The Cuban - Puts His $ Where His 🙂 Is!
Congrats to The Dallas Mavericks and to The Cuban, Mark Cuban. What a fun ride! Let’s do it again next year but, hey, leave the singing to Queen, okay?
No one was more shocked than I at how excellent the crowd in Dallas behaved yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of people came together in a miserably hot, sweltering day with little incident. And me, the guy in the crowd who almost always attracts morons, was treated with kindness by everyone. I love it when strangers strike up conversations … positive, intelligent ones.
I am reminded of one of the few things I learned during my first try at college. In a communications theory class, we learned that you can diagram communication theory on the chalkboard. Every person can be drawn as an X on the board. Around every X is a large circle, which represents the person’s “field of experience.” Now, picture all these Xs surround by large circles on the board. Any time two circles — or “fields of experience” intersect … when they have something in common … communications takes place.
Representin
So that is a pretty darned good theory on why everyone just got along yesterday … Communication! Why don’t we do it more? Expand your field of experience and get out there and intersect!
Thanks to The Dallas Mavericks for giving all of us thousand and thousands of fans a great, common field of experience … one which now just happens to include a World Championship! Now that is something to talk about.
MVP! MVP! MVP!
It was great fun shooting photos of Mark Cuban and all of his Dallas stars … But even more fun watching the fans — especially the kids — from every race … every socio/economic background … so excited to see their heros … Dirk … JET … Barea … Marion … big man Tyson Chandler … The Custodian … and The Kidd or “The Fossil” as Dirk called him. Ha! Even Stevenson made it to the parade, if you know what I am talking about. What a great day for all of North Texas!
Mavs Maniacs and Dancers
So … the Mavs Nation — the peeps — got it right. Everyone got along, with no big issues. The one concern for the entire day — Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) and TRE — The Trinity Railway Express. I didn’t ride DART but heard they had a fiasco where a train failed in a tunnel, and the people climbed out and walked out of the tunnel ON THE TRACKS! Always a bad idea.
As for TRE (someone tell me why they have not nicknamed that “The Tre?”) … I jumped on the train to Dallas before the Dallas Mavericks parade at 7:30 a.m. in Fort Worth, with no problems. (It had NO Wi-Fi and apparently no air conditioning either, I might add. What’s up with that!?!)
But after the very first stop at the main station in Fort Worth, the train was overloaded — with people standing in the aisle and no overhead handles to hold on to. It got worse. At all of the stops on the way to Dallas, there were more people hugging the sides of the train, trying to get on. Each time the train personnel had to plead and plead and plead for the people to “Get back! This train is full.”
On Twitter - 'The Train Is Full' #TRE
It got worse and worse and worse along the way. I saw one and only one policeman at one stop, trying to get people to cooperate. This situation easily could have gotten out of hand. Finally, toward the end of my ride, the train personnel started telling the overflow lines of people that more trains — extra trains — were on the way.
Every time we stopped and I saw the problems and the potential for more issues, I sent out tweets on Twitter with my phone … sadly, using slow 3G technology, without Wi-Fi … but we got ‘er done. And for once, I felt like I was sending out tweets with the public’s best interest in mind … urging safety … instead of being a smart arse. I have no idea if anyone at the TRE saw the tweets … ha … “Heed my tweets!”
In summary … for a special event … TRE handled all of this horribly. It is a miracle that trouble didn’t break out, and that no one fell under one of the trains. For those of us lucky enough to get on a train it was miserably hot, with no A/C and no open windows. I know it is not the norm, but the TRE must gear up and prepare better for special events. Man … I can’t imagine what The Super Bowl must have been like!
Oh … I mentioned my train on the way to Dallas didn’t have Wi-Fi … budget cut? I have blogged from the trains using Wi-Fi in the past for this blog, a few years ago … Ha! But, I first suggested Wi-Fi to TRE back in 2004 … and the official spokesperson at that time on the phone asked me “what is Wi-Fi?” … oh well.
They have made strides … sporadically, apparently. On the way back from Dallas, I tried hooking up with some Wi-Fi one more time on my iPhone … and YES … this time in this car, there was a Wi-Fi network. Ha! … we even had air conditioning on the train this time.
Know what I sayin?
