1. Highlight: Planning and writing content for a 24-page sports section on I-5, in a Ford Taurus, 18 hours before deadline on the way home with McFlurrys in hand.

2. Highlight: Overheard on the way to Stanford Stadium: A middle-aged Stanford fan is asked by a young child, assumed to be his son, if the woman he’s texting is his girlfriend. The man replies, “No, she’s not my girlfriend. Linda’s my bitch.”

3. Highlight: Hearing Stanford’s timid crowd unite at the 5:44 mark of the fourth quarter with modest chants of “overrated” against a team that was winless last season.

4. Highlight: Stanford’s band spells out the words “pork” and “flu” during a pregame performance apparently regarding swine flu. There was also a guy in a papier mache pig costume running around. Yeah.

5. Lowlight: Watching the Giants get shut out by the Cubs at AT&T Park and realizing that there are offenses out there worse than the Mariners.

6. Lowlight: Sprinting down the streets of San Francisco after not having eaten any breakfast in long-sleeved, button-up shirts for a quarter-mile in an attempt to catch our tour boat to Alcatraz only to miss it. Then, having to stand in line for a half-hour with beret-toting tourists for the next one.

7. Lowlight: Needing to crash at a Super 8 in the burgeoning metropolis that is Redding, Calif., at 3 a.m. on our way back after realizing that we were too tired to go on.

8. Lowlight: Hearing the song “Down” 32 times on various radio stations across California, Oregon and Washington while driving home. Coming in at a close second: “I Gotta Feeling” with 24 plays. La heim.

9. Lowlight: The make-it-yourself mushroom sandwiches provided inside the press box at Stanford Stadium.

10. Highlight: Staying up to watch Commando at the hotel and hearing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s one-liner at the end after he throws a steam pipe into the torso of the villain, Bennett: “Let off some steam, Bennett!”