JEFFREY REINHART jreinhart@LNPnews.com

Alrighty — a little non-Lancaster-Lebanon League sports post for you. Oh, come on. You know you want to read it.

I should have pitched a tent in New Jersey last week.

Three days. Two concerts. Two late-night drives home to Pennsylvania.

But a fun time was had by all.

The odyssey started Thursday night with a trip to Giants Stadium in East Rutherford for the Bruce Springsteen show.

Check out my lame, camera-phone pic up there on the left – grainy, I know. And the seats? Yeah, the word ‘nosebleed’ comes to mind. But they weren’t half bad, actually. We were up top, but looking straight at the stage. OK, so Bruce looked like an ant. But those video screens sure were nice. And a special thanks to M.M. for tagging along — at the last minute.

A tractor trailer overturned on the Jersey Turnpike Thursday afternoon, causing major gridlock. Because of the delays and the detours, Bruce decided to push back his starting time from the customary 8:30 or so until (gulp) 9:29.

And since it was the last of three shows in his home state on this tour, he decided to play 30 songs for the paying customers. He wasn’t finished until (gulp) 12:47.

Nothing like getting into your car in the Meadowlands parking lot at 1:01 a.m.

Needless to say that was an awful drive. But when my head hit the pillow at 4:05 a.m., it sure felt great.

Trip No. 2 to Jersey was on Saturday – but not for another Bruce show.

This time, we went south to Atlantic City for the American Idols Live show.

Man, I’m such a geek.

You might have seen me post something a few months back about Idol. I actually watched the last season from start to finish (nerd alert), so when the tickets went on sale for the tour, Rebecca gobbled up three of them.

And – voila! – there we were in Boardwalk Hall on Saturday night to see Syesha, Idol champ David Cook, Archie and the gang.

Funny story – we had seats 14-15-16, but Boardwalk Hall didn’t set up enough seats in our row. It only went up to 14, skipped 15 and 16 on the aisle, then picked up with seat 17 on the other side.

Um, whoops.

So the security lady had us sit in 12-13-14. Luckily, nobody stumbled into that area looking for seats 12 and 13. That would have been interesting.

I will say this about the Idol tour: All 10 of them were much, much, much better live than on the show, especially Chikeze, who was terrific.

Wow, did I just say that out loud?

Anyway, it was after 1 a.m. until we got home, making it two late nights in three days.

But how many people out there saw Springsteen and Jason Castro in a 72-hour span — and lived to tell about it?

Happy to report that I am cranking away at the L-L League football previews. I’m preparing full preview capsules for each and every team in the league. Been hammering those out the last few weeks, and hope to have them finished up in the very near future. They will be posted here when I’m finished.

Also hope to do a few more audio interview Podcasts this week. I have a couple set up, so stay tuned for that.

And the diet is going OK. Did the best I could during those trips to Jersey and back. Did miss one day on the treadmill, but got right back on the next day. Diet update is Thursday.