Back to reality

Suddenly, it's all over.

No more spending my mornings photographing the Dan Patrick Show. No more city-wide party at night.

This week is going to be boring.

Last week was a blur of activity. From 9 a.m. to 12 noon Monday through Thursday, I took pictures of celebrities and sports personalities. Most afternoons, I wrote about my experiences. At night, I walked around downtown, seeing the sights, mingling with friends and strangers and catching parts of concerts by DJ Pauly D, Darius Rucker and O.A.R. I spent the better part of Saturday working at the Celebrity Beach Bowl, sneaking peeks at the game while acting as security for the VIPs.

This week, there will be none of that (except for the writing part, obviously).

As the media relations intern for the Indianapolis Indians, one of my jobs is to catalog ANY mention of the Indians or Victory Field in the national or local media. Today, I documented over 35 mentions from news outlets as far away as Boston and Seattle.

They all served as unwelcome reminders of what is missing this week.

But all is not lost. I bookended the Super Bowl festivities with an Indiana Ice hockey game on Friday, Jan. 27, and an Indiana Pacers basketball game on Saturday, Feb. 4. I had a blast at both of them (despite the Pacers' lackluster performance in a loss against the Orlando Magic), and those experiences help me remember that -- despite the end of the Super Bowl -- I still live in a great city with a lot of things to do.

Because of the timing of the beginning of my job, I got thrown headlong into the Super Bowl fanfare. And it was amazing. But now that I will have more free time, I'm looking forward to experiencing all the permanent entertainment fixtures this city holds.

There may be no more Super Bowl Village concerts and no more Dan Patrick Show live in Victory Field, but there will be more Pacers games and more Ice games, there will be more concerts at other venues and there are high school and college sports, museums and other attractions that help make Indianapolis a first-rate city.

And in a couple months, Indians games will start and I'll be doing my favorite thing: getting paid to watch baseball.

So, yeah, this week is going to be a time of transition, a snap back to reality. But when you think about it, reality isn't all that bad.

Michael Raines writes for the Indianapolis Indians and loves everything about the city. He can be reached at therainesdelay@gmail.com.