SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas -- Unless you really love attending college basketball games, do not envy the few of us who are here for the South Padre Island Invitational.
If you wish you were at a tropical locale on this late November day, wish for Honolulu, Ocho Rios, Bali or Bermuda. South Padre, which normally is in the 70s and even 80s at this time of year, is no place to be today.
The temperatures are in the 50s. It has rained all day. The wind is blowing like crazy. I really didn't think "windchill" would be a term that would pound in my head once I got down here, but this isn't good.
My hotel room is a block from the Gulf of Mexico or the Laguna Madre Bay. I don't know which is which here, and it doesn't matter, because I can't see the water because of all the rain. Isn't that kooky?
On the desk in my room is an advertisement for Golf on the Gulf, an invitation to play South Padre Island Golf Club, called one of the top 20 courses in America that you can play by Golf Magazine.
Carved from a rough-hewn stretch of the Laguna Madre, South Padre Island is a secure oasis of tranquility and peace of mind.
Yeah, right. Maybe some other day. I woke up this morning set to try to play 18 holes somewhere. Not if I need goggles and a life raft to do it, however.
So there's really nothing else to do here but go inside and watch basketball. Swell. The afternoon games of Austin Peay vs. Florida Gulf Coast and Maryland Eastern Shore vs. Valparaiso had crowds in the dozens.
Iowa plays Bradley tonight. I hope there's heat in the South Padre Island Convention Centre.
This isn't Spring Break, boys and girls. This is, however, what the tail end of a hurricane may look like.