Thank you, John.
It is six oh five here on a Tuesday morning, Kentucky and this morning news Nick coffee back for day two. They let me come back two straight days. As I said earlier, I'm gonna keep doing this until they tell me, you know, hey, you're no longer needed, which I hope is a very very very long time from now. But I am really happy to be here, joined alongside Scott Fitzgerald, John Alden, and as you just heard there, John Shannon. I want to ask you guys when it comes to
the commute on the way in. I'm sixty five north. I know John Alden is the same way, Scott are you? Are you sixty four? Okay? So how many lights do you typically hit? And I don't mean do you get stopped at? But do you stop? Do you end up passing many lights? Once you get to the downtown area making your way to our beautiful studios who are four Street Live.
I come off Brook and then if I hit it right, if I get that light green, I'll hit the rest of them green all the way through, which is nice, which is a change.
That's the exact reason why I ask, because I've been coming downtown for the last couple of years, however long we've been here, and you really never know what you're gonna get as far as are you gonna hit the lights or not. But in the morning, there's nobody else out. Yeah, I mean there's no there's no there's no pedestrians, there's not many vehicles, and if you do it seems like if you hit a red light, it's you're gonna hit all of them.
And I think the the.
Traffic lights and the walkway it seems almost set up is and we do have to keep pedestrians safe, trust you are well aware of that, but it does seem as if it's catered more so, as if we have a lot more people walking than we do driving, And it just seems, you know, I'm a very impatient person. I've been working on it for a long time, not
sure if I'll ever really improve in that department. But as I said, at each light, I'm looking around as if, okay, do we need this seemingly hour long walk, you know, the walk path, which I'm exaggerating clearly, And again the root of this is, I'm just a very impatient person. But when you hit, when you hit your first green light, you're gonna be smooth sailing. If you hit the red light, you know, it might take you sometimes maybe five more minutes.
Yeah, it just depends.
John.
Are you still getting off at what is the exit Saint Catherine?
Yeah, so that ever since you and I were in the afternoon, probably not as necessary at this time in the morning, but it's become so routine for me that I just like to go down that way.
At this point, it.
Does seem like it might it might be a little bit of a longer journey from sixty five when you get off the exit off sixty five to get here. Yeah, but I kind of feel like you're less likely to hit lights in that.
Yeah.
Some reason that that opening stretch when you get off of sixty five north off of the Saint Catherine's exit, if it's timed correctly, kind of like Scott was talking about a second ago with Brook Street, you can hit every single green light at the exact same.
Time if you time it to be that way. So, but you've got to have a little luck on your side.
There is something nice about being being downtown this early in the morning, whenever there's really nothing going on, and there's something kind of peaceful about it, which I which I kind of like. Uh, and so far, I don't know if I've adjusted because it's been two days. But the early the early starts have been have been nice. I mean last night I was thinking, Okay, well, here's your first night where you are needing to get needing to make sure you get to bed really early because
you got to get up and do it again. But it all worked out, worked out naturally. I didn't really have to do anything I got. I woke up at three o'clock in the morning yesterday. Therefore, by the time we got to nine o'clock last night, I was, I was, here's where you're.
Going to run in trouble.
Here's where you're going to run into trouble. When you want to watch the Pacers on Thursday one, and you know, game one until at least ten o'clock unless it goes into overtime. That's where you kind of run into a bit of an issue because you got to get up on Friday morning.
Yeah, and if it was really any other game, especially in the NBA Finals, I'd probably be okay. But this is a rare situation where I'm actually watching your team that I'm a fan of. I'm a Pacers fan, so.
And then you can't get to sleep after. I can't tell you, guys, how many Super Bowls I've missed. There was a run where I missed probably ten super Bowls because I had to.
Go to bed early. That sounds awful, it was, And so finally I got smart.
This was the first year that I told our boss Gus, I said, dude, I'm taking Monday after the super Bowl off.
And I said, because I'm going.
To I would have so much fomo.
You learned right.
And I've been in the position where you guys are at where your favorite team is playing at night, and it's almost it's in a weird, twisted way. It's almost kind of like Christmas though, because you wake up the next morning. The first thing you do is you go to your phone to see if they won, if they won your related. If they're not, you're like, well, I didn't miss much.
Is this my life moving forward?
That's how I missed the game. One comeback Nick against the Knicks.
But to be fair, that wasn't a comeback that I think anybody was anticipating. That was one we may never see again.
Well, what makes it worse, too, is now I've learned, like I literally fall asleep at home with the lights on, okay, but I have to get up and.
There scaring the hell out of me.
I tell you, guys, I tell you this. What was I go and my wife comes in.
She goes, I can't go to bed now, because when I first started doing this, I was right where you guys are at. And my wife says, I can't. I can't come upstairs and try to get to bed in the dark. I can't see anything. I said, well, I have to get to sleep, and so I've learned how to fall asleep with the lights on. But yet in the morning, I can't turn the lights on when I get up. I have to keep things dark and fumble for my clothes.
I mean, I knew this was going to be somewhat of a lifestyle change, given that it is such a different shift and a different schedule for me and all adjust but there is one specific comment that really stood out to me from Tony Cruz in one of his last shows over the last two weeks that really hit me and kind of made me realize, Okay, you can try to act like this isn't gonna be a big change it's going to be a big change because he was getting ribbed for how early he has to go
to bed, because for many years, twenty plus years, he had to get up and start this show at five am. And he was kind of defending himself almost kind of like he was a tough guy and saying, well, you know sometimes on Fridays I step up till like nine thirty and I'm like, oh.
My gosh, this is this my life now.
Now, I told you sign for I told you in the bright next Saturday night store and money. Because when you ate one night this stay I'm up till two in the morning, I can see it's awesome.
All right, all right, we got another update of trafficing weather coming your way right here on news Radio eight forty whas. That is six sixteen here at Kentucky and this morning news on news Radio eight forty whas. Nick coffee with you. And if you have a five oh two area code, you might want to consider yourself lucky if you care about your area code. We'll get into
it in just a second. But I'm not sure area code is something that you realize that you really I mean, clearly you have to have one to have a phone number, but the specific it's I don't think it's going to be much of an inconvenience if you have a different one,
and I'll explain coming up here shortly. However, here's here's what we know that if you have a five O two area code that of course covers Louisville and some surrounding areas, it's expected to they're going to run out of phone numbers by the end of twenty twenty seven due to population growth and increased device usage. By the way, that's another factor that I'm not sure many people realize unless you've actually gone about setting one of these up. But you can go create a digital number like a
Google Voice. You can have a phone number that is that is just basically an Internet line. I think you have to have a number attach associated to it, and you certainly have to have some Internet connection to even obtain that. But if you put in where you live, and you put in five two two, seven oh eight, five nine, whatever it may be, it'll populate a bunch
of numbers. And I would imagine that one of the factors here is that because of this, and this isn't new, by the way, you've been able to get a digital number for quite some time, and that has that has probably led to a bunch of these numbers no longer being available. So the Kentucky Public Service Commission is addressing this by planning to introduce a new area code. Existing five O two numbers will remain unchanged, but new phone
numbers will be assigned to the new area code. What that code is going to be, we still don't know. Public meetings are being held to gather feedback on what it should be, and I guess just get feedback from folks. But the first meeting was scheduled. This took place yesterday at the Nelson County Fiscal Court out there in Barchtown. And they're gonna have another meeting coming up on June fifth at six pm and this will be at the
JCC Southwest campus. So these are meetings that are going to inform residents and get in put on new area code implementation, which I just if you live in Louisville, you don't have a five O two area code would feel off, But I think once you realize area codes are needed. Right again, if you're if you're jotting down a number and you and you just have assumed that everything around here is going to be five oh two. I guess that's where the biggest difference would be.
Yeah.
That was the hardest thing for me to get used to when I moved here, because I'd asked somebody for their phone number and they would automatically say, oh, it's five oh two five five five one two one two, And I'm like.
Everybody always gave their area code beforehand. And I asked my wife, I said, why do people do that? And because we're so close in proximity to Lexington, then you have two seven.
So where you grew up, was it very rare for someone to have a different area code?
Yeah, yeah, it was just and then and then when did marketing area codes become like, like for merch that's like the hot thing to do now.
Yeah, so you see it in the gear all the times. True five oh two.
Detroit celebrates three one three day on March thirty first.
But yeah, excuse me.
I thought it was the weirdest thing to just people would always go, yeah, my number's five oh two.
To this day, if somebody takes my phone number, I say five oh two, and I just assume it's I think I do that because if they're gonna put it in their cell phone, yeah, yeah, you would need to. I mean, I don't even know this. When somebody gives me their phone number, I'm used to them giving me the area code, or I just assume the area code is five oh two. Sometimes I assume wrong. But if you were to just put a seven digit number in a phone and call it, it would work.
Right, it will. Yeah, remember you used not one oh yeah?
Of course you also remember when you used to have to pay for a long distance call. Now we don't ever give it a thought.
I mean, it would be weird for me to have a number that was not five oh two. But when I saw this yesterday, I'm thinking, well, there's people I talk to daily that who've been in my phone for nearly a decade.
But I wouldn't be able to guess their.
Phone number, even if you gave me a lineup of different numbers to select, because once I put it in the phone and save the contact, I never look at it again.
You know what I mean exactly.
Anyways, if you get a new phone in the next in the coming years, it may not be five zho two, which again sounds weird, But I don't think it'll be as big of a deal as you might expect. All right, another update of traffic and weather is coming your way, as well as another update on sports from Scott right here the news Radio eight forty whas. Thank you, John at Is six thirty five here Kentucky and this morning
news on news Radio eight forty whas. So, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet studying that stretch of Bargetown Road from the Bullet County Line close to Mount Washington up to Bulah Church Road and Seatonville Roads. As John mentioned there, the study is much needed. I didn't do a whole lot of studying, but I'm in that area often, and I can tell you.
Traffic is really, really bad.
So it's no.
Surprise that the councilman is asking for a temporary pause on new developments until this study is released. It's going to come out in August. And again, I don't mean to act like I genuinely do know what goes into these studies, but as someone who is in that area, not super often, but often enough, the traffic is crazy.
And even before for the latest development, as far as just the new restaurants, the new shopping center, and it's great over there, that stretch between really Fern Creek in Mount Washington, there's a lot going on over there, and it's there's a lot of good restaurants businesses.
But I really really.
Don't think I've been in that area at any time in the last few years, maybe even longer than that, where it is not as bad as it gets when it comes to traffic in an.
Area like that.
Obviously, there's stretches of Shelbyville Road, Preston Highway, Dixie Highway. I mean, you're gonna get traffic jams and just expect traffic, especially during certain times of the day with people commuting from work and whatnot in school. But that is a different level of bad at least from my experience. And look, I'm not some nobody likes traffic. Who does, But when it comes to where we are here in Kentucky, and I've always felt like we've always had it pretty good.
We can get to a lot of places, we can go a lot, we can get really anywhere within our Kentucky and area, I don't want to say in a relatively short time, but without really bad traffic, it doesn't really take us a whole long time to get to a lot of places, especially compared to other cities, even some that are I mean Lexington. I've never lived there, but I know there's been studies previously that A's at one point they had some of the worst traffic you'll find they did.
We found that out.
My son played a lot of hockey tournaments there, and even because I'm like, how big is the city, it's not. It's it's big, but it's not that big. But it took forever to get every place. And I think, what to your point listening you talk about this, I'm like you, I'm impatient in traffic. So what's helped me is I dial up my app on my phone and it says, okay,
your arrival time is, you know, six fifty six. As long as I know, I'm okay, I'm going to get there about that time, which it's pretty spot on.
It is wild how accurate they can they can get you when it comes to time. I used to put it in my GPS and think, okay, well I know I know a different route, and I would and I would try to battle with my GPS app on my phone. I use ways and ways ways as a wedding over me as far as proving me wrong that I went away that I assumed would be quicker and Ways was
Ways was right and Nick was wrong. But yeah, that just to me, see, and oftentimes I've thought, well, maybe this is just me complaining because I'm now sitting in traffic when I typically don't. But as more business as if popped up in that area New Fern Creek, I mean,
it's it's an absolute mess. When you're on the Snyder and you are attempting you know, let's say you're even if you're going past that Bargetown Road exit on the Snyder heading east, you know you're still going to be jammed up because there's so many people lined up, like almost two exits back at times to get off at the at the Barchtown Road Fern Creek exit area there. So not again not surprised to hear that the councilman's asking for a temporary pause on new development.
But the new development's great, it's just there's it's such a jam.
It's so congested, dude, I'm telling you, And I know so many people have moved to that part of the city now that it bought because their houses were such a steal. I mean, they got a nice area, so it's a very nice area. They got a good house with a nice area, and they were down there. And to your point, when you're talking about traffic, I was also thinking about I remember Mayor Abramson announced that we were going to redo the Dixie Highway corridor because they
had a lot of problems. And I was down there recently, and it's not perfect. To your point, you're going to get traffic anywhere. Those businesses totally understand that. But I think there have been improvements on Dixie Highway. Now there's maybe somebody who's sitting there right now listening to us, going, you're crazy, dude, I'm stuck.
I understand that, but I've seen those improvements well.
And if you are a business owner, I think traffic, for the most part's a good thing. There's a lot of people around, there's a lot of visibility, but man, there's a fine line of like people may avoid even getting in that area because it's such a such a mess.
Now, sometimes you're right.
But when I found out though, too, because that area you're talking about, you've got that big Walmart there, they do very well. I've been down that area quite a bit. You've got the cracker Barrel that's right off right off J. Schnyder So and.
A lot of people.
If you want to take the if sixty five is congested and you want to get down to Barnstown, if you're headed that way, you can just cut down here.
So I have a lot of friends.
My sister lives in Mount Washington, and her way of getting to us oftentimes is to just go Barchtown Road all the way to the Snyder and then head west. But I mean, I'm sure she's found some alternate routes because if you hit that And I was going to say at a bad time, but I'm not sure there's a good time, unless maybe we're talking like middle of the night, real quick. Worst city you've ever experienced traffic.
Chicago, hands down. Even La is a close second.
Chicago Atlanta for mehe was bad. Yep, real bad.
All right, we got another update of traffic and weather coming your way right here on Kentucky And it's morning news on news radio eight forty whis six forty six Here Kentucky and it's morning news. Nick Coffee with you here on news Radio eight forty whs. We'll have another update in about ten minutes on Sports with Scott Fitzgerald. One of the stories from earlier was the addition of a Sonanda Frew, who goes by Sonny Frew. He is a big man from Germany who's going to join Pat
Kelsey's team. And he said something in a recent interview on the Field of sixty eight, which is an outland that covers college basketball, that I wouldn't say that this has become a humongous talking point among Louisville and Kentucky fans, but it is something that you don't expect to hear.
I wouldn't think.
And on the other side, I think they have a great fan base. My teammate he played at Kentucky last year and he told me Lugle like, they are the best fans in the whole world basically, and already right reached out tanks me some dms. I'm super happy, super thankful. So I can't wait to get over and touchdown in Louisvuo.
So the hosts went on to ask him, wait a second, you're telling me you committed to play at Louisville and you had a teammate in Germany that played at Kentucky and told you that Louisville had the best fans, and he went on to confirm that that was the case. And the former player was Trey Mitchell, who played at Kentucky, I believe for just a season two years ago. He played, I believe in the last season of Cala Perry being there.
And the reason I wanted to bring this up is because I don't know if this is going to do much to the rivalry, but I think we are in a very rare and certainly unique spot with the rivalry here, because clearly Louisville Kentucky when it comes to basketball. Personally, and I'm biased, I think it's the best rivalry in college basketball. I would put it above Duke in Carolina
because to me, rivalries are all about fans. Players come and go, coaches come and go, And I think if you live in Louisville, there's so many of us that coexist together that I just think, you know, and I'm sure there's many of you listening right now that know
exactly what I'm talking about. You're probably heading to work thinking about you know, you got a buddy in the cubicle next to you, and when Louisville and Kentucky play each other in football or basketball, you know that following day when you go back to work is going to either be a really good day for you, a really bad day for you because you're gonna have to maybe take your medicine, or maybe you're gonna feel great and glow because again, there's just so many on both sides.
But I think again, when I say it's rare right now where we are, I think it's clear that on the Louisville side, And for those who don't know, I'm a big Louisville fan, I find it.
Really really hard to diss like Mark Pope.
And I don't mean dislike him as an eman, being I don't know him, but you know you it's easier whenever there's a villain on the other side, and he's far from that. He's I mean, I think he's a really, really good coach too. I think he had a great first season, and I actually believe his coaching was a bigger factor in their success in year one than anything else.
And I can't speak for Kentucky fans, I'm not one of them, but I think they wanted to find Pat Kelsey pretty easy to dislike and are having a tough time doing it.
And what makes.
It even more difficult if you're somebody that really just wants to get into the hatred and just and look when they play each other, clearly you know where you stand and you're not going to need any anybody nudging you one way or the other. You know where you're gonna you know, you know where your emotions are going to be. We become some of us, I guess I should only speak for me, become lunatics during this rivalry
game and whatnot. But these two coaches, Mark Pope and Pat Kelsey, you can tell that they genuinely like each other, respect each other. And not to say that other coaches that have been at both schools had real animosity. Will never get like what we had with Patino and Caliper.
I mean that was that was.
A personal rivalry that then just played. I mean that was that was cinema, That was theater as far as just you could tell the two made each other's skin crawl. But with Pope and Kelsey, they're not going to force it. They do respect one another. And what we didn't see a whole lot last year, and I don't want to
nerd out too much on basketball. But because of injuries that Louisville suffered early on in the season and the injuries that Kentucky suffered a little bit later, you didn't you didn't quite see it, but they actually want to play nearly the exact same way A bunch of in rhythm threes a bunch, I mean they're they're striving to get open threes in rhythm, free throw line or layups
around the rim, and I think it was right. But yeah, the last season for Pope at BYU, the last season for Kelsey at Charleston, they were both in the top three and three point field goals attempted per game. They're they're very so I think when you not only respect one another as coaches and seem like good dudes, but you also are similar as far as how you want to play the game, I think, you know, it's natural to the only thing, the only thing that makes them
incompatible is one guy's coaching Big Blue Nation. When guys coaching coordination, that's that's really it. But yeah, good stuff. We got another update of sports coming your way with Scott Fitzgerald, as well as another update on news and traffic right here on news radio forty whas