My wife Margie and I needed to fly to New York in early September, and we had made a plan that we weren’t going to fly on September 11. But you know, life is not always in your own hands. I learned that from Don Shula really clearly when he talked about the importance of being audible-ready. That means you have to have a plan, but when plans go awry, you have to be able to “call an audible.” You have to go with the flow.
So on September 10 when we were on our way to our first stop in Dallas, there were all kinds of problems with the Dallas airport, and we had to land in Oklahoma City because we had to get more gas. We eventually got to Dallas at about nine o’clock that night. Of course, our connecting flight to New York had already taken off. So we stayed at the airport hotel right there. The next morning, September 11, we flew safely to New York City. I think one of the things that makes you relax and be more easy in life is if you have an audible-ready attitude. Shula said that when you call an audible in football, it doesn’t mean you don’t have a plan. When things change, you just have to call a different play. You can’t get all uptight and ticked off because you didn’t get to go with your original plan. Some people at the airport were really bent out of shape because their plans were changed. They got themselves all out of whack about something they couldn’t control. So sometimes things change and you have to just go with the flow.