Just because it is logistically possible to make a road trip … doesn’t mean you ought to.

A couple of weeks ahead of that theoretically possible trip, I never remember that idea, above. A couple hours before I leave … then I remember, but the money has been spent and I’m committed and, well, here goes nothing. Something.

In an hour I leave for the airport and an overnight flight to San Salvador, a city I’ve never seen, in El Salvador, a country I’ve never visited, where I will arrive at 5:30 a.m. (at least, according to the itinerary), then do about 12 hours of scurrying around the capital before settling in to write, and spend a night, cover the U.S. national team in a World Cup qualifying match Saturday night, then get up at 6 a.m. or so Sunday morning to catch a 9 a.m. flight back to LAX.

Rather a hare-brained scheme. You bet. Turns out, the press box at the main stadium in San Salvador does not have Internet access. Or so we’ve heard. Which substantially amps up the “degree of difficulty” of covering this match.

But … we’ll see.

Some of the other hare-brained sports travel schemes I’ve had — or those that spring to mind:–USC-Alabama football on a Saturday night in Birmingham, Ala., all night sitting in the nearly empty airport to catch a dawn flight to Atlanta and a change to Houston to see a Rams-Oilers game. This was 1978 and USC won a share of the national title by defeating Alabama. Not a great idea, but if we include a Thursday interview with Bear Bryant in Tuscaloosa … I was thrashed, by the time I got back to L.A.

–USC-Arizona State football game on a Saturday night in Tempe, a plane to Dallas in the morning and a flight to Minneapolis to see the Rams-Vikings on a Sunday afternoon. Made kickoff by, oh, five minutes. Went to a hotel and crashed for a couple of hours before I began writing. Do-able. Not a great idea. This also was 1978.

–UCLA at Arizona football, a Saturday night. Drove from San Bernardino to Tucson before the game (430 miles) …  covered the game, then drove 430 miles back to San Bernardino, arriving home about 5 a.m. Do-able. Not a great idea. Especially that last 100 miles when I was glugging Coke and slapping myself to stay awake.

I could add a couple of dozen up-and-backs to Las Vegas with a championship title fight in the middle … a UCLA game at the Coliseum on a Saturday night and an all-night drive up Interstate 5 to Oakland for a Raiders home game. Do-able, but it almost killed me.

–And the worst idea ever. So bad it failed. Started badly, got steadily worse. A late-Friday departure, December 26, 1997, from San Bernardino to traffic-snarled Las Vegas, and on to Grand Junction, 455 miles. Next morning In theory), from Grand Junction up and over the I-70 to Denver to see the Broncos and somedamnbody (Jacksonville) in the NFL playoffs. Yeah. Over the Rockies in winter. With two non-driving teenagers in the backseat of a rental car. I began encountering snow in central Utah but drove on through the dark and gathering flurries, arriving in Grand Junction at maybe 1 a.m., completely wiped. Barely slept. Again considered trying to cross the Rockies, 240 miles from Mile High with kickoff five hours away. Decided against it because more snow was expected ahead of us … and turned around and drove back to San Bernardino, instead. Jacksonville staged an upset of the Broncos; a good game. I still would have had to spend two days driving back. Increasingly wrung out. That is, a trip that was not really do-able … and a particularly bad idea.

I hope and trust this Salvador trip won’t be as bad an idea. Can’t be. Can it?

I’ll keep you up to date, here.