TR: The Super-Sized Barnyard Road Trip, 1/30/08-2/3/08

THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 2008
4:55 AM EST
ON THE RAMP AT DETROIT METRO-WAYNE COUNTY AIRPORT
ROMULUS, MICHIGAN

It’s been a short rest period onboard Northwest Airlines flight #208, a red-eye from Seattle to Detroit. As I gather up my stuff on this very empty 757, I take inventory of what I’ve got before I leave the plane. Rolloff? Check. Winter coat? Check. Messenger bag? Messenger bag…uh-oh….

Five hours earlier at SeaTac airport…

Bread bowls of Ivar’s clam chowder are one of the greatest things ever invented. First you have Ivar’s clam chowder, which is the best clam chowder known to man. Second, you have a bread bowl. Put ‘em together, and how much better can you get? Anyhow, I’d put my messenger bag on the chair across the table from me, and after I’d scarfed down the chowder I grabbed my coat and rolloff and head for the gate. The only problem is that I forgot to pick up my messenger bag, which means that my iPod, headphones, and a bunch of other semi-important things will be spending the weekend at SeaTac Airport, if not in someone else’s bag.

However, seeing that there wasn’t anything I could do about it until 11 AM Eastern (thanks to the time difference) I figured I better find a nice, quiet, unused gate and try to sleep for a while. Fortunately, even though Northwest has flights to just about everywhere out of DTW, several gates do go unoccupied, and I’m able to zonk out for a while, until it’s time to go get the rental car.

I get the rental car (a Mazda G6), and I decide to drive the freeway around downtown Detroit. Good grief, is that a depressing drive. I went around the waterfront past the Cobo Hall and Joe Louis Arena, and is that downtown ever dead. This is at 9:00 on a Thursday morning and NOTHING is happening.

I decide to get out of there while I still have all my limbs attached, and go back out I-94 towards Ann Arbor. By this time, the lost-and-found offices at SeaTac have opened, and I’m able to call the missing-object report in from a Denny’s on the way to Ann Arbor.

Getting off the freeway, and I drive up M-243 into the campus of the University of Michigan. The campus is fairly accessible by vehicle, and I do some scouting out of locations of potential bar visits later in the evening. I must admit, the University of Michigan campus is nothing to write home about. However, most Big Ten campuses aren’t much to see in the dead of winter, either, so that isn’t a very good comparison point.

I grab some lunch at Wendy’s back out by the freeway, then I meet the rest of the trip at the Hampton Inn on Victors Way. It had been a 12-hour trip by coach bus from Minneapolis, and the folks aboard certainly looked the part. One friend of mine started to drink as soon as the buses had left Williams Arena 12 hours before (about the same time I left Seattle), and had not had a good time of it a few hours later. We got checked in, got our room assignments, took our crap up there, and then got back on the bus to go on a tour of Michigan’s athletic facilities.

The bus pulled up to the loading dock of Crisler Arena, and we get out and meet our tour guide, Bill. We go on a tour of the Wolverine athletic facilities, including their pool (The UMN Aquatic Center is nicer), fieldhouse (a wash), and their studying facilities. I wasn’t overly impressed by any of this until we went into Yost Ice Arena, home of Wolverine hockey. As the Barnyard student section, we have a keen appreciation for ambiance of older arenas, and what we saw at Yost definitely had that. Wolverine fans think very highly of Yost, similar to how Gopher fans revel in The Barn’s atmosphere. Everyone on the tour agreed that Yost was the coolest thing that we saw the whole time there.

Back over to Crisler Arena we went. Our tour guide explained to us that due to construction in the Big House, it was impossible for us to go in there. This was disappointing, both to us and to him. We went around Crisler Arena, and were thoroughly unimpressed by the place. The place appears to have been built in the same timeframe as the old St. Paul Civic Center and the US Bank Arena in Cincinnati, and also hasn’t been reupholstered since then. The colors of the arena are straight out of the late 60s.

This concluded our campus tour, and we retreated to the hotel. I went to the liquor store across the freeway and helped re-stock a few portable medicine cabinets, then returned to the hotel for Wendy’s supper and getting ready for the game. By the time 6:00 rolled around, we were all feeling pretty good. Jump on the buses, and they roll up into the parking lot of the high school kitty corner from the Big House. Erin goes up to the ticket office and gets our tickets while we make the cold walk across the parking lot and to the entrance of Crisler Arena.

I knew beforehand that Wolverine basketball was a distant third in importance behind football and hockey, but I had no idea just how far down the totem pole it was. By the time I got through the ticket turnstile and into the concourse on the opposite end of the arena from where the Barnyard was sitting, it was clear that we were going to have complete control of the crowd noise. In fact, I think we got some of the ushers very mad for yelling, cheering, chanting, and carrying on, and it was 15 minutes before tipoff.

We stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and then it’s game time. The Barnyard is quite merciless on the few thousand that bother to show up to Crisler for this Thursday night game. In addition to your “Defense,” “Let’s go Gophers,” and other standard basketball chants, we also go after the miserable crowd with “Where’s your students?” among other things not repeatable on a family message board. At the end, some of the folks on the bus are aware of the fact that if the Gophers win, this will be win #400 for coach Tubby Smith, so as the clock ticks down, chants of “Win 400!” go up. The team and Tubby appear very grateful that we made the trek there, as they make their way up the tunnel. We for everyone to leave, then sing the Rouser while everyone is hanging around the tunnel.

Back to the hotel, where everyone got ready to go to the bar. Our bunch decided to go to the Brown Jug, and over the course of the evening, most of the people on the trip end up there. It’s a good thing that I brought a change of clothes, because Michigan’s indoor smoking ban stops at 10:00 PM, so you can smoke in the bar after that time. In this day in age, wherever you can smoke, people will. The bar quickly assumed Flying Burrito Brothers proportions (Dim lights, thick smoke, and loud, loud music). As for the atmosphere, anywhere outside Minnesota where the Minnesota block M is prominently displayed is fine by me. The patrons were surprised that there were so many Minnesota people at the bar. Once we explained to them why we were there, they were glad to drink with us. Drinkers in Ann Arbor are most cordial to Gopher fans, unlike receptions in certain other Big Ten cities. In fact, we got several drinks and shots bought for us for that exact reason. At bar close, we stumbled across the street to this New York-style pizza place, which had very good pizza for 3 AM.

Waking up the next morning, I was glad to hit the shower, and bid adieu to the Barnyard crew. The rest of the Barnyard packed up to get on the buses back to Minneapolis, while I was going to go up to East Lansing and look around the campus of Michigan State. Unfortunately, I dropped the key to my rental car somewhere in the snow around the car (it had snowed overnight), and wasted the rest of the morning, a goodly portion of the afternoon, and too much of my money getting the mess resolved. By the time I got things squared away, it was too late to go to East Lansing. So I lit out for my accommodations that evening, which was at Castaway Bay Indoor Waterpark and Resort at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio.

Around Toledo and onto the Ohio Turnpike I went. By all accounts, it was a miserable day, even more miserable than Seattle was at that time of the year. The sky was gray, the traffic was heavy, and what made it worse was that the terrain was as flat as a pancake. At least the cloud layer in Washington State is above the mountains, so there’s something to look at. Not so much across northern Ohio. Fortunately, the Ohio Turnpike operates by a Pennsylvania-model toll road system (ticket in, ticket out). I get off at SR-4 and begin making the convoluted journey into the town of Sandusky.

If there was ever a town that relied on one thing to keep it going, so does Sandusky rely on Cedar Point. During the indirect drive from the Turnpike to the Lake Erie resort district, I lost count of how many businesses (including several hotels) were closed down for the season. By the time I drove out to the Cedar Point Causeway to see the world-famous roller coaster skyline of The Point, I was convinced that by virtue of the desolation of the town, a handful of cannon could hold the town against an army, for there was little on the streets for the shots to hit.

Castaway Bay is one of few signs of life in the town on a Friday night in February. I hadn’t been in an indoor waterpark that resembled the size of this one (Sorry Wisconsin Dells), so I took my time exploring the place. The indoor waterpark was certainly big, but nothing out of line from what I was expecting. More details of it can be found on their website.

The following morning, I drove from Sandusky to the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus. Driving down US 250 between Sandusky and where it picks up I-71 (Mansfield?), I find out some of the peculiarities of Ohio. The highway grid is an interesting combination of the right angles prescribed by the North West Ordinance, but overlaid with important point-to-point highways, similar to the highway grid of Pennsylvania, except sans mountains.

I slogged my way to I-71 and roared into Columbus and the campus of The Ohio State University. I came in on the road north of The Shoe, and had to walk around to try seeing the stadium. Everything the Big House isn’t The Shoe is. My first impression of the place is “Whoa!” It presents an aura of intimidation that the Big House sorely lacks. Sadly, I was unable to get into the seating bowl to take a look around. However, I was able to peek inside the fence between the open end of the horseshoe and the south stands.

After walking across the campus to some sub shop on College Ave. (I think, the exact name escapes me), the sun finally came out for the remainder of the drive across Ohio to Cincinnati. It was an unseasonably warm day (54 degrees and sunny on February 2), but it made for a pleasant drive down I-71 into Cincinnati. The freeway is flat and boring for much of the way, but starts getting very hilly near the Kings Island amusement park. While driving past it, it is hard to ignore just how spread out the park is. It took two full minutes at 72 MPH to go the length of it. The terrain keeps getting hillier the rest of the way into downtown Cincinnati. I intentionally go past the exit I’m supposed to turn off at so I can cross the Ohio River and claim that I’ve been in Kentucky.

After this little expedition (27 down, 23 to go), I backtrack along I-71 to the exit that eventually takes me to a friend’s place that I know through the coaster circles. The reason that I’ve come to Cincinnati is that he has season basketball tickets at Xavier University, his alma mater. Seeing that there is a home game on this Saturday evening, and I was within driving distance, I contacted him to see if he could get a ticket so I could see yet another college basketball venue. I pulled into the driveway (he had a large XU flag hanging on his porch), went inside, and we discussed things for a while before heading over to the XU campus.

Xavier University is a small Jesuit college on the north side of Cincinnati that has a fairly extensive basketball history. A poster on the Gopher Hole suggested that the accolades that get heaped on Gonzaga should go XU’s way. They’ve got a couple of NIT titles, as well as a very new arena/dining hall, the Cintas Center. We got over to campus a little bit early, and he was able to show me around the relatively small campus. Before the game, we stop at the student union for a blue beer. It’s just Bud Light with a bit of food coloring in the tap, but it’s certainly interesting.

Then it’s over to the Cintas Center. The seating at Cintas is an interesting configuration. The lower bowl goes all the way around the court, but the upper deck ends at the baselines on the north end, and a large ballroom occupies the space the “upper” deck should be. The student section is in the lower bowl below the ballroom, and the area is designated by benches, instead of the chairbacks around the rest of the arena. The XU student section is a lot like the hockey student section at Mariucci Arena: unorganized, unoriginal, and full of drunk people too busy to care about the game. Too busy, except for one minute detail: what my friend David refers to as the Wheel of Death. This is essentially a large, flat pinwheel with a spiral painted on it. When the opponent is shooting free throws, the general idea is that the wheel is stood up and spun in line with the shooter’s eye and the backboard, distracting him and making him miss. This wasn’t working the time I was there.

What I liked about Cintas is that it didn’t try to be what it wasn’t. It didn’t try to overwhelm you with either numbers or blaring pyrotechnics. They knew (and let you know) that you were in the home of the Xavier Musketeers, but let it go at that. The crowd was smart, and knew when to get in with the ebb and flow of the game.

Tonight’s game was against LaSalle, and it was a game that the Muskies drew off to a hard-fought win. Another thing I liked about CIntas is the fact that they provide halftime stats to the crowd. At the end of the concourse, near the entrance to the ballroom, there is a printer that kicks out copies of the halftime stats page, available to anyone who asks.

After the end of the game, we got back in my rental, and I drove to a Skyline Chili parlor to give Cincinnati-style chili a try. For those of you who haven’t sampled it, chili done Cincinnati-style means it’s poured over a pile of spaghetti. It’s not overly spicy but it’s very tasty, and I devour it with gusto.

We go back to the friend’s house, where I use his laptop to check my email, the Gopher Hole, and check into my flight back to Seattle from Detroit at noon the following afternoon. I thank him for the use of his place to stay, the tickets, and that I’ll see him again soon. Six hours of topsy-turvy sleep go by, then a long, boring drive up I-75 back to the Detroit airport. I’m finally able to get officially-printed highway maps of Ohio and Michigan at a couple of rest areas along the way.

I return my car, and I go upstairs to see if there’s any way to update my seating assignment (Northwest’s 757s are configured such that a very tall guy like me would like an exit row if at all possible). Seeing that the flight is completely full, I print my boarding pass and head for the shortest security line I can find. This takes me to the upper departure level, where two lines are significantly shorter than the others. I soon find out why. The reason that these lines are so short is that in addition to the metal detector, these lines have what I call a “huffer.” It blasts little puffs of air around your person and analyzes the collected sample for any sort of explosive residue. I hadn’t seen anything like this before, and I didn’t think the TSA agents had either, because it took a LONG time to get through the line.

The flight back to Seattle was its usual long, boring self. It was Super Bowl Sunday, and immediately upon arrival in Seattle, I drove up to a restaurant in South Lake Union to watch it with some friends. While at this restaurant, I was wearing a Xavier sweatshirt I had picked up the previous evening. On the way to the bathroom once, a guy coming out of the john saw my sweatshirt and said “Go Flyers!” I knew from before that the Xavier Musketeers and the Dayton Flyers had been archenemies for a very long time, but that was the first time I’d ever seen it firsthand. The Giants beat the Patriots, I went over to Mass at the UDub Newman Center, and then I went home exhausted, ending the four-day odyssey known as the Super-Sized Barnyard Road Trip.

Paul