Triple H may be tired, but there's a reason for that. He's been busy making hay.
"There's an old saying, 'You make hay while the sun shines,'" he said. "The sun is shining. I'm making all the hay I can. It'll all end too fast. When it's over, I'll at least be able to say I did all of it."
All of it indeed. All the World Wrestling Federation Superstars had a busy week, even for their standards, but no one was more occupied than Triple H. In 38 hours, he traveled more than 7,000 miles, competed in the main event of a Pay-Per-View in London and guest hosted Sunday Night HEAT for one full hour. And that was just over the weekend. It didn't get much easier for him on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Ask him why he agreed to such an intense schedule, and he'll recite an analogy to making hay.
"From a physical standpoint this business only lasts so long for us," he said. "You're in the limelight, you're on top- your big run only lasts so long. I'm going to take every little bit out of it I can. I'll sleep when it's over."
Last Thursday, Triple H actually had a day off. He spent that day at home attending to personal business.
"It started early in the morning and ended late at night," he said. "Basically at the end of the day I was in a scramble to finish doing some laundry so that I could put it back in my bag so that when I left to go to England I had clean clothes."
On Friday afternoon, he flew to New York and checked into a hotel.
He left a piece of luggage there so he wouldn't have to carry it around Europe, and then left promply for a charter flight with the other Federation Superstars to London. He didn't sleep; he spent the entire flight watching wrestling tapes. They arrived in London at 8 AM, and got to the hotel two hours later. He had to be at Earls Court, the site of the Insurrextion Pay-Per-View, by 2 PM, and the building was 45 minutes from the hotel. So The Game had only a few short hours to sleep before waking up, taking a shower and traveling to the arena.
He wrestled his match- a handicap bout featuring himself and Stone Cold Steve Austin against the Undertaker, and he had to be on a bus back to the airport immediately after his match.
"I threw a pair of sweatpants on because it was cold outside, and a t-shirt with a towel around my neck," he said.
After a 45-minute bus ride to the airport, he tried to get himself "as un-stinky as possible," using a wash cloth and bar of soap in a bathroom in London's Heathrow Airport. Again, he didn't sleep on the flight back to the United States- "I was just kind of talking business with everybody"- which included a stop in Gander, Newfoundland, to refuel after the stronger-than-expected headwinds made a direct flight back to New York impossible.
After landing in New York about 4 AM, he had to wait for his bag (not too many baggage handlers working at the airport at 4 AM) and go through customs hebfore he finally got back to his hotel and slept for a few hours. Then he woke up, ate breakfast, and traveled to WWF New York to do HEAT.
"They'd been trying to get me on HEAT for a while," Triple H said. "I'm always working. This is an opportunity where they saw I didn't have a house show. They came and asked me and they said, 'It's the day you get back from Europe though.' And I said, 'Well, I'll do it.'"
After HEAT, he got a surprise visit from a Federation agent (and sometime stooge for Mr. McMahon) Pat Patterson and the two men talked for about three hours backstage at the Times Square entertainment complex. He didn't get back to his hotel until 11. He got a few more hours of sleep and then woke up, got a rental car, ate breakfast and trained before making his way to Nassau Coliseum for RAW IS WAR. The next day, he was off to Hartford for the Smackdown! taping. Normally, he'd be able to go home after Tuesday's taping, but not this week. On Wednesday, he was back at WWF New York, this time to be a part of a special presentation for advertisers.
"Obviously we have tough schedules," he said. "But this is an extreme. It's not that unusual. But at the same time, it's not something that happens every week."