Free Ballin’

Tonight is the highly anticipated first game for Free Ballin’ for the ’08-’09 season, between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Houston Rockets. I’m excited, and I’m also meeting Jake (with whom I’m riding-sharing to Dallas) at the game; his girlfriend had tickets.

Of course I also need to find a place to stay tonight. That’s been a significant issue since I arrived. I didn’t contact people at couchsurfing.com for hosting until I got here, which has proven to be a real mistake. I suppose I took it for granted that I could find hosting very quickly. Well, also, I’d planned to write two or three days in advance, on Greyhound, but unfortunately, Greyhound did not provide the promised wireless internet access, so now I’m scrambling for a places to stay and went quite over budget by staying in motels two of the first three days here. Even the cheapest single motel in all of Oklahoma City (no hostels that I could find) is about 5 times what I can afford for a place to sleep.

Last night I stayed with Jodie, a couchsurfer, and a very gracious host, who cooked chili for us for dinner and let me use her washer and drier. When I know where I’ll be spending the night, I can fully focus on basketball, but shelter is always going to be my first priority, and I’ve spent so much time looking for it, since I got to OKC, that I haven’t spent as much time talking to bball fans as I’d like, and may have to circle back in a few weeks/months to learn what I want to learn. That wouldn’t be so tragic though; it’s the Thunder’s first year and comparing a young town in a new city at the beginning of the season and the end of the season would be a good thing.