s the first time I was able to sit down with my son and see him enjoy all kinds of competition, learning about different sports and awakening his curiosity about not only the sports, but also the culture of the people who excelled at them. Who knew that the national sport of Hungary was water polo?

As Bob Costas said in his final commentary, the Olympics are big for any city that hosts them but this one was huge for the host country as well. China, in many regards, can be described as a third world country with first world weapons. But their expanding economy and now this two-week exposure to the world could bring the people of the country, one fifth of the world’s population, onto center stage. If a communist country can have a job classification of “capitalist,” you’d figure they’d know how to capitalize on this time on the world stage.

I do know that I never have really wanted to visit China, despite my insatiable wanderlust, but after seeing the Olympics, I’d like to go there. It sure will be interesting to see how people view China in the future when it comes to tourism. It hasn’t been a big destination in the past but that sure will change. And now that 1.3 billion people have seen the world through the eyes of the Olympics, will they want to go visit these foreign lands for themselves? How many Chinese have you seen touring around the world? That could be the next thing that happens.

I also think that any rational person, after seeing these games, the expense China incurred, the number of volunteers involved and the organization, must consider China a player on the world stage in just about any situation. In any conflict, either in the boardroom or on a battlefield, they’ll be a formidable foe.

Based on their performance in these Olympics, they’re going to be a force in sports on the international stage for a long time.

I met Jim McKay once, when I was in college. I had a late class but ran over to the theater he was speaking at promoting his book “My Wide World” on college campuses.

My first impression was that he was tiny! I got there after he was finished speaking but I was determined to hear something that he had to say so I hung around the exit to the stage and he walked out with the promoter, an on-campus administrator I happened to know.

McKay had a little bit of a beard if I remember correctly, and he couldn’t have been nicer. We shook hands, and he asked me if I had heard his presentation. I said I did not, I was in class but I wanted to get over here just to say hi at least. McKay said “Oh,” when I told him I wasn’t at the speech, but was very interested in hearing about the fact that I was majoring in communications.

I went to Clemson as a freshman as a pre-med major, and actually did quite well. But when they called us together after my first semester to tell us they were phasing out the pre-med program, I needed a change.

Political Science made a short appearance but after taking Introduction to Broadcasting 101, my professor suggested I look into majoring in that discipline. Citing that Clemson lacked a Broadcasting department, he gave me a list of seven schools where I could gain my degree. Luckily, Maryland was one of those and I transferred to get my degree in Radio, Television and Film, the Terp’s equivalent to Telecommunications.

I was already planning to transfer, and McKay encouraged my move, saying that the field was wide open and it was going to even get better. Remember, this was a time that was before cable, before ESPN, FOX and CNN. There were only the three networks, but McKay had an inkling that was going to change.

We spoke for just a couple of minutes, and I thanked him for making it seem so interesting to go around the world and experience different sports. I think I might have even mentioned barrel jumping and he laughed. We shook hands again, he wished me luck and he was off. But I remember how pleasant he was, and how encouraging he was about a career choice that seemed to be at the top of everybody’s list.

Obviously I’ve been thinking about McKay since he death on Saturday and I’ve read and heard what a lot of the different national “voices” have been saying. I do know he was a very good writer. He was plainspoken and occasionally Spartan, which is always best. A lot of “voices” want to wax eloquently about somebody else who waxed eloquently. But that seems kind of cheap to me.

McKay was a real guy. I met his son, Sean McManus the President of CBS News and Sports once here in Jacksonville and commented that his Dad had a very positive effect on my career. “He did that a lot,” was McManus’ response. Which was correct.

But what I realized in the last couple of days is that McKay fueled my wanderlust. As much as Chuck Thompson, the voice of the Orioles made it seem fun to me, McKay opened my eyes to a true “Wide World.” Since I was a kid I’ve been as interested in barrel jumping as I have in NFL football. Sure, I understand the difference, but perhaps because of McKay and his globetrotting I understand the similarities. The dedication, the sacrifice and the sheer joy of the competition, no matter on what scale.

McKay also represents another layer of professionals who are now gone, who shaped my interest in what I decided I’d put my life into. McKay was a little smarter than the average bear, a little more interesting than the everyday play-by-play guy, a little more well read and well traveled than just about anybody else in the room. He spent his retirement at home, with his family, knowing he had done it all.

Twice.

But he didn’t flaunt it.

He was it.

We should all be so lucky.