Amid natural beauty, it's easy to forget ESPN

JUNEAU, Alaska -- You never know how good you have it until it's gone.

My wife and I departed Baltimore-Washington International Airport Monday morning at 5:40 a.m., headed for Vancouver, British Columbia, where we would board a ship for a seven-day Alaskan cruise.

The view is unbelievable.

The flight over the Rockies, the site of Mount Rainier above the clouds and more snow than you would want in June.

The city of Vancouver is beautiful. The people were nice, the food was great (at The Keg, order New York Strip the next time you are there), and the weather was not the typical Pacific Northwest weather -- it was sunny and cool.

We boarded the ship on Wednesday, which was the day the College World Series played its third and decisive game.

I enter my stateroom, turn on the television and channel after channel I searched.

Finally, the search ended with the realization there was no ESPN!

How can someone go a week without ESPN?

ESPN runs through the veins of each and every sports fan and my veins would now have to go without ESPN.

So you go to the Internet, right?

Well, when the Internet costs $55 per 100 minutes and there is business to take care of you, you don't get to visit espn.com that often.

When you have excursions planned with each port of call, there is no time for viewing the Inter-net.

When we reached port in Ketchikan, I rushed for a local newspaper.

To my surprise, there it was: a report on Thursday night's NBA Draft, the trade for Shaquille O'Neal to the Cleveland Cavaliers, Vince Carter to the Orlando Magic and all the Major League Baseball scores a man would want.

After reading the section while my wife ate every oyster in the state of Alaska -- I'm not a seafood fan myself -- along with salmon chowder, I realized that I would make it after all.

So what if there is no ESPN?

I have turned my attention to the bald eagles, whales and other wildlife you can see on an Alaskan cruise.

This is my first trip to the Great Northwest and, believe me, it won't be my last.

ESPN or no ESPN, I didn't have it before my senior year in high school and made it through OK.

So I think one can go seven days without a highlight of each and every hit MLB has or every trade the NBA pulls off.

It will all be there when I get home ... sometime next week.

Jeff Christian is a freelance columnist and he appears each Sunday in The News & Messenger. He can be reached at christianjeff@rocketmail.com.