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Eastbound and down
Published: 10/12/2006 8:50 PM
Last Modified: 10/12/2006 8:50 PM

My boys Mike Brown and Eric Bailey are headed to East Carolina for a TU football game and I've got some advice for them -- book a hotel room now.
When I was younger and my golf game was just bad instead of worse, I made the trip to East Carolina without first booking a hotel room.
I found a motor lodge-type hotel close to the airport on the way back so I could make a short commute to catch a plane the next morning. It was without question the creepiest hotel stay of my career and I wouldn't have been surprised a bit if Anthony Perkins had showed up wearing his mama's wig.
The place looked like a dive, but it didn't deserve that status. I picked up the phone for the first time in my room and was able to hear conversations of other people staying in other rooms. Not good. The folks milling around outside the hotel looked like they could be extras in a George Romero movie. If I heard the word "brains" one time, I was going to make a run for it.
The lock on the hotel door was so un-trustworthy that I pushed a couch against the door in order to give myself enough peace of mind to sleep.
Nowadays, I wouldn't consider making a trip without first booking a hotel room weeks or months in advance. And it's always a chain hotel with -- and this is important -- inside doors.
For OSU's NIT game last season, I booked a room in Miami, Fla., and arrived to discover that (couldn't tell this on a web site) my hotel had a door that could only be accessed from the outside. I checked in, immediately got on the Internet, booked a room at a different hotel and bailed out. In Miami, Okla., I would have considered staying at such a hotel. In Miami, Fla., no way. I love scary movies, but I don't want to be in one.




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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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