News, notes and opinions from a long week in Miami

	After playing in four Super Bowls, Raiders Hall of Fame linebacker Ted Hendricks knew a stupid question when he heard it. Al Messerschmidt/WireImage.com
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My serious playoff action on the road began with a lonely trip to Indianapolis and ended in the rain in Miami. Why was the Indy trip lonely? Because usually the Flaming Redhead makes these journeys with me, at least to the Championship round, but there were one-thousand-one-hundred-and-forty-eight reasons why she didn't make this one. That's right, $1,148 was what Continental Airlines wanted, round trip from Newark, when you don't book at least a week in advance.

"But how was I supposed to know ahead of time New England would knock off San Diego and the AFC Championship would be in Indianapolis?" I asked the Continental ticket agent. "You're the expert ... you're supposed to know stuff like that," she said. Yeah, I guess so.

(Just kidding ... no one really said that ... c'mon ... I told you I was just kidding).

So since I'll be going on a six-month sabbatical (from the magazine, not the web site), at half pay, we can't afford to start throwing around four-figure tariffs for eight-minute plane rides, and the Redhead stayed home.

What she missed was a trip out there on a plane filled with teeny-bopper cheerleaders, heading to Indy for the Jamfest Cheerleaders Super Nationals, with 8,000 strong. It was like being on a plane filled with demented mice. Same thing on the plane ride home. Same thing in the hotel, the lobby, hiding behind potted palms, everywhere.

"Where's the newsstand?" I asked the desk clerk at the Hyatt, which was the press hotel.

"Through the lobby," he said, "if you can get through the cheerleaders."

On the second floor they had what they euphemistically called a Press Lounge. A sofa and a few chairs and a table, supposedly with sodas and stuff. It looked like the kind of press lounge they might set up in Bulgaria. I stuck my nose in just once. Three guys in what looked like workingman's garb were bitching about the lack of bottled water, and a Hyatt lady was telling them, "We'll bring more." Adios Press Lounge.

Yeah, it was lonely. Had a meal at the Hyatt's rooftop restaurant, going round and round. Paid 14 bucks to watch Forest Whitaker chew up the scenery in The King of Scotland on the hotel's pay TV movie set-up. Well, it beat all those puff pieces and softball interviews on the NFL Network. Front page of the Indianapolis Star carried a story about the ketchup war between Heinz and Red Gold for the use of the term Red Zone. Wish Linda would have been there to read it. Flaming Redhead Zone?

Sometimes the sports section has stories and items that put you to the test, trying to figure out whether they're serious or not. The Outside View column in the Star, for instance, talked about "a series of simulations I've run this past weekend, with the Colts beating the Patriots five out of 10." Am I too dense to grasp this?

• My first two meals in Miami were at Joe's Stone Crab and the Porcao Churrascaria. I felt like I was tapped for the entire Super Bowl week. I'd been going to Joe's for about 40 years now and it hadn't really changed, except that it was bigger. You didn't have to wait as long, sometimes not at all. Still the same sensational hash brown potatoes and creamed spinach. The stone crabs? Yeah, they're good, but I've never been a serious devotee. I just don't understand the magic of them.

But somebody does because an order of the jumbo sized costs $72 on one of the more wide-ranging menus. Half a broiled chicken, for instance, still costs $5.95. "In 50 years, I think they've raised the price by about 35 cents," a waiter told me. Anyway, the Redhead had a Ginger Salmon for $19.95 that she said was wonderful.

Porcao is one of those Brazilian Churrascarias where they come around every 30 seconds or so with different cuts of broiled meats, which you load up on until you pass out. Paramedic units are on duty. Outside the place, a group of cardiologists was getting ready to storm the doors. All I kept thinking, as I shamelessly indulged, was how evil I was, how I would pay for all of this, if not in this world, then in the next one.