Sotaroo

The Olympics TR: 2/16/2010

2010-03-01T08:09:00.000-08:00

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2010
8:15 AM PST
SCOTT ROAD PARK AND RIDE SKYTRAIN STATION
SURREY, BRITISH COLUMBIA

I have arrived at this park-and-ride in suburban Vancouver with no ticket, but a receipt saying that I have purchased a ticket for pickup downtown. I’m wearing a Minnesota State Fair sweatshirt to go along with the Team USA ballcap picked up in the Minneapolis airport. The marshal at the top of the escalator was checking to see if . Upon discovery that I was from Minnesota, the first thing he asked me was, “Is Brett Favre coming back?” Turns out there are a TON of Vikings fans spread out all over Canada, and when they found out I was from Minnesota, they all asked me about Brett Favre.

The marshal wrote me a fare waiver so I could get downtown, and I boarded the SkyTrain without further incident. Vancouver has a highly efficient subway system called the SkyTrain, and it can and does get a lot of people into/out of town in a hurry.

Before I arrive in town, a little bit of background on this trip. I got the itch to try this a couple of weeks ago, and by doing some fanangling with my trip dates, tickets, and car rental, I was able to pull it off for a lot less money than an Olympic trip would probably cost. Much of this cost savings was accomplished by flying into Seattle instead of Vancouver. I used the car to loaf around Seattle on Sunday the 14th, then visit a friend over at Gonzaga on Monday. From this I can verify that it’s a lot easier to drive westbound across Washington State than eastbound. Since I left Everett at such an unholy hour of the morning (5:30 AM PST), there was no one to hold me up at the border.

But back to the Frozen White North. On the way into town, a lady wearing one of the ubiquitous blue jackets that the volunteers wear sat down next to me. Turns out she was one of the volunteers who was headed for the Garage to keep stats. I joked that it must have been quite a process to get that gig. She was not joking when she affirmed my observation. When pressed on the subject, she confirmed that it was a multiple-interview, several-month epic journey to become an Olympic volunteer.

I needed to pick up my ticket, so instead of going directly to the Garage I opted to try the Main Ticket Plaza in Robson Square. Robson Square is the heart of downtown Vancouver (Stanley Park may beg to differ). The first thing I noticed is the crowds. I don’t mind dealing with big crowds at the State Fair, but this was at EIGHT IN THE MORNING. If the sidewalks are this crowded at 8 AM, imagine what they’re going to be after nightfall.

The first look at the line outside the Robson Square ticket office is enough to make a starving man lose his appetite. The line is a block long, and a marshal with a snappy British accent is telling us that the wait from here is going to be two and a half hours, and that’s once the ticket office opens at nine.

I decide to go down the street and try my luck at the Olympic Superstore, which is located on the ground floor of the Hudson’s Bay Company store on Granville and Georgia. The Bay is much like the massive Daytons/Marshall Fields/Macy’s department store in downtown Minneapolis, except that a large portion of the ground floor has been cordoned off solely for Olympic stuff, and it has a separate entrance. The line to get into the store was to the end of the block, around the corner, and doubled back on itself. Beginning to see a trend here?

It’s getting to be 9:30, so I decide to get my ticket from the box office near GM Place. I follow the crowds down to the massive fenced complex of BC Place and the Garage. VANOC has turned the area immediately surrounding the two facilities into a portable prison, complete with dogs, armed guards, and concertina wire. Confused crowds end up having to go to the clear other side of the perimeter and down four flights of stairs to get to the security checkpoint and ticket office.

The line for will call was quite long, but what few people noticed was that there were pickup windows on BOTH sides of the ticket box. I take advantage of this and walk right up to a window. My ticket for the hockey game was right there, so I went over to the security station next to the ticket window.

Al Michaels made note of this in the closing ceremony telecast. While VANOC spent an astronomical amount of money on security, outside of the security checkpoints and the razor wire fences, you never really noticed their presence around town. As for getting through the security checkpoints, you could get a lot more stuff through here than you could past the rent-a-cops at the New Brickhouse. Tons of flags, flag poles, noisemakers, cowbells, and other assorted stuff. One guy cheering for Switzerland brought in a bell the size of a gallon milk jug.

Which brings me to my next point: Outside of Madison, Wisconsin, I have never seen so much red and white in one place in my life. Between the Swiss fans, who aren’t all THAT numerous but cheer as loud as hell, and the Canucks, there are TONS of it in the streets, in the bars, and the arenas. However, all fans were loud and proud. Wherever you were from, you weren’t afraid to show it.

Going from the security checkpoint into the Garage was a trek. Over a footbridge, then up four more flights of stairs to the upper-deck entrance to the arena.

Canada Hockey Place (aka GM Place or the Garage to other fans of teams in the Northwest Division) is the main arena for ice hockey for these Games. It’s a bit different for Olympic hockey to be played on an NHL-sized sheet (85 feet wide instead of the Olympic-sized 100 feet), but not being a hockey guy I couldn’t tell you all of the similarities or differences. The arena itself is the last of the generation of arenas to be designed pre-Xcel Energy Center, which means that the concourses are way too crowded and you are relying on the TVs to keep up on the action in the arena. It feels very similar to an updated version of the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas.

Concessions were their standard overpriced arena fare. Beer cost CDN 8 for 12 fluid ounces of either Coors or Molson. Drinking fountains were either disabled or removed. I did find a chicken flatbread sandwich for CDN 9 that I thought was a fair deal.

My seats were in Row 12 at the end of the arena. Great folks sitting to either side of me. Right before the opening faceoff, a group of 8 crazily-dressed Swiss fans filed into the row in front of me. I mean, these fans were dressed to the nines. A big flag, facepaint, huge wigs, and even red bathrobes that had large “SUI” embroidered in the back. The in-arena host came up there during the first intermission and interviewed them.

I had also never realized just how cumbersome announcements are in Canada, given that everything has to be said in both English and French. Stupid Quebecois. The game itself was great. The Americans were flat for most of the first, but came out blazing in the second and held on in the 3rd. All fans (there were plenty of non-USA or Swiss fans in the building) were cheering loud and long from wire to wire.

Leaving the arena, it was clear that Canada was scheduled to play in the second game at the Garage by the sea of red and white going down towards the security checkpoint. There was also hockey taking place at the University of British Columbia across town, but I didn’t get out there.

After the game was over, I headed back into the downtown core to soak up some more of the atmosphere. The line at Olympic Superstore at The Bay hasn’t gone down any, so I go around to the main entrance to the store. I see signs for some “International Pavillion” up on the 5th floor, so I decide to go up there. Surprise, surprise! All of the Team Canada stuff that was behind the barrier downstairs is for sale up here, with much less crowds. There’s also some other stuff for sale up here. There are T-shirts with old Olympic logos on them (Calgary, Montreal, and Sapporo seemed to be solid sellers), as well as a MASSIVE display of Team Russia and Sochi 2014 gear. I bet if you went up there today (Monday, March 1, 2010), you could get some non-Canadian gear REALLY cheap. Quite frankly, if it wasn’t Canadian, it wasn’t selling.

About a block down Robson Street was the CTV broadcast pavilion. They are the Canadian TV rights-holders, and their pavilion was showing some snowboarding or snowcross or whatever from Cypress Mountain. It was here that I saw Canada win their second gold medal of the Games. The crowd went absolutely ballistic when the commentator said this. An impromptu version of “O Canada” broke out, and it sent me scrambling for a ticket into that night’s medal ceremony.

The line at the Robson Square is still astronomical, so I hustle as quickly as I can down to the Garage/BC Place ticket office, where I picked up my hockey ticket earlier in the day. Fate decided to forcefully intervene. One ticket was left for that night’s medal ceremony in BC Place. While the clerk was processing the request, said ticket vanished. That was a kick in the pants that stayed with me for a while, but would pale in comparison with other ticket agony I would learn about later in the day.

With that disappointment in hand, it was off to the waterfront to see what could be seen. Having been there in August of 2008, I was reasonably familiar with the layout of the waterfront. By this time, the sun had come out and the skies had cleared, which meant that Vancouver was at its full scenic glory.

What was not scenic, however, was the staggering amount of chain link fence, fabric barrier tied to the chain link, and concertina wire. I can understand the IBC/Canada Place not being open to the public, but using the full prison-style fence around the large cauldron? For shame. The crowd along the fence was thick with people sticking the lens of their cameras through the fence. However, where you could get down to the water, it was just as gorgeous as I remember it being.

By this time, I needed to briefly head back to Scott Road and the car. Both pairs of rechargeable batteries that I had brought with me were completely dead, and I needed a quick respite before going back to town for the evening session. On the way out on the SkyTrain, there was a place near a station (which one I can’t remember offhand) that sold cheap pizza. Two big slices and a pop for CDN 5. It was all right, but the crust tasted more like a pretzel than it did proper pizza dough.

While on the train back into downtown, I was talking with a dad and his two boys from Ottawa. Apparently, earlier in the day, VANOC had cancelled 28,000 standing-room tickets at Cypress Mountain. This dad and his kids were among those ticket holders affected. They had taken the money from those and bought tickets for the late Russia-Latvia hockey game that night. Surprisingly, tickets for that game were almost as hot as the Canada-Norway game earlier in the day, and when I thought about it, it made some sense. Playing for the Caps, Ovechkin doesn’t get out to this end of Canada more than once every other season, and the experience hockey fans of Canada wanted to see what he was made of.

The evening session restarted by going into Downtown LiveCity. LiveCity is a site where they show the CTV feed of all the live action going on around town that day. The two LiveCity sites near downtown were jammed to the gunnels during the Canada hockey game. I got to the security line just right after the game got done, and people were streaming out of there cheering for Canada, waving the flag, and carrying on. Inside the LiveCity, there were a couple of things. One was Manitoba House, which was nothing more than a glorified Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce display. Canada House was there too, and I’ll get there in a minute. There was also a big food and drink tent.

They showed the medal ceremonies live at the LiveCity. I was kind of glad that I hadn’t expended any more money on trying to get medal ceremony tickets, because I wanted to see a ceremony that featured a Canadian winning a gold medal. However, an American was awarded a gold medal this night, and there were a few of us belting out “The Star-Spangled Banner” outside the tents. I watched the rest of the ceremony from inside the food and drink tent.

Once the medal ceremonies were done, I headed over to check out Canada House. The Canucks did a very nice job here, showing off what they were trying to do (Own the Podium) while being complimentary to all of Canada. There were two other attractions there on this particular evening. One was a mock torch, so you could take a picture with you “carrying the Olympic torch.” The other was Lord Stanley’s Cup. Yes, THE Stanley Cup. The line to get pictures with the Cup was actually not too long, only about 20 minutes. I was in line behind a couple of volunteer medics from Regina, and they were grousing about how they were losing their shirts on the deal.

I then got my picture taken with both an Olympic torch, and the Stanley Cup. I’m not a hockey guy, but that was pretty awesome.

After all of this excitement around the Cup, I decided to finally brave the line over at the Olympic Superstore. The line had not shrank in length at all since I arrived downtown at 9 AM, but it moved surprisingly fast. I was inside the store in less than 5 minutes. Here is where they had the official Games-logo apparel, and that was worth waiting for. I picked up a couple of postcards, as well as a very high-quality hoodie (or as they call them up there, popovers). At CDN 40, I had no qualms about the buy. Also, HBC must be used to outfitting slightly larger Canadians. American 2XL hoodies can be quite small, but I’m drowning in it.

While at the Olympic Superstore, I engaged in a bit of the Olympic sport of pin-trading. I have no idea how or why this trend started, but I was able to slightly increase my pin count by bartering away some pins I bought at the BC Peace Arch Welcome Center.

By this time it was 10:30 PM, and I’d had my fill. Fortunately the SkyTrain station is embedded within The Bay store, and I hopped right on the train back out to Scott Road Park and Ride. Good Lord, was I tired! After getting across the border, what should have been a 1:10-1:20 drive back to Everett stretched into almost three, as I stopped multiple times to take short naps. I’m still not sure how I got back there.

It’s going to be a long time before the Olympics are going to take place in a location that doesn’t require an 8-hour flight and uber-expensive accommodations to attend. It’s that logic that brought me to the Pacific Northwest and up to Vancouver. They did a great job making an unforgettable experience. The fans from al over the world were great, and I hope to see another Olympics again in my lifetime.

GR

2009 NFR Thoughts

2009-12-12T21:30:00.000-08:00

Well, I’ve returned from the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. It was the first time that I’d been to Las Vegas for a period longer than 36 hours. The last Facebook note I wrote generate a whole pile of feedback, so let’s see if I can do it again now.

-I was on board the 7 AM sodbuster out of Minneapolis Wednesday morning, and even after killing as much time as I could in the Vegas airport, I still got to the Excalibur before 10 AM. I dropped my bags at the bell desk and went hunting for some money. Fortunately, a crap table and sports book at Mandalay Bay gladly complied with my request.

-You could certainly tell that Las Vegas likes having the cowboy crowd in town for the rodeo. Country music in the background, tons of hats boots and western wear on the Strip, and even the dealers at the Mandalay were wearing western garb.

-On that note, I briefly thought about bringing out my western blazer (more accurately: the $5 Goodwill pickup that I don’t’ mind getting dirty), and if I would have worn it with the rest of my clothing, I would have fit right in Thursday at South Point. EVERYONE was wearing their western finery. Committee members all had embroidered shirts with the rodeo they were from. The statue of Benny Binion on horseback had lots of garland on it. South Point really bends over backwards to accommodate the NFR crowd.

-This is a sign of the type of crowd the NFR draws. I was in the South Point showroom where they show the rodeo on the closed-circuit feed. During “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the crowd in the showroom stood up and took off their hats. For watching it on the closed-circuit feed!

-Friday was another good day. Mom and Coke had to run out to South Point right away to get something for Allison’s girls, and then we went into the Cowboy Christmas expo at the Mandalay Bay. The three big Cowboy Christmas shows are all huge, full of Western gear to buy, and have a profound lack of menswear and straw hats. However, if bling is what you were looking for, it was there by the Dumpsterful!

-I left the hall before the ladies did, made a quick few bucks at the Luxor, and withdrew to the Excalibur room for a quick nap and shower. The reason for this was that we were actually going to the rodeo! We took the free shuttle over to the Thomas and Mack Center. The ladies went into the building almost as soon as we got there, while I went over and met the South Central crew in the Coors tent. That Coors tent is quite an adventure. Girls dancing on the bar, a full bar, and a mechanical bull with an operator who was quite the character.

-After proper preparation, we all headed inside. The Thomas and Mack Center is normally home to UNLV Runnin’ Rebel basketball, but for this time on the calendar, it’s home to the NFR. This arena is SMALL and is starting to show its age. All 16,975 in the building get jammed into the narrow concourse, which makes the pre-and-post-rodeo traffic jam borderline unbearable. I can see this being a point of emphasis when the next contract between LVE and the PRCA comes up.
-Once you do get to your seats, though, the building’s small size is an advantage. Everyone is right on top of the action. Even where I sat two years ago (three rows from the top in the deep corner), everyone was right there. The only trouble is that if you’re more than halfway up the upper deck, you can’t hear Bob Tallman and Randy Corley do their thing. Both of those guys do a fine job, and I made it a point to walk down there and shake hands with Randy after it was over. Us announcers have to stick together.

-We had a good time at the Sahara on Friday night. $1 High Lifes, $1 Kamikaze shots, and the WSCA crowd can make for a pretty lethal combination.

-Saturday’s trip to the Hoover Dam with the Vargos was really something. Not only being a gawker, this trip went straight to why I spent five years of my life pursuing something. It is America’s big projects (transcontinental railroads, the Interstate Highway System, Hoover Dam, and the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge) that inspired me to go into civil engineering. The tour was every bit as cool as advertised.

-On that note, after wandering through the Mandalay Bay on Wednesday waiting for Mom and Coke to pick me up, I asked myself one simple question: Who thinks of this (stuff)? The theming, the size of the casino, the size of the hotel? The scale of most of the Strip casinos is simply mind-boggling.

-Back to Saturday. I wandered around town the rest of the day, including the all-you-can-eat-prime-rib special at the Circus Circus. I came in about 5:15, but I didn’t get my order taken for the better part of 15-20 minutes. Apparently the kitchen always gets backed up right after the prime rib special backs up. With that said, I didn’t feel the least bit jobbed by the dinner. I highly recommend it.

-Saturday night the WSCA crowd went over to Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar at Harrah’s. At first, I didn’t know what casino the place was located in. Someone in the group said that it was in the MGM Grand, but I was a bit skeptical of that. I asked a pit boss if he’d heard of the place, and he told me that it was up at Harrah’s. Talk about a confusing casino layout! I had NO idea where the place was in the casino, and it took me quite a while to find it once I got there. Once I got there, drinks in a mason jar were interesting.

-For long desert drives, like Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and the LA Basin, I would almost prefer to do it in daylight. At least in daylight there’s something to look at. Coming back after nightfall was a serious drag. I had a very hard time staying awake.

-I did manage to make it back to Vegas with my car and myself in one piece, and I met up with the gang at the Exaclibur lounge. The energy level in there was almost as lackluster as I felt, but somehow the Spences, Vargos, and a couple friends of Cheryl broke out of there and went to go ride the rides atop the Stratosphere. We had a fun trip in the monorail to the Sahara, and then we walked up the Strip to the Stratosphere. And then, in the immortal words of Ricky Skaggs, “…and here’s where things went wrong.”

-Upon arriving at the Stratosphere ticketing desk, we were coldly informed that due to weather conditions, the rides on top of the tower were closed. I knew that this was a pile of horse dung. Yes, immediately after cresting Cajon Pass it was extremely windy, but once I got near the Nevada state line, it was not breezy at all. I know exactly what happened: Things were awfully quiet, and they just decided to close for weather instead. It was a raw deal, and the Spences got some of their money back, but still…

-The Spences went back to their hotel, but the Vargos and I went to the Sahara and started gambling. By the time it was all over, it was well on the far side of 4 AM and neither of us were very tired. What better way to cap the evening (I’ve been awake for 24 hours straight at this point) than cheap steak-and-eggs at Bill’s Gambling Hall? First, Brian felt obliged to drag Cheryl out of bed and join us. She was extremely appreciative, as anyone rousted from a sound sleep at 4 AM would be.

-Somehow I made it back to the Excalibur, and I napped for a couple of hours before I went with Coke and Mom out to Sam’s Town. Shepler’s sets up a big tent outside the casino to push some of their goods. We also found out that the NFR logo merchandise they bought? Well, it must not have been moving to their liking, because all logo gear was 30% off.

-Just as we were leaving town, the weather took a hard turn to the worse. It started to rain on the way to the airport, and the Strip was only visible for a minute or so on climbout due to the low ceiling and heavy rain. I was also really tired, as we hadn’t been in the clouds for 10 minutes before I was out cold, and didn’t wake up until the top of descent into MSP.

-I was 5-1 on the trip at the sports book. My picks were: Wisconsin-Duke over 132.5, Arizona -2 at home to UNLV (loss), Oregon-Oregon State over 62.5 and Beavers +10, Washington +7, and Bama-Florida over 42.

-The NFR is a great time for anyone in the horse business to go. Not only are the prices fair, the whole city embraces the cowboy visitors to the hilt. Sure all the pools except the Nugget are closed, but otherwise if rodeo is your thing, then the NFr is a great time to Viva Las Vegas!

(Jeez, I sound like a damn Chamber of Commerce)

PM

Trip Recap: Minnesota @ Iowa 11/21/09 OR...

2009-11-23T21:27:00.000-08:00

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2009
KINNICK STADIUM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
IOWA CITY, IOWA

If the third time wasn’t the charm, then perhaps the fourth one is? I’ve been to Iowa three times before for Gopher football games, and have yet to see a Gopher win of any sort. Throw in a basketball trip, and that makes me 0-4 in the depths of Mordor.

Any drive across northern Iowa is going to be very, very flat and boring. Jake and I left the Twin Cities around 4, after a half-hour setback in which he forgot his ticket. After nightfall, the Avenue of the Saints between the Minnesota-Iowa border and about Charles City often looked like an alien invasion, because of the single red lights atop the hundreds and hundreds of wind turbines.

We made it through the alien invasion and into Iowa City. Friday was a fairly quiet evening. A stop at Hy-Vee for some drinking material, and we headed to where we were staying. (where can’t you go in Iowa or southern MN and not find a Hy-Vee?) I was staying with a friend who is a doctoral student at UI. No one had any cell phone reception back there (for that matter, no one else in IC had reliable service), so we had to run back to the bar to call anyone.

The rest of the group was staying at a Motel 6 in Coralville that was, to be very complimentary, sketchy. Word is that a prostitution ring was busted in the very room the organizer was sleeping in. High class establishment. We ran over to the bar that was across the street for a quick drink and to discuss strategy for the following morning.

0620 came all too early. Jake took a quick shower while I went out and fetched the case of beer. My friend had tipped us off that there was a city bus that would take us into campus and the stadium, and it left the stop immediately outside the building at 6:49. This seems like a reasonable way to get into the stadium and tailgate area, but as always there’s a hook. Seems all the buses on Saturday avoid the area of campus west of the Iowa River, next to Kinnick Stadium and the UI hospitals. The bus dumps us off across Melrose Avenue from the Finkbine Golf Course. We hoof it from there all the way over to the parking lot that used to be the Grassy Knoll, on Myrtle Avenue just up the hill from the Kum ‘n Go. (Another high-quality Iowa institution)

The Hawkeyes next to us have a nice bean-bag set, and they thought they were pretty good at it. Unfortunately, they challenged my buddies. They proceeded to get destroyed by all comers wearing maroon and gold, and there are quite a few of them. After doses of humility were dished out, breakfast fajitas were handed out, and you can take a guess where most of the makings came from. The tailgating proceeded at breakneck pace until about 10:15, when everyone staggered across the footbridge towards Kinnick.

Curiosity got the better of me while on the way over to the game. For all of these visits, as well as watching many, many football games from Kinnick, I had never partaken in one of the aforementioned “Big Ass Turkey Legs.” For $8, I decided to try one of the things, slathered in barbecue sauce. It wasn’t too bad. Sure there were a lot of uncooked tendons and ligaments, and the sauce was very messy, but it was good nonetheless.

The game has been discussed ad nauseam on these boards.

After the game was over, both Jake and I were nursing wicked hangovers. We went back to the tailgate and milled around for a while, but a cab was sitting there and after a while, we just went back to my friend’s condo. After a siesta, shower, and change of clothes, we headed downtown for some chow. We worked on a pizza at the Airliner, and it was FANTASTIC pizza. I highly recommend it to anyone going to IC.

Having heard nothing from the rest of my friends, we went back to the condo, watched Stanford-Cal, and was just about to retire before finally getting the call from the guys at Brothers. Jake was the sobercab, and he would have just dropped me off at Brothers and gone back if it weren’t for the fact that the bar had bought the UFC pay-per-view, and it was on every TV in the bar. It was a solid card, and it was a good enough excuse to stay and drink til about 12:00. The party then shifted back to The Edge (the bar across from the Motel 6 and no relation to the U2 guitarist). Let’s just say that Ah Leah isn’t just a song by Donnie Iris.

This is where I really poured the coals to the alcohol. Shots and 7-7s were being passed around like water. When we got going back to Minneapolis the following morning, I wasn’t feeling too terribly awful. I figured I’d be able to drive a hundred or so miles before needing to hand off and sleep. Somehow, I not only drove the whole way back to MSP, but did it in four hours.

Huge thanks to my friend who let us stay in their condo. Also to Big Jake, for putting up with my alcohol-fueled shenanigans. I always have fun on these trips, win, lose, or draw.

GR

2009 CFN Board Meeting: The Epic Recap

2009-10-29T17:54:00.001-07:00

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2009

FAROUT FIELD AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI

COLUMBIA, MISSOURI

The 2009 CFN Board Meeting took place in Columbia, Missouri in the Zou. The best option for me to get there was to drive down from the Twin Cities. Since the Land Yacht (my 1990 Buick Park Avenue) is no longer fit to travel further than AAA will tow it home, I rented a car at the MSP airport. I've rented with Alamo before, and I was secretly hoping to get one of their Chargers, since all of their Chrysler vehicles come equipped with satellite radio. When driving across Iowa, you need all the help you can get. Alas, there were no Chargers there, so I settled on a fire engine red Impala.

The drive to KC was uneventful, aside from the fact that it started to rain shortly after crossing into Iowa, turned into a heavy, heavy downpour around Mason City, and didn't let off until about 60-70 miles into Missouri. I also found out that this particular Impala has a TINY gas tank. When I filled up at Osceola, Iowa, it took 11 gallons and change with the gas light on. The trip was also broken up by a couple of phone calls from Gatorama, and I humored him with ancedotes about what us Minnesotans think of Iowa.

The rain broke, I wandered around the Kansas side of Kansas City for a bit, and found my way to KSULady's house. There I interrupted a furious game of Catch Phrase between KSULady, razorchique, LilDawg, and ElTigreRex. I think "Not lobster" was something clue that came up before I got there, and it was cracking the ladies up something fierce. After a while, KSULady had to go get BurntEyes from the airport. After their return and the obligatory exchange of pleasantries, everyone who hadn't already starting drinking continued with gusto. Both TK and Burnie polished off a substantial portion of liters of whisky, TK preferring Irish to Burnie's Scotch (or do I have that turned around?).

Friday morning dawned cool, windy, and with most folks vicously hung over. KSULady made her self-proclaimed world famous biscuits and gravy, which shook us out of it, and then I left for the airport to make some pickups. First it was to Terminal 1 to pick up the one and only Traveling WolverGator, Gatorama. Then it was over to Terminal 3 and the Continental gates to pick up our newly married UTErin. It is clear that the Kansas City airport was designed as an O&D airport, as transferring planes here would be a major pain the neck, and would require a wholesale rebuild if it wanted to be a substantial hub.

Anyhow, I called back to the house, and MextheDog hadn't arrived yet from Oklahoma. So we headed back down I-635 to KSULady's house, where all the perpetrators that were going to go to Columbia were assembled. We stopped at a Kwik Trip to get gas and beer, and then we were off for Columbia. I thought that I-70 between Kansas City and Columbia is a lot like I-94 across northwestern Wisconsin. Rolling country, lots of trees, and the colors were very pretty.

Before arriving in Columbia, we stopped at a winery in Rochefort. This is one of KSULady's favorite places to go in Missouri, and it lived up to it's reputation. Burnie had a Bloody Mary that was a meal in a glass, but the rest of us had slightly more standard fare. The food was excellent, and considering they called themselves a winery bistro, their food was actually reasonably priced. The setting was also fabulous. It was on a bluff overlooking the valley of the Missouri River, the fall colors were at their peak, and the company was good. While we were there, we received several strange glances from folks wearing Mizzou gear, and it wasn't until we were on our way out that someone asked who we were, and what were we doing there.

We then drove over to the A-frame, which is a little further along on the property. Seems that this was the original point of sale for the winery when it first opened in the mid 80s. While there, we change up the distribution among people in cars, so that the right people are going to the right hotels. Gator and I are the only ones in our car the rest of the way into Columbia. Upon arrival into Columbia, we decide to take a drive down to the stadium and campus before we get set up at the hotel. We travel around Stadium Blvd. until we reach the athletic complex.

You wouldn't know that Farout Field is there if you weren't looking for it. It sits in an unassuming hollow below the main campus. The stadium itself is nothing more than Vanderbilt Stadium but with a slightly larger capacity and four light towers in the corners. I was thoroughly unimpressed by my illicit hop through the gates. Next, we drove into and through the campus, and lo and behold we find the Mizzou Bookstore. After kniving for a parking spot, we go in there and find all Mizzou gear 25% off! Yes, everything. I pick up a nice sweatshirt on sale and Gator gets some postcards. I find that the bookstore is EXTREMELY busy for a Friday afternoon, but I don't think anything of it.

After all of this, we find our way out to our Holiday Inn Express on the outskirts of town, rest, resupply from a nearby liquor store, and go to the hotel where everyone else is staying. Mr. and Mrs. 847Badgerfan have arrived, and despite Badge feeling a bit under the weather, are ready to hit the town. Since there are sufficient board members to make a quorum, the Board Meeting is called to order. We go to the bar in the restaurant adjacent to the hotel, which has the bartender completely unprepared for our arrival. Our first round of the evening complete, we go over to Harpo's. This place is the quintessential college bar, with lots of Mizzou, Chiefs, and Cardinals memorabilia on the wall. We get props from several different groups as we get some drinks and food. Beer was being sold in souvenir plastic cups, and I shove two of them into my hoodie to take home.

We saw a dueling piano bar on the way over to Harpo's, but it wasn't open when we went by the first time. When we came back, it was open, and it was a great time. The best part of the weekend occurred here. About 11:00, a section of the Marching Mizzou came into the already-packed bar. This was about a basketball-sized pep band, and they played a spread of Mizzou music, including what sounded like their main fight song, a few other traditional songs, and the Missouri Waltz. Also, a band designed to fill Mizzou Arena with noise is REALLY REALLY LOUD when jammed into a bar. I thoroughly enjoyed having my hearing destroyed. Not long after this, we headed back over to the hotel and called it a night, but not before having some chaser beers.

Saturday morning dawned clear and gorgeous, after the previous evening's cold, wet, murky weather. Lots of Mizzou gear in the breakfast bar. About 9:00 we head into town, and find a parade going on! Seems this is Mizzou's homecoming weekend, which would explain why the bookstore was so crazy crowded. They were also having a parade, which made parking downtown a near-impossible situation. I end up dropping off Gator at the hotel, then parking in a ramp half a mile from the hotel. Mizzou claims to be the origin of what is considered homecoming, although I've heard the same claim come from Baylor and Illinois. Either way, I found it strange that just about every business in town had some sort of Greek letters taped to the outside wall or painted on the windows. What was that supposed to mean? Are Greeks not from those houses persona non grata in that establishment during that week?

Anyway, we end up at the Fieldhouse, the bar next to the hotel, to catch the 11:00 games. I seem to have a knack for running into people from Minnesota, as I talked with two more from Bloomington after seeing another one from Eagan the previous evening. All of us were watching the early games, me watching the Gopher offense go nowhere, razorchique seeing her Hogs fumble the game away at Ole Miss, and to everyone's shock, the Blenderbirds knock off Nebraska.

After the conclusion of the early games, some people go back to the hotel to rest, and I go with UTErin and KSULady on a walkaround of downtown Columbia. Downtown Columbia is a lot like downtown Boulder in that it had a quirky feel to it. I managed to keep up with Erin and KSULady for about 45 minutes, until I've been in one too many shops with a strong smell of incense. I go back and doze off in Erin's room until everyone comes back and decides to go over to a tailgate near the stadium. Badge and Gator stay in the hotel, and the rest of us head to the stadium.

Mizzou has a pleasantly surprisingly nice, and large, campus. Once we get down to the south mall spreading out from what looks like the original state capitol building, the tailgating starts up hot and heavy. What they were cooking smelled AMAZING, considering that I didn't order any substantial food while at the bar. Razorchique's boss was tailgating in an RV on the far side of the stadium. On the way down there, we were followed for several blocks by a Mizzou student with a strange motive. On our way to the stadium, TigerKing is wearing his Auburn gear. This student comes up to TK and tells him something to the effect of "sorry, man, but I'm a bama fan, and roll tide." And he follows us, arguing with TK the whole time, for the better part of six blocks, before we hit the main parking lots and he stumbles off somewhere. Recall this is not the first time that TK has been accosted at one of these things. Two years ago in Austin a man who was falling-down-drunk tried to jump him at a souvenir stand, and we had the Banshee Bammer at Sam's Place in Nashville.

Once we get shaken loose from the bammer, we go under the Stadium Blvd tunnel, and around the west side of the stadium. We find Tracy's boss, then another friend of hers who was there. It was then gametime. I was supposed to sit next to Burnie in the Texas section, but he went back to the hotel right before the bammer fan accosted us. Everyone else had tickets together behind the Texas bench in the north end zone. I go into the stadium, and am seated behind the Texas road band. Again, their band is a basketball-sized section.

I am aware that this was homecoming, and you have to have the alumni band in cahoots with the regular band, but do you REALLY need them to do the whole pre-game march stuff? Also, could the announcer for their performance be any more depressing than he is? If there was any energy in the stadium, that guy proceeded to pull all of it out of the crowd, so that by the time the Tigers came out of the south tunnel, it was DEAD DEAD DEAD in there.

Granted, the team didn't give the crowd anything to cheer about. The Longhorns had a whuppin' on their minds, and they wasted no time administering one. Mizzou had one long drive, but otherwise a selection of three-and-outs and turnovers. It was 35-7 at the half, with the game not being nearly as close as the score indicated. People were streaming towards the exits. I thought it was for obvious reasons, but I also learned that Mizzou is an open-gate stadium. So long as you get stamped and have a ticket stub, you can come and go as you please. This is the only stadium that I know of where you can do this.

I go over to meet the others where they are seated. We decide to leave and go back to the hotel, and we're not the only ones who do. Upon arrival, the food that Badge brought from Palatine is ready, and we eat and watch the end of the ESPN games, and find that the Iowa Yellow Chickens escape East Lansing at the bell. Mex, razor, and Burnie are in the first car back to KC in the morning, and they'll be gone early, so they bid everyone adieu. The rest of us hang around Badge's hotel room until it's clear that Arizona State is going to get curb-stomped on the Farm. Then we bid farewell to Mr. and Mrs. Badge (they leave for Chicago early in the morning), and it's back to the hotel.

Sunday morning finds us checked out of the Holiday Inn Express and back at the downtown hotel to say farewell to TK and the ladies. Gator and I are the next car to go back to KC, as his flight is at 2:30 and I want to be back in Minneapolis before midnight. I drop Gator off at the airport, then get on 35 to make the long, boring drive across Iowa back to Minnesota.

I really love this bunch of crazy folks. We come from all walks of life, but yet join up to feed our common interest and passion for college football. Plus we have a drink or six while we're there. It's really a good time, and you should come to this if we're in your neck of the woods.

GR

TR: Prowler Opening Day 2009 at Worlds of Fun

2009-05-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2009
WORLDS OF FUN
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

My credit counter is spinning like a busted slot machine. Two weeks ago I made the epic trek to Cincinnati to get Diamondback on Opening Day, as well as get all the credits at Kings Island. I was going to go down to KC the last weekend of April, but then it became clear that Prowler wasn’t going to open with the park. Friends had reported that Prowler was awesome, so my curiosity was sufficiently piqued to make the trip down, albeit a week later than originally anticipated.

The trip down Interstate 35 was pretty boring. I’m a born-and-raised Minnesotan (and proud of it), but I’ll fully admit that most of the state is very, very flat and pretty boring to drive across. There isn’t much to say about northern Missouri, either. And let’s not discuss Iowa. Fortunately, the Sirius satellite radio in the car kept things interesting.

The biggest morale booster of the whole trip came just south of Exit 17, which is the turn for KCI Airport for travelers going south on 35. You come out from under the overpass, and suddenly there’s Mamba, Detonator, and the rest of the park skyline right in front of you. For someone who had really been dragging the last half hour, it was an instant shot of adrenaline. We’re almost there! Yay!

I got off at Exit 54 of southbound I-435, and got confused by the layout of the exit. Since I’ve never been there before, I ended up missing the second left turn up to the WOF entrance and ended up by the Village and OOF. By the time I figured out how to get into the park and get parked, it’s about 5:45 PM. I see two people with TPR hoodies coming out, and I wander my way into the turnstiles. I show them my VF plat pass, they give me food and drink vouchers, and I head into the park.

Worlds of Fun is a surprisingly hilly park. For that matter, Kansas City is a surprisingly hilly city. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised, as the Missouri River valley is a deep one through soft ground. Still, your quads, calves, and hamstrings get a good workout at the park. It’s also not clear where to go once you get past the front gates. I follow some folks who look like they know where they’re going

It’s 15 minutes from the top of the stairs back to the head of the queue maze, then 15 minutes for each out-and-back in the queue maze. The maze was filled to the tune of three out-and-backs, which meant it was an hour wait for my first time on Prowler. The marshall at the entrance to the station was being quite strict on row placement, and I ended up in Row 6 in all three of my rides. Truth be told, I was not impressed with it on Friday night. It was certainly a fun ride, but not the kind of blockbuster that it needed to be to get within spitting distance of either a dark Renegade or a soaking wet Viper in Chicago.

Operations got better as the evening progressed. I waited 45 minutes and 30 minutes for my second and third rides, but the first train that didn’t stack Friday night would be their first.

After park close at 8 PM, I went over and checked into my hotel, then went looking for some barbecue. When it Kansas City, you eat barbecue, right? I ended up over at the Ameristar Casino (which is located about a mile from WOF), at Arthur Murray’s barbecue place giving the Plate-pourri sammich a try. I also made the mistake of ordering French fries to go along with it. When I finally got the plate, in addition to the massive sandwich, the French fries were formed into a MOUNTAIN! Talk about my eyes being bigger than my stomach. I managed to get through most of it before throwing in the towel. I really didn’t like any of the three sauces they had. After dinner, I went over to a crap table and proceeded to win $125. A great night in the City of Kansas!

The following morning had breakfast at the Waffle House, then entry into the park. This time I needed to stop at the toll plaza to show my VF platinum pass. The clerk scanned it, then scanned it again with a befuddled look, then put in a call to GR. This went on for about 5 minutes, then the pass was handed back to me and I was told to go ahead. I got parked, then went down to the entrance gate, where they were admitting season passholders. Two weeks ago at Kings Island, my picture didn’t come up when scanned. My pass was scanned, and sure enough it happened again. A call to GR led to an IPA slip being printed and scanned. The supervisor at GR mentioned that they don’t get a lot of IPAs out there. I told her that with Prowler, they were going to get a lot of them this year.

Finally into the park and back to the queue for Prowler. Shortly before 10, the park GM and a local TV meteorologist present the “first riders,” the winners of the auction for the Susan Komen Foundation of Greater Kansas City. After those riders were brought to the platform, the GM took a giant pair of scissors and cut a large cloth ribbon, and we were in business. Two rides here still didn’t do anything for me, and so I went off to check out the rest of the park.

First was the Vekoma Boomerang. This one ran better than the one at Knotts, if for no other reason than I didn’t get my head bashed in when riding it.

Then I kept going around to Mamba, Wild Thing’s brother in arms. No more than a three-train wait all day, but by the time I got up there they were done cycling one of the two trains empty. I went to get in Row 3, and the seats are soaking wet! It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a dry rag up on the deck to take care of that. Once we got squared away, we went out for a ride. If you could put together the first two drops of Wild Thing with the rest of Mamba, you’d have a Top 10 steel. I’m partial to WT’s parabolic hill, but the headchopper effect of Mamba’s spiral was AWESOME. Plus the fact that the mid-courses were hardly grabbing made for excellent air on the way back. Two rides in a row here.

Timber Wolf’s line was out into the midway, so I decided to take my chances riding Patriot. Two out-and-backs in the queue maze were filled, so I thought I was gonna be there all day. The line went surprisingly quick, only 20 minutes. Patriot is a BLAST! It’s been taken care of much better than close cousin Silver Bullet, and they have a good, brisk crew there.

At this point, I left the park to do some other things I wanted to do around Kansas City. These things included getting my state credit for Kansas, going to the NABC College Basketball Hall of Fame (unimpressive), eating at Rosedale BBQ (much better than Arthur Bryant’s), and going by 12th Street and Vine, the corner from the song Kansas City. By the time I had done all of this and returned to the park, it was about 5:30, and I listened to the Kentucky Derby on the satellite radio in the rental.

Back into the park, and time to get the credits on the top end I hadn’t done yet. Timber Wolf’s line had receded considerably, so I went there. It was only 15 minutes from when I entered to when I got into the station, but it took another half an hour to finally get on the train. Once there, it became clear that this was going to be a crappy ride when we were jackhammering on the lift hill! The main ride was no better. No airtime, jackhammer city, and ROUGH ROUGH ROUGH track. It’s not as bad as Son of Beast, but it’s within striking distance. Anytime a coaster is within striking distance of Son of Beast means it’s a pile of junk.

Another spin on Patriot, then over to Spinning Dragons to get the credit. I rode it with a mother and daughter from a middle school in St. Louis. Did I mention that there were a lot of bands and orchestras in the park today, from schools all over Kansas and Missouri? Line for this was about 20 minutes. Even with a very off-balance load, the thing wasn’t spinning. I wished them a safe trip back to St. Louis, and headed to the back of the park.

At this point, I intentionally took my time going back to Mamba, as it was getting dark and I wanted it to be as dark as I could get it for the night ride on Mamba that I’ve heard so much about. The night ride delivered. In fact, it was so much fun that I did it in the front car and back car. I still like the first two hills on Wild Thing better, but the headchopper effect with the columns is awesome after nightfall.

A funny thing happened on the way to the back of the park. Prowler woke up. Remember how I have said on multiple occasions that Prowler just wasn’t doing anything? I’m willing to bet that Prowler didn’t have many testing days where it operated fully loaded trains for 10 hours running. Cause by the time I got my first twilight ride, around 8:40, the ride had changed. Maybe it was darkness, maybe it was my own perception, or maybe it was the inevitable breaking-in a coaster goes through. Whatever it was, the ride was now AWESOME! I also think the Law of Unintended Consequences was in play with regards to the placement of the on-ride camera. The flash blinds you, then BAM! A hard lateral, and by the time you get your wits back, you’re going into the brakes.

At this point, I also found the single rider line. The guy up in the station was doing a good job of getting the train full, but the marshal at the entrance of the line was not. Frequently, she let groups into the queue. One duo asked me if they thought they could ride together. I told her no, you’re in the SINGLE RIDER queue. This was most unlike the marshals two weeks ago at Kings Island, where if you even looked like you knew the person next to you, you were sent to the main queue.

Anyhow, my final ride of the night came right after they cut the queue. I finally got put in with a group for the back row. I’d been trying to get to either the very front or very back all day, so this was going to be a great way to end the day. Sure enough it was. I was left in breathless hysteria as we rolled back to the station.

The following morning saw another Waffle House breakfast before rolling back to the Twin Cities, including a stop at a casino in BFI where I got a little bit more cash from a blackjack table.

So where does it end up on the ranking list? Prior to the evening session with an invigorated Prowler, my wood list went Rene #1, Viper (SF Chicago) in a hurricane, Prowler, Avalanche, Hades, Coaster in Vancouver, then the field. Now I’m not so sure. I’ve been deliberating for three days whether to put Rene or Prowler at the #1 spot. No, I’m still not made up my mind yet. I’ll have to get some rides on Rene once it opens up to assist in making up my mind. Yes, I know I’m missing a lot of high-profile scalps, but I intend to rectify that sometime soon.

Paul Miller

College Football Weddings and the Trip Back From Seattle

2008-11-26T18:20:00.000-08:00

I apologize if I haven't said much in the past few weeks. My stint in Seattle came to an end this past month, and I parlayed that with my cousin's wedding in Colorado to make for an epic trip across the American West. Here are some random thoughts from the trip.

-Most of the interior West would not exist if it were not for irrigation. Washington is supposed to be the Evergreen State, but most of the state is barren scrubland that's barely fit to run cattle on, much less farm.

-I didn't think that there were any mosquitoes in Utah. However, when we got out to change drivers at a rest stop on I-15 north of Ogden, we were ambushed by the monsters. I'm used to Minnesota mosquitoes, but these things were just as numerous and agressive. Washington State mosquitoes are slow, lazy, and easy to kill.

-My car (a 1990 Buick Park Avenue with a 3.8L V6 under the hood) got 28-29 MPG while roaring across Utah and Wyoming averaging 75+ MPH. This is with the trunk and back seat full of my crap.

-Why is 85-octane gas for sale in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado? Altitude?

-My cousin and his bride are both Colorado Buffaloes, but her family is full of Nebraska Cornhuskers. There was a large TV showing VaTech-Nebraska outside the ballroom at the hotel the reception was being held at. Just as the best man took to the microphone to deliver his speech, yelling was heard out in the lobby. The door was quickly slammed shut, but it was still a bit embarassing. I learned later that this was the Huskers' punt return for a TD.

-I'm not bothered by very many things, but beef feed lots are truly the pillage of the earth. We drove past several in southern Idaho and northern Colorado. I realize the economics of agriculture are forcing up the size of operations, but ye gads! We drove past one on Highway 34 east of Greeley, and there had to be 75,000 head of cattle on about 50 acres of ground. And they stunk for two miles in all directions.

-There is a lot more civilization on Interstate 80 across Nebraska than there is on 90 or 94 across the Dakotas. Maybe that has something to do with the Platte River valley being the traditional highway west (the Pony Express, Oregon Trail, and the transcontinental railroad all parallel Interstate 80 at some point)

-The tallest building in the state of Nebraska is the state capitol building. However, as I saw it from I-80, the second-tallest appears to be the press box at Memorial Stadium. I'm gonna have to go there for a game someday.

-On the way back, we got a partial tour of the Big 12 North. Boulder, Lincoln, and Ames all were on our path of travel.

-I mentioned earlier getting 29-30 MPG roaring across Wyoming. The rest of the family that came to Colorado for the wedding drove an RV, and never bothered to take it above 65 to see what kind of mileage it would get. Following them back, I got the exact same mileage going 65. Go figure. Also, what should have been a 14-hour trip back dragged into 25.5 hours due to their paranoia about going a shred over 65.

-Since I no longer live in Washington, I'm going to have to figure out a new avatar. And no, I do NOT have the "SKIUMAH" plate that I had in my avatar. I got my normal plates before I thought about the "SKIUMAH" custom plate, and I didn't want to go through the trouble of getting another plate. Any suggestions are welcome.

2,275 miles, 8 states, and Lord only knows how many bottles of Coke later, I'm home. I'm looking forward to a bit of an unwind weekend in Madison this weekend.

The 61st Axe: Random Thoughts

2008-11-17T14:27:00.000-08:00

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2008
CAMP RANDALL STADIUM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
MADISON, WISCONSIN

Some random thoughts, game and non, from this weekend's extravaganza in Mad-town:

-I bought a couple of car magnets, and I put them on the side of my car for the trip down on Friday afternoon. I got a few honks and waves, as well as a few middle fingers. You have a nice day too, sir.

-State Street Brats was swamped with Gopher fans on Friday night, taking over the upstairs. If looks could have killed, the Dane County coroner would have been a busy man.

-I don't like how Mad Hatter's is set up. No one downstairs while the upstairs resembles the Black Hole of Calcutta? Set it up like Burrito Loco here.

-I first found Silver Mine subs in Boulder, Colorado. The location next to Hatters' makes for a fine addition to the Madison late night menu.

-Finding cabs at bar time is a beyotch. My hotel was out on High Crossing Blvd., and by the time I found a cab that wasn't hired and got back, it was after 3:00 AM and my buzz was totally gone. Cabbies, if you're hired, TURN YOUR LIGHT OFF!

-Tailgating was great. One buddy of mine made arrangements with his sister's future in-laws for us tailgate with them. We were in the corner of the Regent Apartments parking lot. I also saw GopherLady, NateDawg, Crazy Tony, et al. at the same party.

-I know the U is going to have to learn how to do game-day tailgating once we get back home next year. However, I think that as long as Bob Bruininks is the president of the U, he's going to do everything he can to make it happen. The U is a better place because of him.

-My brother has poo-poohed the Gopher fan base, claming that we're going to want the Dome back as soon as a cold-weather game hits. Yesterday afternoon, it was cold, it was windy, and it started to snow at the end. And I loved it. Just how November football in Big Ten country ought to be. Sure I was frozen through by the time it was over, but it still was great.

-Good grief, was I getting flashbacks to "Punt Kucek Punt" when that kick return got muffed.

-Two points on the little rhubarb during "Jump Around." A) I have no problem with the Gopher bench jumping around like they did. It sure did pump 'em up. The only trouble was that it also pumped up everyone else in the stadium. Seeing the entire stadium doing it was a sight to behold. B) One friend of mine pointed out that the display was borne partly because few of the Gophers had been on the sideline of a game in Madison, and mostly as a "shot across the bow" at Wisconsin, saying something like "Hello Wisconsin! How do you like us breathing down your neck?"

-For all the Gophers' muffs, penalties, screw-ups, and other misadventures, they still had the ball with 2:30 to go with a chance to win or go to overtime. In hindsight, when I planned to come down, all I asked for was a game that wasn't decided midway through the first quarter, as my only other football trip to the Camp was.

-Was it just me, or was the band a little quick to start "Varsity" at the end of the game, before the Axe even got hoisted? I'm watching them hoist the Axe out of the bag just as the students get to the last "U-rah-rah Wisconsin!"

-I realized when I woke up this morning that other than one plate of heavenly cheesy potatoes, I drank ALL of my meals on Saturday. Fortunately, a Mickie's Dairy Bar scrambler was there to save the day. Not only do Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa share heated sporting rivalries, they also share quality breakfast locations (Al's Breakfast, Mickie's, and the Hamburg Inn).

Now only one more game in the Dump. And I still f'ing hate Iowa!

GR

Trip Racap: 2008 CFN Board Meeting

2008-11-10T19:47:00.000-08:00

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2008, 4:30 PM
CONCOURSE B AT MIDWAY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

It’s been a long day already. En route to the 2008 CFN Board Meeting, I’ve gotten caught in morning rush hour traffic in the Twin Cities, driven across a Wisconsin that is now eight different shades of drab gray, and roared through a driving rainstorm on the Northwest Tollway that reduced visibility to almost nothing. By the time I zap a text to ElTigreRex and 847Badgerfan, who are already in Nashville, I’m ready for a drink. However, those two gentlemen have already beaten me to the punch. A few minutes after I message them, Badge calls me back and informs me that I need to take a cab to the hotel, because they have been drinking all day and neither is sober enough to drive to the airport and get me. Ah, the Board Meeting has begun!

A bit of backstory here. It was determined at last year’s extravaganza in Austin, Texas that the next Board Meeting should take place in SEC country. A couple of weeks after that, the executive decision came down that this Board Meeting would take place in Nash-vegas (as the place is often referred to on SEC message boards). Since several of us (or friends of ours) had been there for bowl games, it was agreed that this would be a great place for it.

My flight from Midway to Nashville had a rough climbout due to said rainstorm, but once we got out of the soup, it was a smooth flight. This was the shortest flight that I had taken in at least three years. Being used to 3½ hour hauls to and from the West Coast (and last year’s 6-hour drag to Austin), it was surprising to start descending almost as soon as we got to cruise altitude. The Nashville airport is an easy airport to get through, but I found it to be a dump.

Since the Nashville street grid isn’t set at right angles relative to a north-south, my sense of direction was all discombobulated, and as such I was totally lost on the cab ride to the hotel. I was staying in the same room as TigerKing, and he met me in the lobby to get the hotel keys. Once I dumped my stuff off, we took a cab back downtown. We had a cabbie who was telling jokes that weren’t very tasteful in light of Tuesday’s election, and that’s not even close to describing how this cab ride went.

We met Badge in the lobby of his hotel, and end up eating dinner at an Irish pub. Badge and TigerKing have managed to drink the bar out of Johnny Walker Black, and in punishment we have to suffer through two guys trying to cover various country standards. They ended with a horrendous treatment of the Old Crow Medicine Show’s “Wagon Wheel.” Since we were all quite tired, we decided to withdraw to our hotels for the evening.

Next morning, Badge comes by our hotel with the minivan he rented to shuttle people around in. We head out to the airport to pick up MikeTheTiger and BurntEyes. After that, we head over towards the Vanderbilt campus to scout out places to drink the next day. Since it’s not 11 AM yet, none of the watering holes are open yet. We end up stopping at a place called the Corner Pub that is showing some signs of life. It was only 10:40, but the barmaid agreed to serve us drinks. It was here that most of the gang finally trickled in. UTErin, razorchique, theumrebel, buckeyecraazy, Gatorama, and DavidG all rolled in while we were at the Corner.

Shortly before 3, the party moved over to barbecue restaurant, across 5th Street from the hockey arena. Badge had arranged for us to take over one corner of their outside. This is where SunDevilFroggy, MarqHusker, and his wife came and joined the party. As for the food here, I was not overly impressed by their barbecue. I know that most Southern barbecue is pork-based compared with the Texas beef, but my biggest problem was that it was tough as nails. I’ve eaten good barbecued pork ribs (oddly enough from a joint on the eastside of Seattle), and these were not one of them. Usually pork ribs have a much higher meat-to-bone ratio than beef ribs, but these did not.

It was at this point that Badge pounded on the table and called the 2008 Board Meeting to order. The only thing that he did was order us to drink. Seeing that we had been doing that for some time already, the call ended up being more a “Bottoms up!” command than anything else.

We stayed here until nightfall, which is when the gang briefly retired to their hotels to change clothes and possibly eat supper. After a couple of hours, we met up at The Big Bang, a dueling piano bar on Broadway. I’d never been to one of these places, and it was pretty crazy. It was loud, raucous, bawdy, and an all-out blast. All things considered, the first day of the meeting went pretty well.

On the way back to the hotel, someone suggested that we stop through the Waffle House that is a hundred yards from the hotel. I’m riding with LilDawg, BuckeyeCraazy, and UTErin, and they’re looking at me as if I ought to find the number of this place so we can call in a to-go order. I tell them that I’ve never been in a Waffle House before in my life, and I haven’t a clue what to order. So they order their food, and by the time that they pass the phone to me, we’re pulling into the parking lot. Wonderful timing. They convince me to get an order of grits to try and eat. We end up eating our breakfast haul in Erin and BC’s room. LilDawg insists that the grits are the best thing since sliced bread, but I found them to be more efficient as brick mortar than as breakfast food.

Saturday morning dawned with continental breakfast at the hotel, then everyone converging on the Vanderbilt campus. We got parked about 10:30, and several of us walked into the campus to find a bookstore so we could get some souvenir swag. The campus of Vanderbilt University is a gorgeous little gem in the middle of Nashville. Both Badge and I commented that it was very similar to Northwestern University in Evanston (small but, and then a massive, modern hospital).

We had been recommended to a joint called Sam’s Place for watching the day’s games. A friend of Burny had recommended it, and it did not disappoint. The place opened at 11:00, and before long it became college football central. Other than our bunch, I counted at least a dozen different school colors in there, just for the early games. Sadly, unlike in the Buck Owens song, there were no waitresses named Hattie from Cincinnati or Rita, who hailed from Pasadena.

The 18 of us took over a corner of the front veranda, pushing tables together in a large L formation. At first, the waitress who was working our section of the restaurant was worried about us making our $10 minimum. We assured her that she would not be disappointed. The food and beer quickly started flowing while we digested the early games. Gator and I focused on the 91st Little Brown Jug, while everyone else paid attention to their games. If their team was on, they watched it, but most of the freelancers were watching the wild gunfight-at-the-OK-Corral that was Kentucky-Georgia. For a neutral observer, it must have been an interesting thing to see 18 different people screaming and yelling at different screens at the same time, trying to figure out which was which.

At this point, I should also mention that the city was overflowing with Florida Gator fans. I had at least six of them on my plane down from Chicago on Thursday. The actual makeup of the crowd at Sam’s was very heavy Florida Gator, with the other colors sprinkled among them, much like chunks of ice in a giant blue Slurpee.

The early games ended, and it appeared there was a bit of a “shift change,” if you will. Folks from the early teams left, and fans from the late games came in. Included in this bunch were a few Penn State fans in the back of the restaurant, and a decent-sized contingent of bammers at the other end of the veranda. As the game went on, someone in the group of bammers kept letting off these high-pitched, grating, fingernails-on-the-blackboard style screams whenever anything happened to Bama. Razorchique thought that it was a guy for a little while, only to find that the guilty part was a small, 5-foot-nothing beanpole of a girl.

We took our group picture when all three of the 2:30 games were at halftime, and then things got REAL interesting in the second half. Penn State had their chances to draw away from Iowa, but the chickens played some tough D. For one afternoon, all the SEC folks in the bar became really big Iowa Hawkeye fans. Also, for some reason that I could not fathom, all the Florida fans in the bar were cheering for Bama.

The crowd exploded when Iowa hit their FG, but Badge and I laughed our butts off when the Idiots Out Wandering Around students charged the field with one second left, setting up what could have been a big choke job. But give the Hawks credit, they were able to avoid a The Play-like return. They’re going to be a tough out the rest of the way.

The seminal moment of the weekend took place late in regulation of LSU-Alabama, after PSU-Iowa had ended. All of us at the CFN table were cheering like mad for LSU, partially because MikeDeTiger was in our midst, and mostly because the shrieking bammer from the other end of the veranda was getting REALLY annoying at this point. Anyway, John Parker Wilson broke off a 40-something yard touchdown run. The Florida and Bama fans were going nuts, with plenty of shrieking. The more eagle-eyed observers among us had noticed that the Bama backfield was littered with yellow penalty markers. Sure enough, it was a holding penalty that wiped the touchdown, and caused our table to go just as ballistic. The blocked field goal at the end of regulation drew a similar reaction.

After the end of overtime, we all closed our tabs, and then the group split up. Big kudos to the waitress. How she kept our drinks filled and the tabs straightened out is beyond me. Most folks went to another bar, but some of us decided to see if we could actually get into the game without forking over an arm and a leg. Several contacts assured us that it wouldn’t be any trouble. The walk to the stadium was kind of surreal. Normally, with the game a short time away from kicking off, there’s a lot more buzz and foot traffic around the campus. There wasn’t much of anything happening until you were three blocks from the stadium. We hawked tickets for $40, and went in, hoping that we could meet up at some point. The five of us that went in were SDF, MDT, LilDawg, BuckeyeCraazy, and myself.

Vanderbilt Stadium is by far the smallest stadium in the SEC, and may well be the smallest football stadium in any BCS conference east of the Rockies. I’ve been to a few stadiums in different portions of the country, and I have to tell you that this was the worst college football stadium I’ve ever been in. Even Reser Stadium at Oregon State, which has a similar capacity, is vastly superior to Vandy. Most of the places I’ve been would eat this joint for lunch and still have room for dessert. When we got in there, the stadium was well over half full of Gator fans. I am aware that football is a distant afterthought on the brainpower campuses, but I didn’t think it was that bad.

Either way, this was the first time I’d seen an SEC game in person. A basketball-sized pep band from Florida was there, and they were keeping the crowd well into it. On the field, the Gators were doing whatever they wanted to whenever they wanted to. The offense looked like a well-oiled machine that was FAST. The Gators didn’t start in their own territory until after the second quarter, which meant that all the action was in front of us in the early goings.

The five of us got back together early in the second quarter, and we quickly found ourselves surrounded by kindred folks who wore a similar spread of gear that we had (We had tOSU, Miami Ohio, and a couple of others around us). They thought it was really cool how we all post on a message board and get together once a year.

The game was lousy, and the only thing that kept us in there as long as we did (we stayed to the end of the 3rd when Urban Meyer pulled Tim Tebow and Co.) was the funnel cakes the ladies ordered at halftime. BuckeyeCraazy’s peacoat ended up covered with powdered sugar, since she happened to be on the downwind end of all the funnel cakes.

Once we got out of the stadium, we started calling around to see where everyone went. It turns out that most folks had gone back to the hotel, with a few going back to bed. We stopped at a Quick-Sack for some beer, and joined the gang that was at our Holiday Inn Express. We watched the postgame from USC-Cal and Texas Tech-Oklahoma, drank more beer, and discussed where we might want to take this flying circus next year.

On Sunday morning, the people who were staying at our hotel, plus SDF and MDT who cabbed it over from their hotel, invaded the Waffle House that was a hundred yards from our hotel. I’m a big fan of the waffles and hash browns, but the biscuits and gravy were ice cold. We bid our adieus outside here, which is always tough, but we know that we’ll do it again before too long.

Granted, I’ve only been to two of these things, but I’m always a bit sad when I leave events like this. I’ve had a really crappy-ass year, but I know that for one weekend every year, everything can be right with the world.

The drive from Midway Airport in Chicago back to Minnesota was long but uneventful. I will let you guys in on one thing I do every time I drive across the border from Wisconsin to Minnesota. As part of a college song podcast, I have “Varsity” on my iPod. I play “Varsity,” then go right to the Rouser with the full opening fanfare. I’ve timed it such that when they get to the start of the Rouser, I’m crossing the river bridge into civilization/Minnesota. On a related note, I also play “Hail Minnesota” whenever I leave the state. Go figure.

I’ve got two more college football games on my slate, this week in Madison for the Axe game, then the last Gopher game ever in the Metrodome the following Saturday. I’ll catch you then.

GR

“Trip Recap: Ohio State at Wisconsin, October 4, 2008”

2008-11-10T19:44:00.000-08:00

“Trip Recap: Ohio State at Wisconsin, October 4, 2008”
OR
“I didn’t just drive all the way from Minneapolis to watch an NFL game, did I?”

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2008
CAMP RANDALL STADIUM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
MADISON, WISCONSIN

This past weekend brought me down to Madison for a rare night game at Camp Randall Stadium, this time against the Ohio State Buckeyes.

Perhaps I had better back up and cue you in on the backstory of what brought me to Madtown this weekend. It’s been a crazy month for me. I’ve moved back to the Midwest from Seattle over the course of September, as well as dealing with/staying out of the way of all of my blood relatives at a wedding in Colorado. To celebrate surviving this gauntlet, as well as reinforcing my enjoyment of college football, I asked 847Badgerfan if I could come down to Madison for a night game at the Camp against Ohio State. He gladly agreed, and I made the necessary arrangements to make the epic drive across Wisconsin. Before you call me bat-guano crazy for going to Madison to see a non-Gopher Badger game, I like college football too much to let something petty like archrivalry get in the way of enjoying the game.

Other than the 400-mile distance, the drive from Minneapolis to Kenosha on Friday afternoon was uneventful, for the most part. On I-894 around downtown Milwaukee, a truck was stopped in the left lane, jamming up traffic on the southbound side. I thought he had killed his motor until I got around him and saw why he was stopped in the traffic lane instead of pulled off to the median. It appeared that someone had hit a dog, and he stopped in the traffic lane to get the corpse off to the side. That drive should get a nice fat illegal stopping ticket.

I’ve been trying all summer to get down there, but this was the first time I’d been down to see Badge’s boat. He has a very nice setup, and the other folks that were there were fantastic people. We ate dinner with a one of them at the Kenosha Yacht Club. Badge’s friend then brought us back to his boat and served us the most lethal white Russians any of us have ever had. There was no messing around with those drinks. After three of them, we staggered across the dock to our sleeping quarters.

6:00 Saturday morning came way too early, and after hitting the boathouse for a shower, we were on the road to Madison. Before we got on I-94 in Kenosha, we stopped into a McDonalds for a McMuffin to keep our stomachs occupied. I saw a stack of Milwaukee Journal-Sentinels stacked next to the register. Something about “UW band” caught my eye, and I went over for a closer look. The headline, above the fold and in boldface, said something along the lines of “UW Marching Band Shelved.” Below was the article outlining why the band had gotten suspended. I showed this in disbelief to Badge and Gator, and it took a while for the news to sink into their heads as well. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that they were feeling just as awful as I was.

There was a lot of company on 94 between Milwaukee and Madison, but for some reason the coffee I had with breakfast was doing nothing for me, as I was yawning like crazy all the way up to the hotel. We parked the other vehicles at the hotel, then headed over to their tailgate lot on Regent Street. We arrived shortly after 10:00 AM, and there was already more life around the campus than there has ever been 9 hours before a night kickoff in Minneapolis.

Between my seized-up back and a wicked hangover from those white Russians, I was not feeling too chipper. After the first round of brats had been served, I crawled up in the Tahoe for a brief siesta. I was out of it for about 40 minutes, and I felt much better once I woke up.

The band suspension was the talk of the tailgate, at least in the early goings. Personally, I’m withholding judgment on the situation. On the one hand, not having the band at Camp Randall was a loss not only for the Badgers and their faithful, but all of college football. If the University of Wisconsin Marching Band isn’t the best band in the country, they aren’t far from it. This also has the makings of a nasty power struggle, with all accounts saying that the director made no consultation with any higher-ups before making the call. On the other hand, whatever happened on that bus must have been a real doozy in order for the director to get that wound up. Regardless of what comes out of this, I think it’s safe to say that the UW band won’t be going to Ann Arbor again anytime soon.

The spread of food put out at the tailgate was hard to beat. Bratwurst on multiple occasions, hamburgers, hot homemade soup, pulled pork, macaroni and cheese, lots of dips, bacon-wrapped jalapeños, and probably a dozen other things that I forgot about. Every bit of it was fantastic. I really liked the mac-and-cheese, not just for the spiral noodles they used, but whatever else got mixed into it. Someone said it was creamed corn.

Gatorama had not been feeling well all day, and around 5:00 he decided to go back to the hotel. When trying to unload his ticket, I found out the hard way how rancid the re-sale market was. A little while later, WifeOfBadgerfan went back to the hotel to stay with him. I managed to get $45 for the two of them, and I had to work very hard to get that much.

The band getting shelved made a big difference in game atmosphere. I’ve been there before for a Gopher game, and even though the game was effectively over midway through the first, the band kept everyone much more involved than if nothing was keeping the crowd around. Canned music played with the volume pegged doesn’t make for much of a college football game. I didn’t drive all the way down from Minneapolis just to watch an NFL game. However, the crowd in there last night was a very smart bunch. They knew when to

I also found it VERY strange that the recording of “Varsity” that was played during halftime wasn’t played after the end of the game. The tOSU fans and team were belting away on “Carmen Ohio” even without any musical accompaniment, “Varsity” shows up at all other Badger events, and even “Hail Minnesota” is a postgame staple at all of our athletic events. Someone dropped the ball big-time on that one.

On the way back to the tailgate lot, a conversation was overheard between two Ohio State fans. It went something like this: “I have heard nothing good about the Wisconsin fans ever since that 2003 game. I was the only Buckeye in a whole section of Badgers, but it ended up being a great time as we were surrounded by great people.” I didn’t notice any other altercations between Buckeyes and Badgers, and the Buckeye fans that came by our lot were all very friendly.

The group that tailgates with Badge has some of the nicest folks you ever met in your life. I plan on being down there again on November 15 for the Gopher game.

Sunday morning I went to Mass at the UW Newman Center at the west end of State Street, then ate breakfast at Mickey’s Dairy Bar, across from the Fieldhouse on Monroe Street. Mickey’s is a must-eat place for visitors to Madison, as the pancakes are big and very, very tasty. It poured rain most of the way back to the Twin Cities, so I got a free car wash out of the deal.

Some brief thoughts on the actual game:

This isn’t the first time that BB’s time management skills have cost the Badgers a win, and nor will it be the last.

I can see John Clay becoming an Anthony Davis-style thorn in the Gophers’ side. It seemed as if Davis always went for about 250 yards and 3 TDs whenever he played the Gophs. However, that would require the coaches to keep giving him the rock, and the Badger coaching staff seems quite content with PJ Hill getting stuffed at the line of scrimmage every time.

Terelle Pryor is a horse. There were a few rookie mistakes (a couple of bad sacks where he had all day to throw it away and took a 10+ yard loss), but there was still plenty of brilliance too. He was able to shake off the first man more than once without slowing down.

Say what you will about the Badgers’ inability to defend it, but that option was a brilliant call by tOSU on the go-ahead TD. Put the ball in the hands of your two best players (Pryor at QB and Wells as the pitchman) and let ‘em loose. Granted, Wells hadn’t been doing much in the second half, but it was still a great call. I once saw the Gophers run an option on a had-to-have 2-point conversion, with Brian Cupito at QB and Marion Barber III and Lawrence Maroney as the pitchmen. Needless to say, they got the conversion.

If the Badgers had Adam Weber at the helm, they would be undefeated and a sizable favorite over Penn State this Saturday night. Everidge single-handedly cost them this game. On the last series, the Badgers had way too far to go and not enough time to get there for Everidge to be running around in the backfield like that, on 1st down no less. If no one is open, roll out, throw it away, and try it again on second down. And make sure you don’t go over the line of scrimmage before you do. Instead, the last interception gets thrown without a single red jersey within striking distance of catching the pass.

A big thank you to everyone who I ran into this weekend for making it a blast. If you ever get the chance to go to a night game in Madison, go!

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

2008-07-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

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

TR: Minnesota @ Iowa, 11/9/07

2008-07-14T14:53:00.000-07:00

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2007
KINNICK STADIUM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
IOWA CITY, IOWA

This past weekend, I traveled east to a football game I’d been looking forward to for a long, long time: my third trip to Kinnick Stadium for the Floyd of Rosedale game between the Minnesota Gophers and the Iowa Hawkeyes.

My plans for staying on Friday night in Iowa City went by the boards on Wednesday night. I called my good friend Gatorama (from the CollegeFootballNews.com message boards), who I knew would be in Madison this weekend for Wisconsin-Michigan, and asked if I could come up there and crash in his hotel room on Friday night. He agreed, and so I roared up the Illinois Tollway to Madison after I finally got out of O’Hare.

After jawing with Gator for a while out at the hotel, we headed into campus. While driving around, I got a call from a friend of mine who runs track for the Badgers, and we met her at a Noodles west of campus. It had been some time since I’d seen her, so it was nice catching up on things. Also, one of 847badgerfan’s friends came out and met us at this particular Noodles.

Lindsey went back to her place, and we went back to the hotel, where by this time 847 had gotten in from Chicago, so we jawboned with him for some time while he got some of his breakfast ready for tomorrow morning at the tailgate. We then went over to this supper club in Sun Prairie, where the special was your typical Friday fish fry. Perch was the fish of choice, and when it was brought forth, the slices were thin, over-breaded, and over-cooked. The Spotted Cow was the sole redeeming feature of the dinner.

After dinner, the Rollicking SUV O’Fun headed into campus. I was dropped off at Brothers to meet another friend who goes to grad school at UW. Unlike the last time I was in the Madison Brothers, the bar wasn’t jammed to the gunnels, so one could actually move around. I hung out with my friend for a bit, then trekked across campus to the Big 10, which is where 847, Gator, et al. went after dropping me off. They had fallen in with a group of Michigan fans, and they were having a good time discussing Gator’s exploits, and the prospects for the next day’s game. We stayed here until we called it quits around 11:30.

3 AM wake-up calls on consecutive mornings are hard on a man. They’re even harder when the second one occurs in a time zone that is two hours earlier than what your body has been. Still, with apologies to a schooner of coffee, I made it into Iowa City as the sun rose over a gorgeous Saturday morning in Big Ten country. I ended up parking in a grassy field at the end of Olive Court, and walked into the campus and the stadium.

Iowa City is similar to Madison in that there is no one spot where all the tailgating takes place. Every nook and cranny is filled with tailgaters, including my group of guys I was tailgating with. Call me a bit strange, but that kind of cold (sharp, brisk, dry cold) actually felt pretty good compared with the wet, damp crud that often settles into Seattle. Plus the sun was out, which you all know if a rarity in a Pacific Northwest winter.

After drinking, carousing, and carrying on, it was time to go into Kinnick Stadium. Another friend of mine from Davenport met me on the way into the place, and we went up to our seats. However, I had to use the bathroom first. BIG mistake. The men’s room under Section 109 was, without question, the WORST line I have ever seen at a men’s bathroom. I didn’t do the end-around, which meant it was over 10 agonizing minutes by the time I finally got up to one of the individual urinals. It was bad.

The game has been discussed ad nauseam. When I first bought the tickets, all I asked for was a competitive game for coming all the way from Seattle. Watching college football on a beautiful November afternoon, when your Gophers play the most competitive game they’ve played in some time in a road rivalry game, it does not get much better than that.

After the game was over, my friend from Davenport took me out to this restaurant on Mormon Trek Road (or whatever it’s called) just south of I-80, the name of which I cannot remember to save myself. Either way, the food was tasty and reasonably-priced. During the dinner, I could also feel the coffee schooner wearing off rather hurriedly, which meant that by the time the check came, I had the 40-foot stare of an exhausted guy.

The friend drove me back to Olive Court, and while walking to my car, I was summoned over by an Iowa fan parked in a yard, who noticed all my Gopher gear. He asked if I had a good time in IC, and I assured him that I had indeed. He said that he was from a small town about 50 miles southwest of Lake Okoboji, and that he liked seeing visiting fans make their way to Kinnick. He (and his companions with him) was genuinely impressed when I told him that I had come all the way from Seattle just for the game, and that I was already planning on Madison in 2008. Both of us agreed that with college football, it is the pre-and-postgame experience that matters, and we had a very nice chat, ending with him wishing me safe travels back to Washington. I have had experiences like that on all three of my visits to Iowa City.

I drove out to my hotel on the Coralville Strip, and after napping, showing, and changing clothes, Saturday night was your typical fun-filled, alcohol-fueled evening on the downtown Ped Mall.
After Mass at the UI Newman Center the following morning, I went over to the Hamburg Inn on Lynn Street for breakfast, to make another notch in my belt of Legendary Big Ten Breakfast Establishments. The Hamburg Inn seems to be the epicenter of presidential visits to Iowa City, with the Coffee Bean Caucus under the front counter, all the bumper stickers from the major-party candidates, and more pictures of past Presidents than can be hung on the wall. Oh, and the food isn’t bad either. Pancakes almost as thick as Mickey’s in Madison, and hash browns just as good as the ones at Al’s. Plus it’s CHEAP. What cost me $5 and change would have run me twice that out here in Seattle. Hamburg Inn is definitely a winner.

Iowa and North Dakota may be a couple of the worst states to drive across, but Illinois has to be right there. On the East-West Tollway back to O’Hare on Sunday afternoon/evening, I was cooking along at 75-80 MPH all the way between Davenport and the outskirts of Chicago, and it seemed as if I was going NOWHERE in a hurry. Plus if new tollways ever get built, they better go with the Pennsylvania model (ticket in, ticket out) instead of the Chicago model (stop every 20 miles and toss a fistful of coins into the hopper). Much more efficient that way.

Do new cars right off the line take a while to get up to their optimum fuel mileage? I rented a Pontiac Grand Am, and it had 225 miles on it when I left the Alamo rental facility at O’Hare at noon Friday. In the three segments of the trip (O’Hare-Madison, Madison-Iowa City, and IC-O’Hare), the car got 19, 20, and 23 MPG respectively. If I’d have known that, I’d have kept the rental as an econo-box, instead of giving a car its “shakedown cruise.”

Overall, this was another fun trip to Iowa City, and with this my live college football viewing has ended for the season. I’ve seen more different teams in person this year (Gophers, Iowa, Washington, Boise State, Ohio State, USC, Oregon, Texas, and Nebraska) than I’ve seen in any other year before this, and I’m very grateful for the ability to be able to do this. Good night, and Go Gophers!

TR: CFN Board Meeting Austin 2007; 10/25/07-10/28/07

2008-07-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2007
SEVERAL VENUES AROUND THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
AUSTIN, TEXAS

In my 23 years on this earth, I’ve done my share of gutsy, unusual things. Forked out good money to see your team play even though you know they’re going to get butchered? Check. Skydived? Check. Moved halfway across the country by myself? Check. Ride a roller coaster 17 straight times without leaving the loading platform? Check. But flown halfway across the country to meet some folks who post on the same message board as I do? Haven’t done that yet. Therefore, as my Southwest Airlines place roared off the deck at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, I really wasn’t sure what the hell I was getting myself into.

I actually flew to Austin on Thursday night, and was met at the airport by Erin (UTerin03). I had my first taste of authentic Austin food at the Magnolia Café on South Congress on Thursday night. I could definitely tell that everything I ate had been prepared fresh, with quality makings. All of Erin’s friends bailed out on her for going to the bar that night, which was for the better, as I was pretty wiped out after a long day at the office and 5 hours of flights.
Friday morning I finally met razorchique, KSULady, and Gatorama in the hotel lobby, and I rode with them down to Ruby’s. I took a liking to the place immediately. It is your typical Texas hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint, and I’m partial to places like that. I also had my first taste of the national beer of Texas, Lone Star, and it does a good job of washing down some of that FANTASTIC brisket.

Roby’s is where most of the Board Meeting met up for the first time. The four of us ran into MikeDeTiger, SunDevilFroggy, 847badgerfan, hooky, BurntEyes, and several others that I can't remember off hand.

After Ruby’s, a few of us went over to Cain and Abel’s to have a drink and chill out for a while. I must say that Cain and Abel’s is my kind of bar. Good atmosphere, $2 pints of Dos Equis, and a jukebox where “I’ll Just Sit Here and Drink” by Merle Haggard was the song that stuck in my craw.

BurntEyes and badgerfan needed to get some smokes, plus I wanted to walk through the campus, so BurntEyes led badgerfan, and myself (correct me if there were more of us) through the campus. It’s a very nice campus, and definitely has a big-league feel to it (compared with my foray into Eugene). Badgerfan said that it definitely felt like a Big Ten campus, but with a Southwestern flavor to it.

En route to the tailgate site, we stopped at the souvenir shop at Darrel K. Royal Texas Memorial Stadium. It’s your typical team store, but trying to find the bathroom was a confusing maze. I picked up a t-shirt to verify that I have indeed been to Texas.

The laws of Texas are significantly different than anywhere else I’ve been to when it comes to drinking in public. Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Washington lawmen would give you a $300 open-container ticket for drinking on the sidewalk (and be harda$$es in the process). Seattle cops would give you an additional ticket for not putting the drink in a plastic cup. Texas lawmen will let you drink on the sidewalk, but not on the state parking lots until they open for tailgaters to set up at 6 PM Friday night. This peculiar setup was demonstrated to us when we got to utee’s tailgate site about 5:00 Friday afternoon. Several of the tailgating setups were parked along the sidewalk waiting for the 6:00 bell, and they were already having a good ‘ol time, throwing washers and drinking beer. We helped utee get his tents set up, then went to Badgerfan’s hotel for him to change, then went to dinner.

Dinner was up at Trudy’s, just down the block from Rudy’s. Erin had raved so much about their Mexican martinis, I had no choice but to try one. Very tasty. I also had a mixed grill plate, and that was fantastic. If anyone complains about not eating or drinking well this weekend, it’s their own damn fault.

The party then shifted to Cheers on 6th Street. The waitress with the shot tray made out like gangbusters. When she came upstairs where the group was, someone suggested buying the whole tray. My hat was passed around, and there was a fair bit more collected than what she was willing to sell us the shots for. This happened twice over the course of the evening. I also had a nice talk with the barman about how the RRS is conducted up in Dallas.

Shortly before midnight, the folks who were riding in Gator’s car back to the hotel decided to call it a night, in preparation for the next day’s long haul.

Wow. A page and a half, and this is only Friday. Hard to tell how long this thing is gonna go for the Saturday recap.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2007
DARRELL K. ROYAL TEXAS MEMORIAL STADIUM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
AUSTIN, TEXAS

Saturday morning dawned bright and clear, albeit a bit chilly, on the plains of central Texas. It took a little while for me to fully come around, after short rest the past two nights and lots of cold beer the previous day.

When I saw Gator outside my hotel room shortly after 9:00 Saturday morning, he reported that I looked awful. I didn’t disagree with him, but assured him that once I got some food and some beer in me, I’d look and feel better. The whole bunch of us that were riding in Gator’s car piled in, and off to downtown we went. We ended up parking in a lot on 15th and Congress for the staggering cost of $5. Who said game-day parking had to be expensive?

After we piled out of the car (a la the clowns piling out of the Volkswagen), we made up an impressive menagerie of different school colors. Shirts, jackets, and hats from Florida, Minnesota, Kansas State, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona State, and Auburn made up our little group as we walked the three blocks or so over to utee’s tailgate. Several times we were asked if we were lost, and once we explained what our motive for being in Austin was, they thought it was very cool. In fact, we were offered beers at several points during the walk, but we declined.

I mentioned earlier that we helped utee set his tents up on Friday evening. By the time we got over there about 9:30 Saturday morning, he had a very impressive spread out there. Beer kegs on ice, plus more cans in an iced tub in the event we drank the kegs out, plus lots of other beverages. A dish set in a bucket of sand to pick up ESPN and all the early games of the day. Lots of chairs, and the breakfast tacos out and ready to eat. An impressive setup indeed. Utee’s organization donates all proceeds from the tailgate to noteworthy Austin-area charities, and we were all glad to contribute. I also thought utee’s Texas hockey sweater (for those of you who aren’t too familiar with hockey, it’s frequently called a sweater) was one of the more unique things I’ve seen.

The rest of the group trickled in from their hotel rooms over the next hour or so. By 10:00, everyone was there and wearing their respective gear. I believe the final tally of schools represented at the tailgate was 12 (Host school Texas, Florida, Minnesota, Kansas State, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona State, Auburn, Georgia, LSU, Nebraska, and Wisconsin). Also, there were folks there in gear of Penn State, Illinois, and Oregon, but I don’t know how they fit into this whole situation. It was an impressive blend of colors, and the only regret of the weekend was that we didn’t get a group shot of all of us in our gear.

Around 10:30, utee and the other Longhorns in the group led us on a walkaround of the tailgating going on in that part of campus. I’ve never seen so many meat smokers in one place in my entire life. As with before, our group got a lot of jokes, jests, and stares as we maneuvered our way through south Austin. We walked past the State Museum of Texas, which looks to be the kind of place I could lose myself in for a full day or two. While we were told that the number of elaborate setups is down from many big games (Ohio State, A&M), there were still a lot of big rigs there.

We got back in time to see the early games get under way. Badgerfan and Gator sat down to take in Wisconsin-Indiana on the big TV, while Texas Tech-Colorado occupied the other one. By now, the main food had been set out, and we set out to devouring the catered Tex-Mex, and washing it down with all that cold beer.

I had to find an ATM, and I was told there was one down at the Scholzgarten, a few blocks down San Jacinto from the tailgate. I stepped in the door and into a sea of red. Turns out I had wandered into the semi-official Big Red Bar in Austin. I later learned that after the Big 12 was formed, the first time that Nebraska came to Austin, Texas fans were surprised that the visiting team had even found a bar to congregate at, much less show up in the sheer numbers that Cornhusker fans tend to.

At this point, it was getting really crowded around the tailgate. We stood around enjoying the tailgating scene, discussing football in general, and finding tickets for the members of our party who wanted them and didn’t already have them.

A little after 1:30, our group (Erin, Mike, TigerKing, SDF, Razor, and myself) headed into the stadium. I figured our seats were going to be a ways up in the upper deck, but after huffing, puffing, and damn near blowing the house down, it occurred to me that Row 54 was not only high up in the stadium, it was the VERY TOP ROW. The view of the field was good, though. It was just like watching a game on TV from Ohio State.

The University of Texas Marching Band, the Show Band of the Southwest, has a very nice pregame show. However, am I the only one who found it more than a little awkward to announce the emergency evacuation procedures AFTER the band has taken the field and began their pregame show? Also, “The Eyes of Texas” does a good job of pulling double duty. When played at a fast pace, it’s a good fight song. When played at a slow, deliberate pace, it makes for a fine school alma mater. The tune for “Eyes” also happens to be the same as that of “I’ve Been Working On The Railroad.”

The game has been discussed ad nauseam, and the second quarter was so exciting that I apparently fell asleep while leaning against the top wall. Erin brought binoculars, and they were used frequently throughout the game. SDF also used his cell phone to find the answer to this past week’s Resident Genius question.

For as many people as DKR seats, I didn’t find that it was much more than average. I realize that this may have been a function of being at the very top of the stadium, but the place wasn’t very loud either. Husky Stadium in Seattle is still the loudest college stadium I’ve been to, and also the most unique/scenic. After the end of the game, it took quite a while for us to get down to the concourse of the upper deck. We waited for the women to use the facilities, and took some pictures as the sun set on a gorgeous day for football in Texas.

On the way back to the tailgate, we stopped at one of the T-shirt wagons so that TigreRex could get a souvenir of his visit to Austin. While we were waiting, a man who was so drunk he could hardly stand accosted MDT and started talking smack about LSU and Texas. After a few minutes, his accomplices were able to drag him away from our group, and we all completely cracked up and laughed all the way back.

We thanked utee for letting us crash his tailgate party, found our way to Gator’s car, and after driving around what seemed like half of Austin, ended up at Sports Bar. It was crowded, and it took a while to get our food, but the turkey melt sure did hit the spot, and the onion rings were fabulous. Mr. and Mrs. Badgerfan both left during this time, and it was too bad we didn’t see them again before I left for Seattle the next morning. The rest of us were perfectly content to sit at our tables/booth, drink beer, and watch football.

Strangely enough, for a bar in Texas on Saturday during college football season, the sound from Game 3 of the World Series was being put on the house sound system, instead of any of the many, many football games on the different TVs. At the back of the bar, there were a big crowd of Red Sox fans cheering on the other big projection in the back of the bar. There were also delegations from both Ohio State and Penn State in the bar, watching the OSU-PSU game from Happy Valley on one of the big projection monitors. Since it was Halloween weekend, one guy had dressed up like Coach Tressel, sweater vest and all, and I had to get a picture with him (it’s in my Photobucket album).

Let no one accuse KSULady of not being a passionate Wildcats fan. You could see her blood pressure going up during the third quarter of the KU-A&M game when the Wildcats were taking it to the Aggies, and most other folks in the bar cheering for the Jayhawks out of their hatred of A&M.

We sat there and drank until halftime of Cal-Arizona State, at which point we headed back to our hotel for a nightcap. Mex had a hard time getting more beer to take back to Razor and KSULady’s hotel room, but get it he did. SDF was able to watch the end of the beatdown his Sun Devils put on Cal, and we sat, drank, talked, laughed, and basically agreed that we were going to SEC country for next year’s Board Meeting. I also suggested not bringing the Board Meeting to Seattle unless we had a booooooooat to stern-gate from near Husky Stadium.

Fate is strange. 48 hours earlier, I hadn’t met any of these crazy folks before in my life. Hell, I’d never been within 500 miles of any of them in my life. I’d only read what scraps they’d posted on an Internet message board. But saying goodbye to everyone that night was like bidding adieu to dear friends that you’ve known forever. Because we are all friends. We have GOT to get together sometime in the spring for a half-year meeting or something. I had way too much fun to wait a year for it.

It’s hard to top Washington State for natural beauty. The approach into Seattle took us south of Stampede Pass before turning over Issaquah and Lake Sammamish. Since it was a clear day, you could see well into the North Cascades National Park to the plane’s right, and the impressive profiles of Mounts Adams, St. Helens, and Rainier to the left. Absolutely beautiful mountain scenery. After leaving the airport, I realized that the fall colors are still in peak around Puget Sound, which meant that the 405 from SeaTac airport around to Eastgate was awash in natural colors. Seattle is badly underrated when it comes to fall colors.

So there it is. My bloated epic of a two-day visit to central Texas. Any questions, comments, or complaints? Send ‘em my way. Thanks to everyone for making it such a great weekend.

TR: Ducks-Dawgs, 10-20-07

2008-07-14T14:46:00.000-07:00

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2007
HUSKY STADIUM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Yesterday, I attended my fourth Washington Husky game of the season, a 55-31 defeat at the hands of the Oregon Ducks.

· The often-ugly rivalry between Oregon and Washington began in the fall of 1948. That year, both Cal and Oregon had gone unbeaten in Pacific Coast Conference play, and it was decided that the presidents of the universities would vote on who would go to the Rose Bowl. It was suspected that the vote would be split between the California schools and the Northwest schools. As it turned out, UW voted for Cal instead of Oregon, sending the Bears to Pasadena, where they would lose 20-10 to Northwestern. Ten years later, the PCC dissolved in a slush fund scandal, and the big schools of the West Coast (Cal, Stanford, USC, UCLA, and UDub) voted the smaller Northwest schools out of their new AAWU, but reneged during the ‘60s and became the Pac-8, and later the Pac-10.

· This political underhandedness has translated to the gridiron over the years. Washington leads the series 58-37-5, and dancing on the home team’s midfield logo (or worse) was often commonplace. There was a period between 1924 and 1967 where UDub refused to go to Eugene, playing at Portland instead. In 1973, Oregon smoked the Dawgs 58-0 at Eugene. This was followed in 1974 by the Ducks getting roasted 66-0 in Seattle. Due to scheduling quirks, only one of the last 6 meetings has been in Seattle, and three straight have been in Eugene…until yesterday.

· Weather was typical Seattle football weather: rain and cold wind off Lake Washington. Husky Stadium is a hulking behemoth on the shore of the lake, but it’s showing it’s age (1920) in some elements, and there is a lot of debate as to what to do with it, either renovate it, wipe it out and rebuild it, or (GASP) move to Seahawk Stadium downtown. That’s enough material for its own column, and I will treat it as such.

· Tailgating around the place is not unlike most college tailgates. It’s very picturesque to see al the boats out on Union Bay that have anchored there and are drinking and carousing before the game, particularly on a day when the weather is clear (i.e. against Boise State back in September). Several waterfront restaurants, the most notable of which is Ivar’s Salmon House, run special gameday charters to Husky Stadium that include pre-sailing buffets. On land, the E-1 and E-12 lots, immediately to the north and south of the athletic facilities, is where most of the tailgating takes place. Seattle has an ordinance against any open containers, so everything must be poured into plastic cups prior to consumption.

· I went into Husky Stadium anticipating coming back to the Gopher Hole and posting something to the effect of “UO’s uniforms are even uglier in the flesh than they are on TV.” Instead, Oregon actually came out with respectable-looking all-white uniforms.

· The same cannot be said for the Oregon Marching Band. The OMB has, without question, the ugliest marching band uniforms of any BCS-conference marching band I’ve seen. In fact, what they wore to Husky Stadium yesterday was so ugly that Google couldn’t even find an image of it. The Oregon Marching Band’s website hasn’t been updated since at least 2006. The band did a short pre-game on-field show, and the crowd booed vehemently the whole time. As for their marching style, they behave a lot more like a drum and bugle corps than a traditional marching band, with fast formation changes, no high-stepping, and a battery of orchestral percussion (xylophones, timpanis, two large hanging bass drums, etc.) set up on the bench area of the field during their halftime show.

· The Husky Marching Band is a traditional marching band that can certainly be mentioned in the same breath as some of their Big Ten brethern as far as quality goes. They employ the typical chair-step marching style, and do a fairly good pre-game show (not nearly as long or as elaborate as the Gopher band, but they do a good job).

· I’m already a page into this and I’m just getting to the game. Oregon won the toss, received, and promptly drew off to a 14-0 lead after their first two possessions. This had all the feeling of a Gopher game in Madison the last decade, except for then Jake Locker unloaded an 82-yard bomb that landed straight into one of UW’s receivers to wake the crowd back up and make it 14-7.

· Dennis Dixon put on one of the most impressive quarterback showings I’ve ever seen in person. Many times over the course of the game he faked handoffs to his backs, and everyone in the stadium bit on it, including cameramen and play-by-play guys. Except Dixon still had the ball and was scrambling 20 yards to the outside.

· Jake Locker, the freshman phenom QB for the Huskies, was no slouch himself. He had been working on his passing touch in the three weeks since I last saw him play against USC, and he wasn’t airmailing passes (like he did twice with potential TDs against the Trojans). Both Boise State and Ohio State fans were heard to remark that they were glad they were playing Locker now, instead of next year or year after, because Locker is scary good. If Tyrone Willingham can get some talent around Locker, the Dawgs will be back in the Pac-10 race before too long.

· The third quarter was a wild shootout if there ever was one. However, by the time time had wound down to around 7 minutes left in the game, Washington had just score to draw within 38-31. At that point, the Ducks had over 600 yards of total offense, and the Dawg defensive backfield looked physically and mentally fried. During the TV timeout after the TD, I had a hunch the Huskies would try a dribble-kick on the ensuing kickoff to try and keep the ball out of Duck hands. Sure enough, they did. One of the Duck up-backs made a spectacular lunge to tip the ball to one of his teammates, and that was the only thing that kept the Dawgs from recovering. This call was NOT popular where I was sitting, although had I been Ty Willingham, I’d have sent in the exact same play.

· For all of its deficiencies, Husky Stadium is LOUD. My seats have all been under the upper deck overhang on the south side, and holy cow did that place ever get loud! Granted, it was louder against USC, but Husky Stadium was howlin’, no pun intended. Camp Randall and Kinnick couldn’t untie Husky Stadium’s boots.

· King County Metro Transit has a substantial network of special game-day services to many of their park-and-rides in the Puget Sound region. Since I live close to one of them (Eastgate Park and Ride), and I’m not tailgating, it makes sense to partake of this service. After the end of the game, Montlake Boulevard is closed to through traffic while a whole fleet of KC Metro buses take folks back to their park-and-rides.

So that’s how my visit to Husky Stadium went. Next weekend I’ll be in Austin, Texas, two weeks after that in Iowa City, and (maybe) the Badger game the week after. Here are some additional links for some of the organizations referenced in this write-up:

Husky Marching Band: http://www.huskymarchingband.com/
Oregon Marching Band: http://omb.uoregon.edu/
Thread at CFN that discusses the animosity between Oregon and Washington:
http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=451#s=451&f=2366&t=652154

TR: UO, OSU, Autzen, and Reser, 8/4/07

2008-07-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I wanted to do once I got settled down here in Seattle was to go check out all of the big-league campuses of the Northwest. Pullmangopher is working on Wazzu, and my tickets for four Husky games are in the mail, and yesterday I got in the car and drove down the I-5 into Oregon, to Eugene and Corvallis and the campuses of the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.

Once you get out of the Portland metro area, I-5 driving through the Willamette Valley is a lot like driving across the Palouse in Eastern Washington on I-90. It is flat, the bridge overpasses are prime Highway Patrol radar spots, and the concept of going faster than 60 mph in the left lane is unheard of.

Of all the BCS-conference universities that I’ve been to the campuses of (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern, Colorado, USC, UCLA, and Washington), they all have the feel (setting, architecture, etc.) of being at a big-time university. After walking around UO for a bit, I got the feel of being at an overgrown community college campus. There just wasn’t the feel to it. No grandiose architecture, no big open assembly spaces, and no charm. The majority of the place looked like it had been thrown up in the immediate aftermath of World War II. I also didn’t like how the campus was integrated into the rest of Eugene. It seems as if the campus was scratched together on the cheapest hunk of land the Board of Regents could find, and then the town just built it’s way out to campus.

Mac Court was one of the few exceptions to this trend. The Art Deco exterior was one of the few scraps of charm in the place. Unfortunately, all the doors were locked, so I can’t report on how the playing surface is.

Hayward Field, the legendary track and field stadium and collegiate stomping grounds of Steve Prefontaine, was being torn up and re-built in preparation for the 2008 US Olympic Trials.
The dirtiest secret that nobody in the Pac-10 wants you to know is that the legendary Autzen Stadium isn’t on campus. The Willamette River and a large park separate the campus from the stadium. Prefontaine’s legacy still looms large over Eugene, 30 years after his death. The woodchip running trails are all dedicated to his memory, and several of the plaques in the park keep mentioning him as an inspiration.

Despite it’s location, Autzen Stadium a.k.a. The House That Phil Knight Built, is everything that is advertised. A gate was open, and I was able to go down onto the field and take a look around. This place is everything that the Big House, Camp Randall, and LA Coliseum are not. Autzen does not try to overwhelm you with sheer numbers. Rather, it’s a small place with the seating going straight up. It actually felt a lot like Kinnick Stadium, except smaller, steeper, and more claustrophobic. I can see why visiting teams have so many problems up there. When the crowd gets going, that bandbox would be hell on earth.

After this, I drove over to the UO Bookstore, and while I waited for AAA to break the keys out of my car, I partook in a Mount Saint Helens pizza at Pegasus Pizza (14th Ave and Alder St.). I’m partial towards pizza with lots and lots of meat on it, and St. Helens failed to disappoint. I think I’m still full from eating all that pizza.

I then made the 45-minute drive up Highway 99W to Corvallis and Oregon State. Going from Eugene to Corvallis would be akin to the U of M bring in Alexandria, and then the St. Paul campus being called Minnesota State and being set in Long Prairie. Highway 99W was, for much of the way, a two lane road through the rural Willamette Valley.

When I arrived at the campus of Oregon State University, there were a lot of cars parked around Reser Stadium and the Gill Coliseum. It soon became clear why. OSU was having an open scrimmage/practice, similar to what the Gophers were doing up at St. John’s, so I didn’t need to sneak around to check out the interior of the stadium.

Prior to the most recent renovations, which took place after the Beavers wiped out Notre Dame in the 2000 Fiesta Bowl, Reser was the poster child for “overgrown high school college football stadium.” Fortunately, the renovations, which redid the far side of the field (behind the visitors bench), remedied that problem. Despite being the smallest football stadium in the Pac-10, it works very nicely for what OSU wants.

I also thought that OSU had much more of a college feel than their brethren in Eugene did. I also kept in mind to expect something more along the lines of the St. Paul campus of the U of M, and I thought the Corvallis campus was very nice.

I could not say the same for the town of Corvallis. The town looked like one of those that needed SOMETHING to be there in the absolute worst possible way. Thankfully for them, the university is an enormous revenue driver, and the businesses I saw in town were clinging hard to the student dollar.

One thing that I’ve noticed in all of the 3 Northwest schools I’ve visited so far is that there aren’t many college bars to be found. Maybe I’m not looking in the right spot, but considering the size of football crowds on Eugene and Corvallis on game days, I’m surprised that there aren’t more bars to be seen. I’d love to be corrected by this by some of the Duck and Beav posters here. Where do you drink (in legal establishments) in either town?

Overall, I enjoyed the day trip down to OSU and UO. I will definitely have to get down to the two places for a game sometime this year.

TR: Six Flags Great America, 6/30/08

2008-07-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 2006
SIX FLAGS GREAT AMERICA
GURNEE, ILLINOIS

Last week I made my annual visit to the Wisconsin Dells, and when I was there, somehow the seed got planted on pushing on another few hours to Six Flags Great America. I spent the next week trying to contact friends who live in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, to no avail. So I bit the bullet and got the cheapest hotel on Expedia within driving distance of SFGAm, which was the Microtel Inn in Racine, Wisconsin. Racine is about 35 minutes north of Gurnee.

I took off at lunchtime on Thursday from my normal job at MnDOT, and after goofing around a bit, headed east on I-94. I have a newfound respect for U of Minnesota students who come here from the east coast of Wisconsin, because the drive was a pain in the butt. However, making the Ho-Chunk Nation pay for some of your expenses en route doesn’t hurt. I get to Racine intact, but exhausted, and don’t stay up very long.

Friday morning, after jamming myself full of IHOP pancakes, I took the free highway down to SFGAm. I paid the $15 (gulp) to the troll at the toll plaza, and parked front and center, which was considerably closer to the front gate than the $20 preferred parking lot. I got there about 9:10, and by 9:30, the area between the ticket windows and metal detectors was filled with people. Being used to the size of Valleyfair, where a crowd like this at T-minus 30 minutes usually meant a very crowded park, I thought that was going to happen here. The metal detectors opened up at 9:40, and let the crowd fill in the front plaza. At 9:50, the pre-open show started with a perfect way to open the long 4th of July weekend, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A family from Sedalia, Missouri had been taken up to the upper deck of the carousel to be the official “first ride of the day. This took place to much fanfare, and promptly at 10 AM CDT, the rope dropped, and the crowd took off.

Having read the SFGAm tip thread, I took off for Superman: Ultimate Flight (coaster credit #44), as well as half the crowd in the front plaza. We arrived at the entrance to S:UF, and stopped. And waited. The line kept getting longer and longer, and by the time the queue opened, 20 minutes later, the crowd was all the way back to the carousel. Since I was close enough to the front of the line, I decided to go to the front row, since there was just about no one else in the front row line.

When I got to the front of line, three trains later, I emptied my pockets to the cubbyholes, and sat in the very comfortable seats, but then the seats turned forwards. This was my first flyer, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from the restraints. They were very unusual in that your butt is completely out of the chair during most of the ride. The flying sensation is awesome, and then you hit the pretzel. Holy crap, was that fun. After that, the ride just fizzles out. After we got back, the line was already back into the queue mazes near the front. When I was waiting impatiently outside the line at the open, my logic was either wait 20 minutes now or wait for 2 hours later.

Keeping in with the tradition of hitting the low-capacity stuff first, I headed over to Vertical Velocity, but along the way I got my credit on Rajun Cajun (#45). Standard Reverchon spinning mouse, as in it spins like a crazy dude. Then over to V2 (#46). Same ride as Steel Venom here at VF, but with a slightly different belt configuration. I was enlisted as a partner for a group of three where one rider didn’t want to be flying solo. V2 seemed to have a little stronger kick of air than Venom did in Row 4.

Next on the circuit was Iron Wolf (#47), a primitive B&M standup. This ‘ol boy was no Riddler. It has not aged well. Back on Revolution, I was tall enough to sit over the top of the OTSRs. On Iron Wolf, I had the exact opposite problem. I was tall enough to get my ears boxed out. Also, the trains were not exactly aesthetically pleasing. One and done.

Since I had seen Déjà Vu (#48) running, I figured I better get that credit before it goes down mechanical. The station for this looks like the starting gate at your friendly neighborhood horse racing track. The operations were such that the line was long, but they were doing a good job of cranking people through the ride. I had no problems with height (I’m close to the 76” listed maximum height). These Deja Vus get kind of a bum rap as far as the ride goes. It’s a fun ride, I had no headbanging, and it was doing a good job of chewing through a line.

After the Vu, I headed over to the Great Southwest for some B&M goodness, Raging Bull (#49). The line was back to where the queue goes down the steps. It looked like it was going to be a long wait, but boy was I wrong. The line was one of the fastest moving ones I’ve ever seen, and I was through the ride in less than half an hour. As for the ride itself, wow! Lots of kick and floater airtime, smooth as glass, and a great crew! If this isn’t a Top 10 steel, it’s a rotten shame.

I’ve cleaned up the steel credits, so it’s time to get the woodies. Since Viper (#50) was close by, I headed there. The line looked very long, though. But I was proved wrong again. This was another fast-moving line. I sat in the very back, and the ride was nothing too spectacular.

Next came the long, long walk back to American Eagle. This is the one of the longest queues I have ever seen. It’s a long hike out to where the line splits for the Red and Blue trains. LONG hike. I started on the Blue side (#51), and got a ride a lot like Viper. Kinda smooth, fast, but not much in the way of either floater air or kicks of air. Same with the Red side (#52). However, contrary to reports seen here on TPR and elsewhere, my second ride on the Red train actually ran racing against the Blue train, and it wasn’t until this happened that I noticed the trim on the Red side going into the helix. Either way, either side of Eagle wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t SO DAMN FAR TO GET BACK TO THE LOADING PLATFORM!

It’s a hot day, and I’m thinking about going over to SFGAm’s new Hurricane Harbor waterpark. But first, I decide to go over to the original Batman: The Ride (#53). I notice that unlike the queue out at SFMM, which is themed like a disaster area, the theme for the SFGAm queue is a construction site by Gotham Public Works. The line had some great techno music in the queue, until the CD ran out. Next CD up: the batman soundtrack with “Kiss from a Rose” by Seal on it. It was a bit unusual hearing “Kiss from a Rose” in the queue line for a major roller coaster. But the ride was just as I expected it to be: fast, forceful, and fun. Rode in Row 2 first, then row 8. Great ride.

After this, I decide to get Demon (#54) out of the way before heading to the car to change equipment. Semi-standard Arrow looper, except in the very front, where for some reason, the nose cone has been closed off part of the way. There was still plenty of room for my legs, though. I liked the lights in the tunnel after the second vertical loop, but otherwise, nothing too spectacular.

The crowds up to this point hadn’t been too bad, and I soon found out why. I then went to the car and grabbed my trunks to head to Hurricane Harbor, the waterpark. I got there, and holy cats! The place is a nuthouse! I change, and go over to the waterslide tower with the two body slides, two raft bowls, and two other raft slides. I first go up the body slide staircase, and experience the second-longest wait of the day. There seemed to be some confusion on trying to get people to both slides. I got back down to the bottom, and I grab a hold of one of the double tubes, and I head up the stairs. The line on this side of the tower is almost as long as the body slide line, but faster moving. While in line, I somehow get to talking to the foursome in front of me. We have one of those fun but brief waiting-in-line conversations, and they split up to go down the bowls.

I got through the bowl, and as I scrambled out of the pool, dragging the twin tube along with me, here come two of the foursome over to the tube pile. They ask me if I want to go on some rides with them, and since I’m there myself, I gladly take up their offer. We introduce ourselves, and we get to talking. They’re from Battle Creek, Michigan, they had some campground/hotel problems last night, and they get to make the 4-hour drive back to Battle Creek tonight after leaving SFGAm. We decide to ride the big tube slide, and of the two on the tower, we go for the purple one, the one with the long airtime run. It’s a great time talking with these folks on the way up. We have to split into twos to ride the slide. Me and Tyler, the other guy in our group of five, opt to go last. We come out of the tunnel absolutely flying, and we get some MONSTER air. So much air that had we all gone in one tube, as had been originally suggested, we would have likely been scraped up somewhere around the Wisconsin border. The lifeguards get SOAKED, and we all collapse in hysterical laughter. We got so much air that Tyler hurt his shoulder on impact.

After we change, we split up. I have to go out to my car to get some of my stuff (camera, phone, wallet), so we exchange phone numbers so we can meet back up after I get back in the park. After making the swap, I call Tyler’s phone about a dozen times, to no avail. By this time, the sun is going down, and I get some inspiration on what to shoot for video and pictures. One of the songs that just came on the park’s background sound is “Shadow Dancing” by Andy Gibb. I started shooting lots of sundown footage with this inspiration. After circling the park getting lots of footage, I run into Tyler and company by accident. They are getting tired, and are ready to head back to Michigan. It was very nice meeting you all. If you are reading this TR, message me.

Anyway, after bidding the Michigan Four adieu, I shoot footage until my camera battery dies, and then I start taking night rides. Viper really came alive as the sun went down. I rode in row 6, and it went from a “meh” ride in the back row to a “Wow!” ride in row 6. Had it not been so damn far back to Eagle, I’d have gone back there to partake in some more wooden madness. I went on two more rides on Raging Bull (rows 8 then 9), with the ride getting better and better.

At this point, it’s 9 PM. Apparently there are going to be fireworks and a show near the one train station at 9, so I wander over to see what it’s all about. The show is unwatchable, so I start positioning myself for a fast run over to Superman after the end of the fireworks, thinking that people are going to start pouring out of the gate after the end of the fireworks, and will draw people out of the park. The fireworks were decent enough, and as soon as the last shot is fired, I walk very quickly over to the Superman queue. The line has indeed shrank (it’s been back in the queue mazes all day) to about half the distance to the station, but it still takes half an hour to get up to the platform.

When I get up to the station, I go to Row 7 of the train. Lo and behold, I line up along side the same three people I’d ridden in the front row with way back at the open. We make lots of comments about how the day is best book ended by rides on Superman. The flying sensation is still great in row 7, but going through the pretzel I thought I was going to black out. Force, force, and did I mention force? A great final ride of the day before I decide to quit it.

I get back to my car, then I start making my way back to the Microtel in Racine. That open-faced turkey sandwich at the Perkins at Kenosha, WI never tasted so good. The remainder of the trip featured stops at the Wisconsin State Fair Park/Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and Lake Zumbrota in rural Wabasha County, Minnesota. All in all, a fine trip to celebrate America’s independence.

THE END

TR: The 3rd Barnyard Road Trip: Iowa 2007 (1/13/2007)

2008-07-14T14:22:00.001-07:00

SATURDAY, JANUARY 13, 2007
CARVER-HAWKEYE ARENA AT THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
IOWA CITY, IOWA

This was my second Barnyard road trip that I have partaken in. Last year, I went to Northwestern with the gang, and had a great time, despite the fact that the crowd at Northwestern was the worst thing since Long Island Iced Tea Mix In a Bottle. With that thought in mind, I trudged my way over to Williams Arena on a viciously cold Saturday morning to board the coach buses that would take us to Iowa City.There were two buses packed to the gills with Barnyard members.

The trip through southern Minnesota was a quiet one, but as soon as we hit the Iowa state line, the several Marching Band members who were on our bus started singing, and any premonition of waiting for a while to start the festivities promptly went by the boards. The trip down was fun, and included a conversation between several of us in the front of the bus regarding the origins of some of our Gopher Hole aliases. After we went through Waterloo, it began to snow/freezing rain, and by the time we got to Iowa City, there was a coating of slop/ice on the ground.

Killed a little time at a McDonalds in Coralville, then we went over to Carver-Hawkeye Arena. At first, we weren't sure if this was indeed Carver-Hawkeye Arena that we were driving towards. Oh, that ugly lattice gidrerwork is what holds up the roof? Anyway, we go in and find our seats (the top of Section II, for those of you with a seating chart close at hand.

Carver-Hawkeye Arena has elements of the New Mexico Pit (dug out of the ground), Mariucci Arena (open concourse around the top of the arena), and the old St. Paul Civic Center (a constant oval bowl). Carver-Hawkeye is also the most acoustically dead sports arena I have ever had the misfortune of going into. Abraham Lincoln is more alive than the sound in that arena was. We couldn't hear the ref's whistles, the pep band, or any announcements. I'm not sure what caused the place to be that way, but any noise the crowd made was promptly sucked into the abyss, never to be heard again. There is no way for a rowdy crowd to feed of itself. Between the 8 and 4 minute timeouts of the first half, I went around behind the pep band to see if I could hear any noise the Barnyard was making, and I could hear nothing. I'll take the Barn any day of the week. For that matter, I'll take Welsh-Ryan any day of the week, I just don't want that crowd. Also, is "In Heaven There Is No Beer" the UI alma mater?

There are enough discussion threads about the game to take care of that, although I was STUNNED to see in today's Des Moines Register that we out-rebounded the Hawks.

After the conclusion of the game, another Barnyard member and I were grabbed by a man who told us something to the effect of "As a Minnesota alum, I was very disappointed in you today." Now aside from a few chants that were quite off-color and probably should have been left on the bus (particularly with two small children seated immediately in front of us), I thought we did a good job representing the U of M. He didn't bother to elaborate on that point.

One of many things that the Univerity of Iowa is renowned for is the inability to disperse a big crowd, at least compared with the U and those red skunks in Madison. It took 30 minutes to move the 200 or so yards from where the busses were parked to the light on US 6. During this time, one guy told us that despite Northwestern taking Becky to the wire, they couldn't finish the deal.

We arrive at the hotel, and what a clusterf***! The computers were broken down, room keys were screwed up, etc, etc, etc. I won't elaborate, but it involved a LOT of POed people. At this point, the gathering broke up, with some going downtown to get loaded for bear, and others going to get dinner first. I highly recommend the El Dorado Mexican restaurant across the street from our hotel. Excellent meal for a reasonable price.

I ended up going with alltimetwinsfan to the Fieldhouse for a while, then back out to our hotel on the Coralville strip and Old Chicago where the evening ended with a rousing game of shuffleboard. Someone in the Twin Cities has to get one of those shuffleboard tables. That was, without queston, the highlight of the night, which speaks volumes about the nightlife in Iowa City.

It was quite a bit warmer in Iowa City than it was in Minnapolis, warm enough for the precipitation to stay as freezing rain. By 10:00 PM, there was a protective coating of ice on Iowa City, which made crossing the street a dicey proposition. The ice was still there by morning, but as of the time of this writing (the buses were passing Charles City), the roads haven't gotten too bad as of yet.Overall, I had a great time, and would do this again in a heartbeat. Thanks to all the Barnyard folks for organizing this trip, and hopfully things will work out again next season.

TR: Gopher-Badger Non-Game Thoughts, 10/14/06

2008-07-14T14:16:00.001-07:00

There is enough venom floating around on this board today to kill an elephant, and it is justifiable after the fifth straight dismembering of the Gophs at Camp Randall. What this thread is about is some of my non-gameplay thoughts about my weekend in Madison.

I drove down Friday afternoon, and got stuck in the work zone near Black River Falls. Arrived at my buddy’s house in Madison around 8:30, and was toasted within an hour. Had a hard time cheering for either team in the hockey game that someone had on TV (Bucky was hosting Boys Named Sue).

State Street Brats does not serve brats after 9 or 10 PM. I found this out Friday night, much to the disappointment of my stomach, as I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. However, Toppers Pizza on Regent and Randall is open until 3 AM. Their pizza tasted pretty darn good, although I put that down to the fact that I was drunk and half-starved.

UW students are late risers. Camp Minnesota had the beer flowing by 7 AM, and it was almost 9 before we saw anyone under the age of 35 out in the street in front of the house. Also, there was plenty of empty seating in the student section, and a portion of is under the second deck stayed open throughout the slaughter.

The only ticket I could get for less than an arm and a leg was a student ticket. Being that I am a referee, I can give and take verbal punishment with the best of them. That said, you would think the UW student section would be more creative in what they taunt opposing fans with, other than “A$$hole! A$$hole!” Jump Around wasn’t all that exciting, although I write that one off due to the fact that I was near the very top of the student section.

The Badger band makes the Gopher band look bush league. Relative to the Badger band, the Gopher band is also asleep standing up in their spats. I know it takes a lot more energy to sustain the high-step throughout the halftime show, but it looks a LOT better than the shuffle-stepping the Gopher band does. I was impressed with the Fifth Quarter, and the fact that more than a few token people hung around the whole duration. I hope that someday, the Gopher faithful can sing “Hail Minnesota” with the same gusto Badger faithful sing “Varsity.”

UW fans sure trash that city on game day. On Saturday around sundown, I’ve never seen so much garbage, stale beer, and other crap lying around in the streets. And that was just in the streets. The big bar compounds on Regent (Big 10, Lucky’s, the Stadium, et al.) had their outside fenced-in areas turned into a massive pile of empty beer cans. I found it disgusting.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Anyone who is complaining about how big the U of M campus is should be sent to Madison immediately to walk the campus.

Just like Iowa City was clearly Budweiser territory out of St. Louis, Madison is definitely Miller territory.

When eating breakfast at Mickey’s Dairy Bar (Regent and Monroe, across from Camp Randall Stadium), unless you can eat a massive pile of pancakes, just order 1. The pancakes are a foot across and 3/8 of an inch thick. They are tasty, but at some point your stomach absolutely refuses to take any more. The rolls are very good too, and there are two of them sitting on my counter waiting to be eaten for breakfast tomorrow.

The more we rely on ethanol, the less fuel efficiency we’ll have. My car, a 1991 Buick Park Avenue, got about 26 MPG on the freeway run to Madison on Minnesota gas, which is either 10% or 15% corn liquor. While this certainly isn’t bad, I filled up in Madison on Wisconsin gas (0 ethanol), and got 31 MPG on the run home. Explain to me how my gas mileage can go up 20% without doing anything significant to the car, aside from putting in 0 ethanol gas.

The fall colors, while a little after the peak, made the drive back this morning a little more palatable. Highlight spots included the downhill on 90/94 going down to the Wisconsin River, the tree tunnel north of the Dells, the Black River Falls area, just east of Eau Claire, and the uphill grade west of Menomonie.

So those are my random, non-gameplay thoughts about a weekend in Mad-town. Overall, I thought Iowa was slightly better than Madison, but that could go either way, depending on the crowd you’re with.

TR: The Great Florida Adventure, 2/9/06-2/12/06

2008-07-14T14:13:00.000-07:00

PAUL, DAVID, AND JERRY INVADE FLORIDA

PART 1: FLORIDA STATE FAIR or THIS IS FLORIDA?!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2006
3:30 AM
YOUR FEARLESS NARRATOR’S APARTMENT
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

It is the rather annoying sound of an alarm clock rousting me out of a tumultuous sleep at half past 3 AM that starts our adventure. Jerry and David convinced me (actually, I did a fair amount of convincing myself) to go to Florida with them to visit the Florida State Fair, Busch Gardens in Tampa, and a certain 300-foot tall A-frame on the Irlo Bronson Highway in Kissimmee. An itinerary was found that reasonably matched David and Jerry’s that was also reasonably priced. Seats were booked, passes were bought, and schedules were cleared.

The best-fit fare this time around went on US Air through Mayberry, er, Charlotte, North Carolina. The flight crew on the 6:20 AM departure from MSP to Charlotte had a very good sense of humor. The lead flight attendant referred to the crew as “Pilot Fred, Co-Pilot Barney, and Flight Attendants Wilma and Betty. Also, if you needed to smoke, and couldn’t make it to Charlotte without a smoke, you are more than welcome to step out onto our beautiful smoking wing…”

After arrival in Charlotte, the rear flight attendant came over the speaker and boldy declared, “OK, who brought Minneapolis with them?” Barely visible outside the windows of the small CRJ were snow flurries. Knowing the reputation on how southern airports deal with snow (they don’t), I suddenly had a couple of nagging doubts about my flight to Orlando. However, said snow flurries immediately ceased, and the flight to Orlando went off without a hitch. One cool thing about the Charlotte airport was in the main shopping area near the security checkpoints, they have white rocking chairs under trees. I like that little touch to try and improve the otherwise sterile interior of that airport.

But back to Orlando. I met with David Bowers and Jerry Dorf at the Hertz rental car facility, and we head for Tampa. There isn’t much to see on I-4 between the two central Florida metropolises, so most of the time was spent discussing the subtle nuances of our trip. Our first destination on arrival in Tampa was the Baymont Inn on the western side of Busch Gardens. After several false starts, wrong turns, and missed exits, we finally end up on Busch Boulevard.

I realize that Busch Gardens Tampa had been in its current location since around 1959, and that Tampa had grown out to surround the park. Still, I was quite surprised at the state of that part of Tampa. I guess I had been expecting something like what Beach Blvd. is around Knott’s, or worse yet, the Wisconsin Dells Strip. Instead, the street is lined with pawn brokers and check-cashing parlors. Generally, the types of businesses on a street are a fairly good indicator of the type of neighborhood that the street runs through. Also, a large concrete wall has been built around the Busch Gardens complex. For those of you keeping score, there used to be an access to the entrance across from the McDonalds. Jerry and David were both using that fact to base hotel placement, to try and avoid $8 a day in parking fees. Alas, this was not to be. However, splitting $16 in parking three ways makes the ding a little more bearable

We check in and head for the Florida State Fairgrounds. We had already passed the grounds on our way to Busch Gardens, and now we returned to the site. My initial reaction on getting out of the car was the fact that it was not very warm. In fact, it was only going to get colder as the evening progressed. It didn’t help that the winds were howling out of the northwest at better than 20 mph. But anyway, we enter the fair through the enormous Expo Hall, and emerge onto a strip that is packed wall-to-wall with food joints. There are a LOT of foods available on this fair, but I don’t like how everything is jammed into the lot. The fairgrounds claims to be 330 or so acres, but

Down this strip, and over onto the main midway. I have been on several good-sized midways, and I have never seen a midway that was so crowded with stuff. I am not talking the crowd (the crowds were very light tonight), I am talking the joints. It seems like the committee told all the shows that brought equipment to bring every joint they had, and to get as many of them as we can physically fit on the lot. From this setup, no one was going to make any money. All the jointees were working their joints extremely aggressively, but the crowd was just not there on this cool and breezy Thursday night. Even by our Midwestern standards, it was getting mighty chilly.

Despite this crowded midway, the selection of flat rides on the lot was hard to beat. Huss Rainbow, Enterprise, and Tornado, SDC Moonraker, Mondial Top Scan and Shake (Magnum), three gorgeous music rides, Crazy Mouse and Zyklon coasters, Chance Rok-n-Roll, three claw rides (KMG Afterburner and Freak Out, and Zamperla Nitro). On Opening Night of the fair, unlimited ride wristbands were $15 and gate admission was $5. Parking was free during the fair, so it makes the elaborate booths at the entrance to the grounds irrelevant. So the potential for POP abuse was imminent. As a flatride fan, we thoroughly abused the wristbands. Later in the evening, we were over at the Chance Rok ‘n Roll. Jerry and David had already ridden it twice, and the guys running it recognized them immediately when they came up for ride #3.

Over the course of the evening, we met up with many members of Matt’s Carnival Warehouse, as well as some show owners. Matt Cook, Ryan Vawter, cny_chris, Mike Reiss, and Top Spin Jay were all there, as well as Mike Wood and Jim Murphy.

However, something was missing about this fair. David and I couldn’t figure out what the heck it was. Perhaps it was the lack of greenery on the fairgrounds. Yeah, the lake was there, but it seemed little more than a “token” object. Or maybe it was no “buzz” of the crowd. Or maybe it was the lack of other stuff on the fairgrounds, aside from token appearances. Throw in a little bit of the brisk weather (I won’t say cold, because the wind chill outside my apartment as I write this is -32F), and I think it’s a combination of all these factors.

Overall, the Florida State Fair was a good time, and not a bad investment in $25 (I throw on an additional $5, because you HAVE to eat something). We returned to the Baymont Inn and made preparations to hit Busch Gardens the next morning.

Paul

COMING SOON:
PART 2: BUSCH GARDENS AND MORE FSF

PAUL, JERRY, AND DAVID TAKE FLORIDA
PART 2.1: BUSCH GARDENS, DAY 1

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2006
BUSCH GARDENS TAMPA BAY
TAMPA, FLORIDA

Confucius once said that if a man is tired enough, he will sleep anywhere. Well, I was beat after an early wake-up call and lots of walking yesterday at the FSF, so despite the fact that I was on the floor, sleep came very easily. And so did breakfast the next morning. After partaking in some of the Baymont’s continental breakfast, we get in the car and make the agonizingly long, drawn-out, 5 minute drive to the BGT parking lots.

After giving the trolls at the toll plaza $8, we proceed to park very close to the tram station. We then ride up to the main park entrance plaza. There is a slight chill in the air, but the warm Florida sun is rapidly dispersing said chill. It’s going to be a fine day. Anyway, up to the ticket plaza to get our vouchers processed. I was anticipating something along the lines of Valleyfair’s season pass processing, where my wonderful mug shot would get taken and placed on a hard plastic card. Instead, when I hand over my driver’s license and Fun Card voucher, the lady in the office returns with something that I thought came out of a parking garage ticket dispenser. No photo (although the back side of the card has a nice Busch Gardens photo), just my name, a barcode, and “Photo ID Required” printed in boldface above the barcode.

Since it was still about 15 minutes before the park officially opened, we bided our time. At about 9:20 (park open was 9:30), a brass quintet came out and entertained the small crowd that was gathered at the gate with such songs as “Sweet Georgia Brown” and the themes from Perry Mason and Mission: Impossible. They played for 5 or 6 minutes, and then went back into the park. They were seen over by Sheikra later in the afternoon.

During the band’s performance, an older gentleman was pacing around behind the turnstiles with a nervous look on his face. He looked like the starter at Churchill Downs on Derby Day, so naturally I assumed he would be the one that would give the signal to start taking tickets. At promptly 9:30 AM, he yelled out to “Open ‘em up!” At this, the ticket takers began processing tickets. I dug my license out again, and went up to the turnstile. The lady scanned the pass, and then told me to put my hand in some strange-looking doohickey next to the barcode scanner. This is a hand scanner, and I had never seen anything like it before. I had trouble getting all the lights to go out, so my Minnesota driver’s license made for a good stand-in, and the three of us were admitted.

Busch Gardens is laid out in an uneven circular layout, with Montu to the right from the front gate, and Sheikra, Gwazi, and most other stuff to the left. We opt to head towards Sheikra, since it’s the new thing, the crowds will flock to it. However, we get as far as Gwazi and see that a large rope has been stretched across the midway, along with a sign that stated something to the effect of “This area of the park will open 30 minutes after park opening.”

However, the rope is past the entrance to the queue house for Gwazi. And at this fateful juncture in time, we see a train go out from the station. The three of us head straight up to the loading platform on the Lion side, and jump in the train. Gwazi Lion isn’t a bad wooden coaster. Not terribly forceful but fairly smooth.

After riding Gwazi, we decide to try our luck at Montu. We make our way towards Montu. By all appearances, Busch Gardens is a zoo that just happens to have some some sweet B&M thrill rides. This is likely one of the reasons why BGT management took great care in their theming. The theming in this park is fantastic. Whoever did the theming in the Egypt area where Montu is had an eye for detail.

Since it’s still close to the open, the park is deserted, which means there is almost no one in the queue house. We go to the back row of the train, and wait. However, the train stays in the station, and a man from park maintenance is futzing with something in the control. Then an announcement is played, stating that Montu is temporarily down. Being the patient people we are, we wait for a spell, as several trains are ghosted. Then the announcement changes to “The ride is closed, come back later.” So no Montu ride in the “hot seat” right now.

We walk over to the skyride station, built by our friends at Von Roll, and determine that the three of us must split up, as the listed weight limit is 650 pounds. David and I go in one car, and Jerry follows in the next car. The skyride goes over the Serengeti plains, and we get a good look at the animals on the “Serengeti plains.” After getting off the Skyride, we parked our stuff at a locker bank near Sheikra, and headed into the queue. Sheikra is the second B&M dive machine, and it looks great. What looks even better is the near-empty queue. Walk-around for all three rows in the second train. Sheikra loads two trains at once, one in front of the other. Six rows of 8 seats a row means that this thing can crank the people through in a hurry.

Since it’s a walk-on, we ride in the front row. The seats are almost like a Mondial seat, with a wicked lean back. We roll over to the lift hill, and are forced back by the incredibly steep grade that the lift hill has. Obviously Busch Gardens didn’t want to waste much real estate on the lift hill. We hit the top, and roll around to the top of the drop, where the train lurches to a halt, and begins to creeeeeeeeeeep over the edge. And we hang in our OTSRs as the people in the train start to babble among themselves, then BAM! Crazy airtime followed by a very forceful element. It’s a wild roll into the mid-course brakes, where the train lurches to another stop, then slowly rolls into the second plunge. Coming out of the tunnel, I always seem to take a droplet of water square in the forehead. The water effect doesn’t do much on the train, and we roll back into the station. Busch Gardens has a winner on their hands, and a high-capacity one at that.

We continue to reride until the queue bridges get full (about 6 or 7 rides), then head back towards Kumba. However, en route to Kumba, we take our obligatory stop at Python, as I don’t have the credit for it. It’s an Arrow corkscrew, and I think it’s similar to the original Corkscrew at Knott’s Berry Farm. After looking at RCDB, it is. It may have been the biggest thing since sliced bread back in its day, but if I had to wait more than 5 minutes for this waste of time, I would demand my money back. One-trick pony.

After wasting our time at Python, we find our way to the back corner, and a freshly painted Kumba. Kumba is a beautiful piece of B&M work that’s just been freshly refurbished. It looks beautiful. The line for Kumba is a confusing one. There are no immediate signs declaring what line is for what, and we end up in the line for the front row. Which just so happens to be the only queue with any people in it. It’s a four train wait to get to the front, and it’s worth it. Fabulously smooth with a powerful punch. We go around again, and again, and again. Seven straight times in all. It’s almost as if we were riding Avalanche at Wisky Dells instead of Kumba at BGT.

After all the fun at Kumba, we go back to Sheikra to get our stuff out of the lockers, and then we go to the Timbuktu section of the park. We see a mouse coaster, and jump aboard. This is a Gerstlauer Wild Maus, which has been themed Cheetah Chase and given a blaze orange paint job, in tune with the Timbuktu theming. After loading up the car, it heads up to the top of the hill, and flies through the top-level flat spins. I’m thinking that this thing has some potential for the rest of the course. But as we take the first drop, we start to hit brakes, and the ride just kind of fizzles out to nothing. File this one alongside Python.

Nearby is Scorpion, a single-loop, single-train Schwartzkopf coaster. The station is very small, so the train loads from the front to the back. I get in the first row of the second car, and promptly get stuck. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it appears that for the first time, thanks to my insanely long legs, I am stuck in a car. The Schwartzkopf train on Monte wasn’t much bigger than this, but it was big enough as to not get stuck. Being stuck kinda ruins any fun effect that Scorpion may have given out. But getting tossed out of the coaster isn’t an issue on an Anton creation. Lots of force and headchoppers. David, who is sitting along side of me, has to get out before I can turn and get my legs un-wedged.

We then decide to make our way towards the front of the park, and the Anheuser-Busch Hospitality House. For those of you who are of legal U.S. drinking age, A-B offers free beer in the Hospitality House. Yes, FREE BEER. Granted, they aren’t giving you a free “mas” of beer, but free beer is free beer. Several different types of Busch beers are on tap, and I found it ironic that a pizza joint had been placed in the house. Hmmm. Pizza and beer go hand in hand, so why not put a pizza joint next to the free beer? Someone up in corporate gets a gold star for a genius bit of marketing.

By this time, we hope that whatever mechanical issues they were having on Montu would be ironed out. So we head over there, deposit our stuff in a locker (again), and head to the back row line, so my first ride can be in the so-called “hot seat.” Folks, we have winner #3 of the day. While some coasters go for copious amounts of air time, some try brute speed, and some just plain suck, Montu is all about force. The fierce kick of airtime at the batwing is incredible, and I can’t imagine what it was prior to the mid-course brakes being turned on. Since there were decent amounts of people in the queue house, we had to walk around, although it was never more than a one-train wait for any seat behind the front row. Did I say that the theming of this ride was fantastic?

David wanted to see what the Rhino Rally was all about. So we meander over there, and the queue time indicated by the clock says 20 minutes. It’s a nice day, so we don’t mind waiting. We get part of the way through the line (it’s moving along fairly well), before the line stops, and an announcement comes saying that the ride has just gone down mechanical. This virtually clears out the queue, and we are in the second Land Rover/Humvee/Jeep to go out after the ride comes back online. Our navigator was a kid with an unpronounceable Islamic first name, so he’s affectionately known simply as Skippy. Rhino Rally is a cool, unique ride that I won’t go into much detail about. It’s worth waiting a few minutes for, but not necessarily two hours.

It is at this juncture of time and space that we depart Busch Gardens and head back to the Florida State Fair for an evening of photography and POP abuse. We’ll head over there, after a word from our sponsor.

Paul

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Now, part 2.2 of “Paul, Jerry, and David Take Florida”

PAUL, JERRY, AND DAVID TAKE FLORIDA
PART 2.2: FLORIDA STATE FAIR, FRIDAY NIGHT

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2005
FLORIDA STATE FAIRGROUNDS
TAMPA, FLORIDA

Coming around the exit ramp, we see that there are a LOT more people at the fairgrounds today than there were yesterday. A LOT more. We end up parking in what is widely regarded as the “Back 40,” a long way from the gate. We get to the gate, get our tickets, and come up to a “security checkpoint” that wasn’t there the previous evening. It’s basically the same as the one over at Busch Gardens (paw through bags and hooded sweatshirts), with one additional twist. They have you raise your shirt and expose your beltline, to expose any contraband that you may have stashed in your belt. Not that it would have done a bit of good. If you use your brain a bit, you can get a substantial weapon past that gate without them being any the wiser.

Through the expo hall, and back to the midway. We stop to partake in some fine stromboli, and then we embark on the mission of the evening, which is to take pictures and get footage of the rides. Since the sun was at an unusual angle, we were taking pictures looking east. We shot pictures until about sundown. At this point, David and Jerry got their wristbands. I had obtained a Mountain Dew can the previous afternoon giving $5 off the evening wristband, so I tried to redeem this can at a friendly ticket window. However, the lady at the ticket window told me that I needed to go out to the front gate to a tent, where I would get a voucher to present at the ticket window.

David and Jerry went over towards the Rok n Roll while I went to the front gate to get my voucher. I approached the front gate and attempted to figure out the re-entry procedures. I could definitely tell that the crowds were very different tonight than before. I overheard the exit procedures explained. What happened was that you got your hand stamped, then you were given a re-entry pass good for the next 20 minutes. If you took longer than 20 minutes, too bad. It was clear that they were discouraging re-entry, but since I was only getting a POP voucher, I didn’t need the re-entry stamp.

After getting cleared back through “security”, I go meet David and Jerry back at the Rok n Roll. Getting there was starting to be a challenge, as the place was getting more crowded by the minute. Since the sun was setting, we continue to take photos, as that is our primary objective for the evening.

The weather is gorgeous, which means we have a very different crowd on the midway tonight. For one, there are a LOT of people on the midway. Check that. There are a lot of teenagers on the midway. Apparently, Hillsborough County Public Schools had the day off and a $5 break at the gate. Put them together, along with the $5 off POP armbands, and you get a midway that is absolutely PACKED. Long lines for everything, short cycles on all the rides, and a lot of people spending their money. Or not spending their money. As the evening progressed, the crowd got bigger and bigger, but the crowd also brought a nasty attitude with them.

We finished taking pictures, and I volunteered to make the run to the car to dump cameras, loose objects, etc. After returning, and clearing “security” again, I meet up with Jerry and David back by the Space Roller. The crowd has gotten even more brazen, as David and Jerry witnesses a fight in front of the Roller. I then try to ride the roller, and I have to act like a blocker and force my way up to the entry point. There is no order to the line whatsoever. Every man for himself.

There is a Huss Twister ride down the line, and David and I try to get a good spin ride in. But we can’t get that sucker to spin to save ourselves. David and I sit on one side of the car, but all that happens is that we slosh back and forth. Blah. Then over to the other side, and we wait for the one-of-a-kind Moonraker. We had seen it run earlier in the day, and we decided we were going to try to ride it. We camped out at the bottom of the stairs, and after about 15 minutes, it finally opened up. It’s basically a sit-down Round-Up with OTSRs. Only 7 seats were operating. Just to show you how crowded the place was, by the time we got off the ride, about 3 minutes, the line had grown into a large scrum.

We then move across the road to the Flip ‘N Out, where another ugly line incident developed. It was all I could do to get to the front of the line. After the Flip ‘n Out ride that I had to use an offensive lineman’s skills to get to the ride, we decided to cut our losses and get the hell out of there. The crowd kept getting uglier and uglier, and it seemed that a massive conflagration was imminent. I witnessed a stampede towards a fight that I couldn’t see while waiting for the Moonraker. At the end, the crowd had a “We’re going to do whatever we want and you can go screw yourself” attitude. I regularly go through some of the crummiest parts of the Twin Cities, and that was the first time that my gut was telling me to run for your life. I took the lead blocker position, moving as fast as I could, hitting gaps wherever I could find them, and not slowing down until we got out of the mess. David and Jerry followed at close proximity. We finally ended up at the Boar’s Head Hot Dog booth, where David and I partook in some fine hot dogs, and we discussed the fair, hot dogs, and how the brand was working its way into the Midwest.

Since it’s getting late (after 10:00), we decide to call it a day, and head back towards the expo hall. Problem is, all the doors to the Expo Hall are closed. So we try to go around the south end of the building, only to find the path goes into an auxiliary exhibit hall, which is also locked. A Hillsborough County Sheriff deputy was stating that the hall was closed, and wasn’t giving any directions on how to get out of the place. Earlier in the afternoon, I had noticed what looked like an exhibitor entrance behind the Springshot. The Springshot is located across the pond to the north of the expo hall. Sure enough, there is a paved road going back towards the road. After a couple of dead ends, we make our way back to the gate side of the expo hall.

To me, this sets off all kinds of alarms in my brain. If you needed to clear the grounds in a hurry at this hour, pushing 10,000 people into a dead-end that is the expo hall or down a dark, unmarked path, that is asking for trouble. Also, with the midway set up the way it was, if you needed to clear out the midway in a hurry, there really was not many places to go. There was too much stuff jammed into that lot. If you needed to clear that place out in a hurry, there could be some BIG trouble.

But after all of this, we make it back to the car alive and in one piece. We head back to the hotel, and watch the end of the 2006 Torino Olympics opening ceremony. I don’t worry, though. I figured out how to activate the timer on my VCR so I can watch the opening when I get back to Minnesota.

Paul

PAUL, JERRY, AND DAVID TAKE FLORIDA, PART 3

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2006
BUSCH GARDENS TAMPA BAY
TAMPA, FLORIDA

After staying up until well after NBC’s midnight sign off from Torino, we were a little bit groggy when it came time to head over to the Busch Gardens for our full day there. This morning, we were masquerading as theme park tourists, cameras and all, instead of being the aggressive, go-for-broke coaster junkies we are. J

We start the morning over at Montu. Now, while we were definitely going to take pictures, we were not going to pass on a power-riding session should the opportunity present itself. And an empty queue house was opportunity presenting itself. We started the day with six straight rides in the “hot seat”, and 11 straight overall, all without leaving the loading platform. My T-shirt had yellow stains on it where the bottom of the OTSR squeezed up against it.

Then the photo safari began. And we mean safari. Plenty of pictures of the beautiful theming by Montu. After loading up on Montu pics, we try to take the skyride back to Sheikra and Kumba. However due to the very breezy conditions, the skyride was closed. So, we head around through the front of the park, past the crocodile pit, Hospitality House, and aviary, to Sheikra. Plenty of pictures are taken of Sheikra from the Stanleyville area of the park. Also, during the photo shoot, David took a picture of the wait time clock at Sheikra. The clock said 0. Truly a wonderful sight.

The photo safari was briefly put on sabbatical while we hit Sheikra for another power-riding session. We rode Sheikra until the line got “long.” By long we meant that it was about a two or three train wait, depending on what row you were waiting for. I think we’re getting spoiled when a long line only fills up the bridges going over to the Sheikra loading platform. The power-ride session moved back to Kumba, where several more rides were taken before the queue house filled sufficiently to prevent immediate rerides.

After this, we got our cameras from the Sheikra locker bank, and worked our way back towards Kumba on the photo safari. This took us past the tiger pit and Congo River Falls, BGT’s large raft river ride. Large amounts of Corona merchandise were seen in a gift shop near the Congo River Falls exit. This is indeed a strange sight, considering that neither Anheuser-Busch nor any of its subsidiaries distribute Corona beer in the United States. This anomaly aside, we kept taking pictures of Kumba. It is at this point of the photo safari that I run out of fresh batteries, so my camera is done for the duration of this trip.

The armchair photographers work their way into the Timbuktu portion of the park. Included were pictures of us walking into Timbuktu, so you can impress your friends by saying that you have indeed gone to Timbuktu. Never mind that it was at Busch Gardens. It was TIMBUKTU, man! Aside from Scorpion and Cheetah Chase, this part of the park has some of the most pitiful flat rides I have ever had the misfortune of seeing with my two eyes. Jerry and David decide to go on Scorpion. Based on my misadventures with it yesterday (getting stuck), I decide to partake in a bag of popcorn. It’s very good popcorn, albeit a bit salty.

While all this is going on it becomes painfully clear to all of us that it is going to storm sometime in the near future. The wind has picked up, the sun has vanished, and the clouds keep getting darker. The question is not if it’s going to rain, but when. So after Jerry and David get out of Scorpion, we head through some of the animal exhibits back towards the front of the park. I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Busch Gardens is an absolutely beautiful park in the middle of a crappy part of Tampa. Lots of greenery, as if BGT is a zoo first, theme park later.

We head past the Morocco Theater and the croc pit, and decide we are going to ride Gwazi. Since we’ve already ridden the Lion side, we head over to the blue Tiger side. I thought that the Lion side was OK, but boy was the Tiger side rough. Very rough. Since our cameras have been stashed in a locker down below the station, we head around to take another ride on the Tiger side. Ah, much smoother. We are second in line for another ride on Tiger when the announcement comes. “Due to approaching severe weather, this ride is closed” or something to that effect. We notice that it has started to rain. Since the Hospitality House is close by, we decide to head over there, as there is no such thing as a bad glass of free beer. It is raining fairly hard as we walk fast/run over to the House, and no sooner than we step inside than the heavens open and the rain comes POURING down.

Shortly thereafter, fate takes a decisive turn against the prohibitionists in the park. There is a flash of lightning, and the power goes out. If you know anything about beer taps, you know that electricity is not required to operate said taps. However, I overhear one of the bartenders say something like, “Keep that beer flowing, because once the beer gets warmer than 40 degrees, we can’t serve it.” Having consumed large amounts of beer that was nowhere near 40 degrees during my college career, it wouldn’t bother me in the least if beer was warmer than 40 degrees. That threshold must be a corporate policy.

While we are standing outside the House (it’s getting quite stuffy in there from lack of ventilation), we notice large amounts of people heading towards the exit of the park. This option briefly crosses our mind, until we realize that if the power is out here at the park, then it may very well be out in the surrounding neighborhoods. So we decide to bide our time, and perhaps the park will clear sufficiently to power-ride some more before the afternoon is out. David and I decide to try some of the Bare Knuckle Stout beer. While I will never denounce free beer, Bare Knuckle was certainly a lot of work to drink. While we were drinking our stout, the power came back on, and a loud cheer went up from the masses. We waited an additional half-hour after the power came back on to allow for everything to start up again, then we head to Sheikra.

It is during our second ride on Sheikra during this power-ride session that our Flirtation with the Lawyers (or the Women) takes place. While waiting to load, two women about my age were waiting in front of me. One of them was psyching herself into thinking that she was going to die on that drop. Since I am fairly certain that nothing serious will come out of it, I egg her along a little bit. She then asks me if I go to Michigan. Keep in mind that I’m wearing a T-shirt with a maroon Minnesota block M on it, which looks nothing like a Michigan M. I chuckle and tell her that at least she’s in the right conference. I was sitting in the third seat from the left, front row, with the two women. After the initial drop, she’s carrying on as you would expect she would. Just our luck, we hit the mid-course brakes and grind to a halt. I continue to carry on the conversation (they catch on about the Minnesota M) until the announcement comes: “We are sorry. The ride has temporarily shut down.” Since the seats are quite comfortable for coaster chairs, we chat for a while until the announcement comes that the train is moving again, and to brace for movement. By the time we get back to the station, the line has lengthened quite a bit, but since Sheikra is a line eater, the line dissolves very quickly.

We ride Sheikra a few more times, then head back to Kumba. Things have picked up at Kumba, but we can still walk around. Just as we are about to get on the train, a park patron decides that they have had enough Kumba for one day. The unloading deck and train are hosed off and disinfected, and the train is ghosted, cutting the capacity in half. This train is ghosted two or three times, and by the time we finally get on the train, we can see the rain start again. This is not going to be a pleasant ride on Kumba. Since I had never ridden a fast-moving B&M in the rain, I close my eyes and hope I don’t get sandblasted too badly. The Kumba Kar Wash is open for business as we scurry out of the station. None of us thought much of the Kumba Kar Wash, and it is agreed we are done on the coasters for the day (the forecast is that when it starts to rain, it’s not going to stop til morning).

Unlike during the last rain squall, we decide that this is it, and head out of the park. We browse the gift shops, duly noting that any kind of merchandise with any sort of Budweiser logo on it can be purchased here. David also conjectures that they are willing to assist you in shipping, in the event that you know you can’t fit your purchase into your bag for the trip home. We ride the parking tram back to the car, noting that the weather has turned from a warm sunny day into a cold, dank, dreary all-night rain. We then decide to give Steak ‘n Shake a try. This particular Steak ‘n Shake, on Hillsborough Ave. near the turn to BGT, was not the most pleasant dining establishment I have ever eaten in. The food wasn’t bad, although I attribute that to being half-starved. We retire to the hotel after a purchase of blank digital media to get photos back home.

Paul

PAUL, JERRY, AND DAVID TAKE FLORIDA
PART 4: THE GRAND FINALE

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2005
OSCEOLA HERITAGE PARK
KISSIMMEE, FLORIDA

The fourth day of our invasion of Florida dawns downright cold. The cold front that caused all the rain yesterday and last night is gone, replaced by the Canuck Express. Freeze warnings out over much of the state, which is quite unheard of for Florida. What’s worse is that a cold wind is howling out of the northwest. High wind warnings are out for most of the state as well. The walk to breakfast this morning was chilly, even by my ridiculously low standards. Mind you, this was in the still of a hotel.

After checking out of the hotel, we drive out to I-4. Since there isn’t a whole lot to see between Tampa and Orlando, I spend a fair bit of the drive sitting in the back seat, dozing off. We rolled into Orlando and onto International Drive. International Drive is Florida’s version of the Wisconsin Dells Strip, i.e. a vacuum cleaner for your wallet. At one such location on I-Drive is a Funtime Star Flyer, which is a Wave Swinger with a twist: Instead of just rotating the flat pane of rotation, the seats go up and down a very tall central tower.

We arrived at Magical Midway a few minutes prior to the open, and all of us are seriously doubting if the Star Flyer will run. Wind advisories are out for most of Florida, which means sustained winds greater than 25 mph. 10:00 AM comes, and we wander about the place for a bit. There really isn’t much here. Other than the Star Flyer, and a Funtime Spring Shot (cable-mounted Ejection Seat), not much. We go to the ticket window and ask if the Flyer will be running today due to the high winds. Much to our surprise, the Flyer runs! We purchase our tickets, go up to the deck, and sit in the flimsy-looking chairs. The Flyer went through it’s cycle, and it was a very interesting ride. A cold, stiff wind at 25 mph made for an unusual cycle.

We had read that Strates Shows is playing at the Osceola County Fair down in Kissimmee, and is offering a pay-one-price promotion from noon to 5. After leaving Magic Midway, we work our way on back roads over to the Osceola Heritage Park. Since it’s about 11:00 on a Sunday morning, the place is deserted. The way the “fair” is set up, it is little more than a glorified still date. $5 at the gate, $15 for an all-you-can-ride armband.

The midway starts to show some signs of life, and we begin our pursuit of as many rides as we can stomach. Believe it or not, there was a second Rok n Roll there. From never seeing one to seeing two different ones over the course of a long weekend is very unusual. This one is run by operators who don’t seem too enthusiastic about trying to get it to roll as much as possible. Over the course of the afternoon, we get our money’s worth out of our POP bands. This includes a ride on Strates’ Giant Wheel, which claims to be 125’ tall. The top of the wheel yields a good view of the Osceola Heritage Park, which is where the “fair” is. The Houston Astros train here, and their spring training facility dominates the facility. There is a small expo hall adjacent to the carnival, and an indoor rodeo facility outside the pay area of the fair. It is also VERY cold and windy when on the upper reaches of the wheel.

By the time we are done at the Osceola County Fair, it’s about 3:00, and we are are hungry, cold, and wind-burned. David’s curiosity gets the best of him, and he tries out some deep-fried alligator meat. He thoroughly enjoys it, and it fills the car up with the fine smell of deep-fried alligator meat. If authenticity was in question, the trailer the alligator came from had Louisiana license plates.

Since we’re all quite hungry, we decide to stop at a Steak ‘n Shake on the main drag. If you remember, last night we ate a Steak ‘n Shake in Tampa that left much to be desired. This Steak ‘n Shake was in much better shape than the Tampa one, and the food reflected that. After the Steak n Shake we head west on the Irlo Bronson Highway in search of our Baymont Inn. However, since we can’t find the thing, we proceed directly to Old Town.

We park near the end of the street, and take a look at everything that Old Town has to offer. At the end is the Windshear roller coaster, but we didn’t find it worthwhile to ride it, as both Jerry and David had the credit, I was running low on cash, and it would have cost almost as much to ride the Windshear as it would have been to ride a certain attraction located on land along side Old Town.

Located along side Old Town are a few other attractions. One of them is the G-Force. This simulates a drag race, going from 0 to 120 mph in about 2 seconds. It’s based out of a former merchandise trailer that was for the Steve Park NASCAR entry back when he was still with DEI. Anyway, it looked cool, but the cost was prohibitive, so we all decided to take a pass. There’s another attraction on the lot next to Old Town. This certain attraction is the 300-foot tall Skycoaster. We go into the office and inquire if the Skycoaster will fly. I’m having some serious doubts, because the wind has not abated, and there are some crazy lateral deflections in the cables.

She says that due to said crazy winds, the Skycoaster will fly, but only with 3 people. I still have my doubts, so we retire back to Old Town for further deliberations. After some application of pressure by Jerry and David, as well as a reduction in wind speed to almost zero, I decide to fly. We go to the shack, get our tickets, and then go get harnessed in at the tent. Then, out to the loading platform. Jerry and David are making sure that everyone out on the platform knows that this is my first Skycoaster flight. We get clipped together, and right about the time that I think they’re telling us to lean forward…

THUD!

That thud you heard was me leaning forward too soon, drawing a 5-yard false start penalty, as well as a skinned knee. Since we’re all clipped together, it’s a royal pain to get back up and properly hooked to the cable. Then, we get told to lean forward, and instead of plopping on the floor, we hang by the cable and begin to be winched up the tower. Damn, it’s a long way up there. Jerry pulls the rip cord, and I take my first Skycoaster flight. Not gonna lie to ya, it was pretty damn fun. Apparently, we hit 66 mph on the radar gun mounted at the bottom of the apex. We swing ourselves out of momentum, and get unhitched.

After I watch my first flight, we head back over to the Old Town proper. Located over alongside the main highway is a Funtime Spring Shot. The reported maximum capsule height is about 365 feet (convert 115 meters to feet), and I decide to try it out. I fork over my money, David gets into the seat to my left, and we get launched. It is a VERY smooth launch, but there is no kick of airtime at the top of the launch. I have had more airtime on Sheikra.

We’ve seen everything we need to see at Old Town. After I get a quick souvenir (and a drink for everyone), we go back to the car and finally find our hotel. A long, hot shower never felt so good. Except for that time after tramping around Phalen Park on the coldest day of the year looking for the St. Paul Winter Carnival Medallion, but that’s another story for another day.

Next morning, after breakfast, we get back to the Orlando airport. My flight goes on US Air via Charlotte. In Charlotte, I hustle like the dickens to the commuter plane terminal, only to see that my original 50-minute connection has turned into a 2:20 connection. I go back to the center food court and partake in some Brookwood Farms Authentic North Carolina Barbecue. Unlike the lousy swill at Famous Dave’s (Minnesota’s premiere barbecue chain), this is actually good stuff. On the very small plane from Charlotte back to Minneapolis, I sit next to a fellow Gopher. It happens to be that our school apartments are only half a block apart, and we enjoy a nice chat on the light rail and bus all the way back to the turn point. At this point, I am glad to see my apartment.

THE END

TR: Wisconsin Dells with the Alveys, 8/12/08

2008-07-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 2005
THE STRIP
WISCONSIN DELLS, WISCONSIN

I have been reading Theme Park Review since roughly this time last year, when I accidentally stumbled upon it during a slow, rainy day at work for a previous employer. When I was in California in March for Knott’s Winter Coaster Solace and West Coast Bash, I stood in the Xcelerator line behind the world-famous couple. And when I read that the Alveys would be coming as close as the Dells of the Wisconsin River, how could an avid TPR reader (as well as up-and-coming coater enthusiast) like myself not jump at the chance to meet, greet, wine, dine, and ride coasters with the Alveys? Okay, maybe not the wine and dine part, but you get the idea.

Rolling into Wisconsin Dells after the tedious drive of 3 ½ hours from northwest of Minneapolis, I pulled into a gas station and gave Robb a ring. He said that they were filming on Hades, and to meet at the front of the park. I then wheeled over to Mount Olympus. The way they were parking cars was totally befuddling. They were running all the cars into one row. Which is fine, except when you realize that they are going to fill this row to the VERY FAR END OF THE PARKING LOT. I only managed to get ¾ of the way down the row, which made for a very long walk. Also, I noticed a troubling lack of dispatches from the big steel-frame monster known as Hades.

Knowing the park, I knew damn well I wasn’t going to stay up by the north gate and make an unnecessary trip up that hill for someone. While the SoCalers on the trip might be in climbing shape from climbing a certain mountain north of LA, I am not. So, I walked around to where I could see the train on Hades making the first drop out of the station. Lo and behold, there were Robb and Elissa in the front row, awaiting train dispatch and ready to film. The train FINALLY rolled out of the station, and I went back down the hill to make a few other rides on the other coasters here. Roughly half an hour after I entered the park, I finally met up with the entourage, which was splitting up. Elissa and Derek went to have their mis-adventures on Dive to Atlantis (ask them about it), and the rest of us went to film from the bronc-saddle seat on Cyclops.

Reuniting, we find our hero, Elissa, SOAKED! Apparently, the ride attendants decided that instead of two people in the log (which they had been doing the whole time they had been open), four people would go into this particular log. And when the log went down the last drop, copious amounts of water were unceremoniously dumped on the occupants of said log. Elissa and Derek were both drenched, as well as the camera Elissa had brought. Robb remarked something to the effect of the Dells are hazardous to a camera’s health.

The crew split up at this point, with Elissa, Robb, Andrew, and myself going out to the parking lot to get footage and talk for a bit, and everyone else going to get credits on the kiddie coaster and Pegasus.

We then went over to Riverview. I had not been here before. The clientele at this place was significantly different than what we had seen over at Mt. Olympus. I will not comment, but I think after Robb gets done captioning the photos, the idea will be clear. The most diplomatic way to put the park is “ghetto.” Robb, Elissa, and Fred were sent around three times on the Wacky Worm, and Derek was sent around twice on the Orient Express-themed Dragon Wagon. The four of us who hadn’t ridden Galaxi yet rode it. This was the first (and so far only) coaster where I felt the need to duck under anything. Another indicator of the park’s ghettoness was when the cars needed to be manually pushed from the unloading platform to the loading end. The cars also needed to be given some, ahem, encouragement to get out of the station to the bottom of the lift hill. It was interesting, and that’s all I’m going to say.

After this somewhat mortifying experience, the next few minutes yielded some of the most hilarious moments ever captured by a carousing coaster crew from California. Someone asked how fast the Sellner spinning dragons spun. Since they had a few tickets left over, Robb and Derek hopped aboard to find out. As soon as the brake was released, that dragon spun, and spun, and spun. It was hilarious to hear Robb yelling in agony whenever the opening faced us. “Wha………wha…………wha…..”

Lunchtime! According to Derek’s PDA, there was a Pizza Hut on the corner of Wisconsin Dells Parkway and Hwy. 13, the road in off Exit 87. Well, a few minutes of wandering around on I-90/94 later, we find that there is no Pizza Hut, and most of us ended up at the biggest McDonalds I had ever seen. The inside was themed like a Northwoods lodge. Over lunch, I explained some of how I am becoming a coaster enthusiast, Robb’s periodic trips to the Twin Cities, and Southern California theme parks.

After lunch, we headed over to Timber Falls Adventure Park. Wristbands were purchased, and rides were taken. After the first ride, the TPR Invaders were absolutely dumbfounded. They were reduced to laughing, simple smiles, and babbling. They weren’t sure how Avalanche could possibly be that intense, how fun it was, and just the overall level of insanity. Since it was a quiet afternoon, we pretty much sat wherever we wanted. As far as the coaster itself, it had “seasoned” quite a bit since I rode it June 10. There was a lot more side-to-side shuffling than before, as well as more squeaking. It’s still absolutely NUTS.

Back to Mt. Olympus to find that the line for Hades had not shrunk since park opening. It was to the bottom of the stairs. So the crew went to Cyclops for more riding and filming. After Cyclops, some of the gang went back to the hotel to change and get ready for some waterpark action, while Robb, Fred, one other person, and myself went up to Zeus to ride. Fred then went over to the hotel while Robb, the other guy, and me went out to the top parking lot, for different reasons. Robb and the other guy was there to get footage, while I was there to get my car, as, unfortunately, it was time for me to head back to the Twin Cities.

I gave Robb and the other guy a ride back to the hotel end of the park, where we officially bid adieu. I also suggested that if they could, that they should come to the Minnesota State Fair, just for the whole atmosphere.

Speaking of the Minnesota State Fair, if TPR ever wants to have a Flatride Challenge, I am officially suggesting Opening Night of the Minnesota State Fair with the Gang of Four (Jerry Dorf, Cameron and Loren Willis, and myself) because A) it’s not that busy, B) the flatride lineup kicks serious @$$, and C) we know the operators of a few large pieces. Sound good?

Paul “The MNSF opens in 10 days!” Miller

TR: Valleyfair Coaster Craze 2005, 7/29/05

2008-07-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

FRIDAY, JULY 29, 2005
VALLEYFAIR FAMILY AMUSEMENT PARK
SHAKOPEE, MINNESOTA

The final Friday in July has become the unofficial date for Valleyfair Coaster Craze, my home park’s annual enthusiast event. So what better way to prep for it the night before than to go to the bar and celebrate a friend’s birthday by getting quite drunk? Ah, can’t get much better than that.

I awoke shortly after 6:30 AM to find that my buddies, whose apartment I had stayed at for the night, were giving me grief about sleeping sitting upright. A quick stop at the campus Burger King and a fast drive against the horrendous Twin Cities rush hour traffic later, and I was in a familiar place: outside the front gates at Valleyfair. Morning ERT was on Steel Venom, Wild Thing from 8 until the park open at 10, with RipTide and Corkscrew joining the festivities at 9 AM. My perennial partner in crime, Jerry Dorf, was there at the open, along with Tim Dahl, another Minnesota enthusiast, and occupied the very back seat. My other compatriots, Cameron and Loren Willis, showed up at the Venom after the first cycle.

There is nothing quite like breaking a hangover (albeit a relatively small one, but still a hangover) with the front seat on Steel Venom. I managed to get 3 rides in various parts of the train before a vicious power-riding headache/eyeache set in. I then set off for the back of the park with Cameron, Loren, and Mark Fletcher, the manager at ComoTown.

A stop at RipTide showed that it was being run in the wet cycle. Having heard a story about a RipTide wet cycle from Jerry and Tim, we decided to pass. Besides, none of us had anywhere dry to stash our wallets, phones, etc. Anyway, we then made a few runs on Wild Thing. The train was noticeably rougher than normal, and this was attributed to the early time and lack of cycles. The jury remained out on Wild Thing.

Next in the ERT was Corkscrew, the Arrow looper that is celebrating its 25th anniversary this season. We all rolled to our default spots for our run. OK, so I went to my default spot, which is the very front. Long legs are a pain to get into anywhere other than the seat with the nose cone. I think I could pull off eating a banana on this Arrow looper (a la Donald Sutherland in Space Cowboys). Lots smoother than its bigger sister on the mountain, Viper.

Back to Wild Thing for another run, and then a pause on the way out for “The Star Spangled Banner.” Power Tower is adorned at the top with large American flags, so it was a very nice sight. After the anthem, and a slight holdup from 9:50-10:00, the seven of us made our way towards the back of the park. Going by Mad Mouse presented an opportunity to get another credit. You see, I had never ridden the Mouse, as the line had always been astronomical. SO… I found that this mouse wasn’t as nuts as either the Exterminator at Kennywood or the Crazy Mouse portable at the Minnesota State Fair. A good family coaster, but not one that is going to knock socks off.
Excalibur awaited at the back of the park. This guy is truly a hidden gem. Very well done trains, nice pops of airtime, and plenty of speed. It is also known as the Thunder Canyon Spin Dry, as soaked patrons from Thunder Canyon’s exit queue go straight into Excalibur’s entry queue. Since I have NEVER seen more than a 1-train wait on this, 2-3 cycles are the norm.

Back to the front of the park, where we watched Cam use his Ripcord season pass endorsement. After watching a squirrel scare the living daylights out of the girl in the booth (message for details), six of us opted to try the go-karts. In order to provide for a proper start for the go-kart race, the six of us went slowly out of pit row, grouped up 3 across and 2 deep, and started at the shadow in the tunnel. Since I had the pole position, my kart was an absolute dog. It had NO go. I was dead last of us 6 when we were waved back to the pits.

Lunchtime! Valleyfair does know how to do fried chicken right (sorry KFC). Crispy breading with a great flavor. Must have gotten a few tips from Mrs. Knott. Also, Valleyfair had made a 25th birthday cake for Corkscrew, and Cameron got the piece with the train. Apparently, his iron count was running low.

After that was the prize drawing. Prizes included lots of T-shirts, a few pullovers, pins from CP, a blanket, and some Nalgene bottles. However, the most coveted prizes, which were tucked into some of the shirts, bottles, and jackets, were…

D

R

U

M

R

O

L

L

P

L

E

A

S

E
.
.
.

GOLDEN TICKETS.

No, these were not the Wonka Golden Tickets. These were Enthusiast Golden Tickets. The Golden Tickets are exit lane passes to Jr. Gemini at Cedar Point that allow one person per ticket to ride Jr. Gemini WITHOUT ACCOMPANYING A KID. You read that correctly. Tickets to ride Jr. Gemini without a kid in tow. Printed on bright yellow paper. Coincidence? I think not.

After lunch, most people who had been there all morning went elsewhere. Your fearless hero went back to the U of M campus to help out as an Admissions Ambassador, giving tours to prospective engineering students.

Returning to Valleyfair around 9 PM for the night session of ERT, there were still a LOT of cars in the lot. However, there was lots of parking close by the gate. After finding Cam and the gang, we headed for High Roller, which was a rare 2-train operation. The trims were still in business, and the little double-dip right before the station is the only powerful kick of air on the whole coaster. We remained there for the start of night ERT. Trims stayed on the few rides we rode there.

Over to Wild Thing for what everyone was hoping for: a brakeless ride. Last year, during evening ERT, the brakes were turned completely off. This year, all of us there were hoping for the same thing. Maintenance had pulled one of the trains, so it was only a 1-train operation. The brakes were definitely tuned down, but they weren’t completely off. You could see this by the full train overshooting the main brakes. The brakes varied during the ERT. However, even on the last train, the brakes were never completely disabled.

That last point did not bother me at all, but a couple of people thought quite poorly of the event. One gentleman, wearing a Hydra shirt, was bellyaching about how the queue was not cleared so that the ERT could start EXACTLY at 10 PM, among many other things. He was going to Guest Relations to complain. For those of us within earshot of this man’s tirade, it was all we could do not to harshly shut him up. Personally, I’m grateful that VF went through the trouble of being open for 3 extra hours, and won’t be bitching unless it gets REALLY bad. I had a great time at Coaster Craze, and I hope it gets firmly entrenched into the enthusiast calendar.

Paul “STOP WHINING!” Miller

TR: Mt. Olympic 6/10/05

2008-07-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

JUNE 10, 2005
MT. OLYMPUS WATER AND THEME PARK AND TIMBER FALLS
WISCONSIN DELLS, WISCONSIN

Being that I am a member of RideWorld, I was able to join the Midwest Coaster Conquest crew in Wisconsin Dells on Friday, June 10. I departed work at 10 AM in the Twin Cities, drove through some heavy showers on I-94 in western Wisconsin, and made the three-hour journey from Golden Valley down to the Dells. However, the closer I got to the Dells, the worse the weather looked. The first clue was noticed when I stopped at a rest area just past Black River Falls. The radar indicated a large blob of rain moving towards the Dells. After going past the Tomah split, the sky ahead grew more foreboding. Half an hour north of the Dells, the rain finally came.

I pulled into the parking lot at Mount Olympus shortly after 2 PM in a pouring rain. I parked next to my other RideWorld coaster friend, Jerry Dorf. Jerry was not on the tour, but had come down earlier that morning to see the gang. He filled me in on the activities of the morning during the rain delay. The thunderstorm stopped around 2:30, and by 2:45 all the coasters were back in business. I purchased my unlimited use pass (4-hour passes are now a thing of the past), and we entered a deserted park. The sun came out, and with it came incredibly high humidity (dew points in the 60s).

Prior to becoming a coaster-enthusiast-in-training, I had thought that Noah’s Ark Waterpark was the only reason any self-respecting college student would even get off the freeway at Wisconsin Dells. However, the combination of Hades, the purchase of Family Land Waterpark by the owners of Big Chief’s Carts and Coasters, and the merger of the two into Mount Olympus now make that a true destination worthy of the critical theme park mind.

The first place Jerry and I went was Hades, the wooden coaster that has set coaster message boards ablaze for the past year. The jury will not take six days to get a verdict on Hades, unlike a certain trial out in Santa Monica, California. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new champion. Pre-lifthill, Hades is better than a lot of wooden coasters. The drop and tunnel is all about speed. It is impossible to know just how much banking is in the tunnel without some sort of vertical reference point, so you can definitely tell that you go through a steep banked curve, but you can’t tell if it’s 90+ degrees. Also, reverse of what many would think, Hades delivers more airtime in the front of the train than in the back. Keep in mind that this is while the coaster is relatively “green”. This time next year, Hades will be an absolute monster.

After a couple of rides on Hades, we then tried out the other selections in the park. First was Zeus, an old CCI creation. Zeus looks good from the road, delivers lots of airtime, but this coaster has not aged particularly well. During some of the airtime, which was plentiful, the train ran on the upstops. Hard. I also didn’t like the back row in these cars, as my knees took a battering. My rides on Zeus are like High Roller at Valleyfair, better from the back row due to more legroom.

Next was the infamous back row of Cyclops. Wisconsin state law requires that all riders in the back car to be over the age of 18. For good reason. Perhaps it was because Jerry had most of the seatbelt on his side of the seat, or maybe because of the relatively loose lapbar, but this was incredibly ridiculous. Nearly completely thrown out of the car. I can see why you must be 18 to sit in the back. Rest of the coaster is relatively tame compared with the back row.

We cycled through those three coasters for the next hour. We then found our way to the relatively tame coaster of the bunch, Pegasus. Jerry and I rode separate, for good reason. That coaster is all about laterals, and we would have beaten the daylights out of each other. Like I said, relatively tame. We also met some of the people on the Midwest Coaster Conquest, as well as the RideWorld chiefs, Chris and Natalee Godsey.

After riding the daylights out of the coasters at Mount Olympus until about 4:30, the crew met at Timber Falls at 5 to get specs of ERT. As it turned out, there would be no ERT. However, the park would be open until 10. After paying a special group rate, the Trekkers partook in a round of miniature golf on one of Timber Falls’ three mini-golf courses. I hadn’t mini-golfed in a long time, and I forgot how fun/frustrating mini golf can be.

Mini-golf completed, we descended upon the 12-person train on Avalanche. This coaster doesn’t look like much. Boy, are you in for an attitude adjustment. This is a WILD coaster, with ridiculous airtime, just enough of a rough ride to keep you hooked, and a very agreeable re-ride policy. While this coaster is deliriously full of airtime, it’s a tough one to power-ride. Very intense, and quickly became a favorite of everyone. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this ride as well. Avalanche is going to hit the top-10 list of most enthusiasts who pass through the Dells.

The CoasterTrek armada left for Illinois at 7:30, and Jerry and I stayed to ride Avalanche a few more times before I departed for Madison and my accommodations for the night. The Dells coasters seem thoroughly underrated in the realm of the coaster world. This was discussed by some at Timber Falls, and we agreed that the reason for this is that not many enthusiasts get up here, as compared with Florida or SoCal. Anyway, if you are not bothered by the obscenity of the “Strip”, the Dells is a great place for coaster enthusiasts to get their fix.

En route to Madison on I-94, I was forced off the freeway twice by rain so heavy I couldn’t see 100 feet in front of me, and I did not care to get my car smashed in. I did get to Madison and back intact, while staying with my residents (OK, ex-residents now) the night in Madison. All that walking and the heat meant that I was sore and exhausted upon arrival in Madison, and I slept the sleep of the dead.

PAUL’S BOLD PREDICTIONS

1) Within a few years, Hades will be having tracking issues in the tunnel, simply because so much speed is carried through the tunnel that the lumber can’t handle the load. GhostRider and SOB all carry lots of speed through parts of their track, and neither of those has held up well.

2) There isn’t enough cheese in Wisconsin to go with all of the whining the ACErs will create when CoasterCon rolls into town at the end of next week from Six Flags Chicago. The trains are short, there is one train on each coaster, and the park is very, very hilly. I lost a few pounds climbing stairs, and I am in good walking shape.

TR: Southern California, 3/11/05-3/13/05

2008-07-13T17:54:00.000-07:00

FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 2005
KNOTT'S BERRY FARM
BUENA PARK, CALIFORNIA

As the sun sets over a hazy day in the Los Angeles basin, I am not sitting on a SoCal beach such as Redondo or Hermosa, enjoying the fiery sunset into the haze. No, I am a few miles inland, being hauled up the lift hill on a rickety wooden roller coaster for my first coaster ride of Knott’s Winter Coaster Solace VI. Just as I am about to plunge down the lift hill…

However, before we dive down that lift hill, I suppose I better start at the beginning. My day had commenced at 4:05 AM Central time with the ringing of several alarm clocks. Shower, shave, and a handoff of the duty phone and key ring later, I am off to the city bus stop on Washington Ave. and Harvard St. Imagine my surprise when two others are standing there with rolling suitcases in hand. We ride the same city bus and LRT train out to the Lindbergh terminal, and have a nice chat for the ride to the airport.

In order to save money, my routing took me on Delta to Atlanta before going to Los Angeles. No holdups in either MSP or Atlanta meant that our flight into Los Angeles got in a few minutes of schedule. At the same time, a lot of the big 747s were being pushed back from the Tom Bradley International Terminal, ready to head to the Orient. This meant there was an epic traffic jam on the tarmac, and we took a long time getting to gate 52A.

I met Jerry Dorf, my partner in crime for the weekend at the car rental office, and with glossy maps in hand, we headed out for Orange County, and more specifically, the Knott’s Berry Farm (KBF) resort complex. This was my first experience of California outside airports in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and I must say freeway conditions on the 105 didn’t surprise me much. We stayed at the Radisson that is on-site at Knott’s, and as soon as we get squared away, both of us are down for the count, attempting to rest up for the several hours of ERT we are going to get tonight.

We make our initial walk towards the gate at around 5:00 PM. Knott’s Berry Farm is not your average garden-variety theme park. Outside the gate is Knott’s California Marketplace, which is essentially a heavily themed strip mall. Several different shops and a couple of restaurants are outside the gate. To me, this was a rather unusual configuration, but I suppose any attempt to get money from locals who want to come shopping there is a worthy venture.

FRIDAY NIGHT ERT or THE BEGINNING OF A SPOILING

We had picked up our ERT credentials at the hotel registration desk, and couldn’t go into the park officially until 6:00. Jerry could have (he has a Valleyfair pass, which is good at KBF), but I would have been relieved of an unnecessary $45. 6:00 finally came, the flags in front of the park were properly removed, and the gates were opened to the out-of-towners who had gotten the package deal to stay at the on-site hotel that we did.

Our first foray in the park was down to Ghostrider. On this particular evening, Ghostrider was in a good mood. It ran (relatively) smooth, at least compared with some of my runs on Ghostrider the next night and on High Roller. Four words are my summary for Ghostrider: Hauls a$$, kicks a$$.

There was also a carny at heart working the mic on Friday night. He had the crowd worked up, getting the crowd to send off and greet each train with a rousing round of applause. Granted, you’re with a bunch of coaster diehards, but anyone who can get a crowd to do that every time a train comes into or leaves the station gets an A in my book.

After two passes on Ghostrider, we set off to partake in some of Knott’s interesting menagerie of coasters. The first one we came upon that was part of the ERT was Montezooma’s Revenge. For those of you unfamiliar with KBF, Montezooma’s Revenge is a Schwarzkopf shuttle loop. There aren’t very many of these shuttle loops left in the world. It is a unique ride and a powerful, G-filled launch and loop. At the time, Montezooma didn’t leave much of an impression on me. However, read on to see what happens.

After one trip on Montezooma, me and Jerry headed back to where the Supreme Scream and the station for Xcelerator are located. I have my personal issues with drop towers, so I passed on Scream, and headed for Xcelerator…

XCELERATOR

All I can say about Xcelerator is: WOW. I was quite jittery while entering the queue for Xcelerator the first time. I was fully aware that the intial drop was 90 degrees and the acceleration out of the station was crazy. Because of this, I endured some good-natured ribbing from Jerry about it. Jerry didn’t seem to be very enthusiastic about riding this, due to previous bad experience with the restraints on Top Thrill Dragster. However, restraints here were not a problem for either of us. Due to said crazy acceleration, this was an empty-your-pockets ride. Both of us had to leave glasses and pocket contents in nifty cubbyholes in the station, so we were literally “flying blind,” as we’re both very nearsighted. 60 seconds, 2.8 linear Gs, and a strange trip down from the top hat later, we were back at the station. The airtime on this ride in the first 3 cars was a different kind of airtime than on any other coaster I’ve ridden. Granted, that’s not saying much, but the point is there. I rode it again in the back row later, and THERE was the airtime. Overall, a great ride.

Dinner, then Learning How to Bite the Bullet

Knott’s treated the guests on Friday to a fantastic dinner. BBQ chicken, steak, grilled salmon, with a full salad bar was the menu, and we chowed down. It hadn’t helped that the only thing I had eaten all day was a piece of pizza in Atlanta 12 hours earlier. Needless to say, I did some damage. After dinner, a few dignitaries spoke. First was JP Morgan, general manager of Knott’s Berry Farm, thanking everyone for coming. Next, we got to the raffle. I would NOT have wanted to win one of the big 60-pound road wheels, as I had no way other than FedEx to get it home (I didn’t check any bags). However, I would have liked that weekend package for 4 Alas, it was not to be. Next was one of the guys from S&S. With all due respect to him, he should stay in the structural engineering business. The speech just kept going and going. The ride crew started sending warmup trains through the course towards the end of the speech, and that was getting EVERYONE’S attention. Some of the gasps that I overheard was how quiet it was for a B&M, or how fast it goes. As soon as the dignitaries were done, the stampede to the Bullet took place. Me and Jerry talked a bit with Chris Godsey of Rideworld, and then we headed for the front row queue of Silver Bullet.

The reason that we waited for a front row seat was that this was to be my first inverted coaster, and the first ride should be taken in the front row. I was not disappointed. The Silver Bullet is awesome from the front, and even though I couldn’t see much clearly, it was great in the front. Bullet is also very rerideable, to the tune of 6 more passes, including two just to get a better on-ride photo. Part of the package for the Friday ERT was a free on-ride photo at Silver Bullet. For all three of mine I looked at, I looked like I was about to fly into a brick wall. Jerry looked like ‘ol Cool Hand Luke in all three pictures. If someone can host the scanned photo, I’ll stick it below here.

However, after Jerry got his photo, the time difference was catching up to us. It was only 10:15 PM local time, but my body clock was saying 12:15 AM, and you’ve been awake since 4. As a college student, I am kind of used to running long hours, but I was running out of gas. Jerry and me staggered back to the Raddison, glad we went for the on-site hotel instead of trying to drive to an off-site hotel while groggy and tired. A very interesting day indeed, but more was yet to come Saturday.

SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2005
KNOTT'S BERRY FARM,
BUENA PARK, CALIFORNIA

Saturday morning dawned bright and early, with ERT starting at 7 on the Jaguar, Montezooma, and the Boomerang. If this was supposed to be sunny California, then our weekend, the morning certainly wasn’t. I didn’t see a sunrise for either of the two mornings we were in California. However, on Saturday, things cleared up later in the morning, and the sun got kind of hot later in the afternoon. We started on Jaguar. I had seen Jaguar go through the top of the pyramid, and it looked like there A) wasn’t much to it, and B) it didn’t go very fast. I was wrong on both counts. It is quite a long ride, very similar to the Ripsaw at Mall of America. The ride is also much better in the back. Sitting in the front meant there was a lot of sitting and waiting for the train to get over the top of the hill.

After the Jaguar as kind of a warmup, Jerry and I went over to Montezooma. This time, we must have taken rides in every car on that train. At first I thought the G-forces were worse in the front than in the back, but after learning that at one point in the loop, there is over 4 Gs on your body, rerides in the back and front found a substantial difference between the two, with the back being more forceful than the front. Monte is also hard on your body after a few launches. Still, it’s a classic ride with a big punch.

Prior to deciding between Boomerang and Montezooma, Jerry asked me if I wanted my headache now or later. After one pass for the credit on Boomerang, I know understand the validity of his question. This Arrow concoction administered a beating that up to that point, was the worst I had ever taken from an amusement ride. I had ridden Valleyfair’s Corkscrew, and was told that Corkscrew was a pounder. One quick side note: On Arrow trains, I have to ride in the front row, due to the fact that I can’t fit anywhere else on the train (I’m 6’4” with really long legs). If there was ever a one-and-done, this was it.

By that time, Xcelerator had opened up, and we made a few passes on it. It was during the wait for one of the cycles that I waited right in front of the world-famous Robb and Elissa Alvey. In fact, I attempted to sit along side Elissa one time, but it didn’t work out. As far as one-train operations go, I really couldn’t notice much of a difference in turnover rates between one and two train operations (I rode it again with 2 trains right before the night ERT). Wait times weren’t bad during the morning ERT. 3 cycles for any car behind the first car is fine by me.

After the park opened to the general public, Jerry and I wandered around to see what there was to see, as well as to partake in some of Knott’s selection of flat rides. First up was the Riptide, a clone of which Valleyfair is getting this year. I had ridden a Soriani and Moser Top Spin at the Minnesota State Fair last year, but this was the first time on a Huss version of this ride. The second round of flipping, we got 5 full flips, but couldn’t quite coax a 6th out of the gondola.

For the ERT people, there was a 2-for-1 on the Giant Swing. We tried this out, and I must say, looking down at the ground while at the top of the swing was a rather unsettling feeling. While this ride packed a nice little punch, it is a poorly-kept secret that the designer of this ride originally intended for it to be much faster than it currently was. As I was told, the designer said that “Knott’s neutered my ride.”

Another thing I noticed was that there sure seemed to be an awful lot of high school-aged girls wearing cheerleading uniforms in the park. After walking past the Charles Schultz Theater, I found out why. KBF was hosting the state cheerleading competition. At first I thought Knott’s was a rather unusual venue for such a competition, but after doing some research, the 2,100 seat Charles Schultz Theater would make for a fine venue for such a competition. Jerry also suggested that the Mall of America would love to host a cheerleading competition, but they don’t have a stand-alone auditorium or arena large enough to handle it. Sounds strange for the Mall of America, but sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Also, while I applaud Knott’s for going out and getting the actual songs to play in the Broadway area of the park, could you do us a favor and get some more good oldies to add into circulation? I think I heard “Chantilly Lace,” “Tequila,” “Sleepwalk,” and “O Little Darlin” at least 3 times just during the ERT. Don’t get me wrong, I like those songs, but if you were an employee, they could drive me crazy.

Lunch was served across Beach Blvd, in their picnic pavilion. Chicken, ribs, hot dogs, and all the trimmings were served. After everyone went through the line, GM Jack again thanked everyone for coming to their event, and they raffled a lot more stuff off. There was all kinds of miscellaneous junk out of the maintenance shed that they were raffling off. Included were some coaster wheels, Ghostrider lumber, the fronts from two cars of an old defunct kiddie coaster that used to be at Knott’s (Can’t remember the name), framed photos, pins, posters, even the Solace signs at the entrance. At the end, Knott’s donated one of the signs as a giant get-well-soon card for a Minnesota enthusiast, and everyone was signing it.

Jerry retired to the hotel after lunch for a siesta while I went to try my hand at coaster photography. Here’s a note for all of you photographers-to-be out there: Coaster photography is not a knack acquired with half-dead batteries in your camera. I got a few pictures of the Bullet and Montezooma before the camera batteries died. After this, I noticed that the queue for the Bullet was only to the bottom of the stairs, so I decided to get my front-row Bullet ride in daylight. I entered the queue, and half the park followed me. I only waited about 20 minutes for a front-row spot. I still like the front row of Bullet for the visuals.

I must have been more tired than I thought, because after going back to the hotel and reading the LA Times, I was dead to the world for 3½ hours. Awakening a little after 8, I grabbed my trusty Ambassador sweatshirt, and headed for the park. Re-entering the park, I met back up with Jerry around 9. He had gone back into the park at 6 and went on Perilous Plunge. According to him, the ride crew was bored. So they sent him around again. Upon returning to the station, they sent him off for a third time around. By the time he got off the third time, he was thoroughly drenched, and went back to the hotel to change clothes. So thoroughly drenched, in fact, that when we were leaving for Magic Mountain at 6:30 the next morning, the clothes (which he had hung in the shower to dry out) were still wringing wet.

We got two cycles on Xcelerator during the 9:00 hour, along with a lot of people hiding their Solace ERT credentials. Two trains were running at this time, and the difference in turnaround time wasn’t anything substantial. I did like the fact that there were two sets of cubbyholes at the platform, one for each train. When the other train came into the station, a sheet of plywood slid to the side, allowing each train’s cubbyholes to be kept separate.

SATURDAY NIGHT ERT

Ghostrider must not have gotten its afternoon tea, because it had an ATTITUDE tonight. For our first run, the general public had not cleared out of the queue, so this led to an approximately 30 minute wait for the first ride in the third car. The first ride was incredibly rough, and I almost picked up a big headache. Jerry then decided that the next ride was going to be in the back. Great. Just what I need. The back row had a ton of airtime but also delivered a head-bashing that would make any Arrow veteran quiver in fear. So much of a head-bashing that I had to get off Bullet after two cycles (we went there next) because I was starting to get tunnel vision through the helix. I rejoined the party on the Bullet about 10 minutes later, and was fine for the remainder of the evening.

The Bullet crew was FANTASTIC. In fact, one of the crew, a girl, for reasons I can’t recall off the top of my head, rode in the front row. I was just getting off after 2 straight cycles. Since the front row was empty, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go, what does any self-respecting, handsome, available, 20-year-old gentleman do? Hop in the neighboring seat. The train is dispatched, and while going up the lift hill, we have a brief conversation about how awesome the Bullet is. We then have a great ride, and afterwards, while in a fit of hysterical laughter, she says that she didn’t think Bullet moved so fast. Not wanting to be a buzz kill and inform her that if anything, the train was moving slower due to less passenger mass (the train was about ¾ empty), I just nodded and agreed. I am truly learning the ways of women.

Anyway, I was on the Bullet until ERT ended, and had a great time with the crew, as anyone who was there can attest to. I want to thank Knott’s for being such spectacular hosts for Solace, their crews for being great, and for their overall hospitality.

SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 2005
SIX FLAGS MAGIC MOUNTAIN
VALENCIA, CALIFORNIA

awned cloudy and chilly (even by my ridiculously low standards) early again for myself and Jerry, who found it a little more difficult to wake up early today (we’re starting to get used to the time difference) for check-out and our run to Valencia and Six Flags Magic Mountain. After successfully checking out of the Radisson, we embark on the voyage to Valencia. The stretch of I-5 from Beach Blvd. into downtown Los Angeles is a very old freeway. I was excited to see the overhead light towers of Dodger Stadium for the first time as we went by. Further north, we passed through the junction with the Antelope Valley Freeway, portions of which had collapsed onto the I-5 during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. I also noticed a lot of earthquake retrofitting on overpasses.

The long drive to Valencia gave us a chance to talk about some things. I’ll use this time to talk a little about myself. I am Paul, a newbie in the world of coaster enthusiasts. Currently, I’m a junior at the University of Minnesota, studying civil engineering. How did I get involved in the coaster world, you ask? I’m a born-and-raised Minnesotan, and to me, the Minnesota State Fair was always the highlight of the year. Something about the midway always keyed my interest. I started posting on the Matt’s Carnival Warehouse (MCW) message board during my freshman year, and while on MCW, I met Jerry Dorf, another Minnesotan who is well-connected in the enthusiast circles. Last summer he asked me if I wanted to come to a coaster event at Valleyfair. Up until then, I hadn’t been a big coaster guy. I made my first rides on Valleyfair’s coasters that night, and I think I commented that Jerry was “trying to get me hooked on this coaster stuff.” Earlier this month, Jerry was talking up this California trip on the MCW and the roller coaster IRC chat channel. Somewhat out of the blue, he asked me if I wanted to come along. A quick search of airfares to Los Angeles produced a reasonable enough rate for Solace weekend, and the rest is history.

But anyway, back to this trip report. The Six Flags California complex is set way back from the freeway at the Magic Mountain Parkway exit. If you were coming from the south, and you didn’t know that the park was here, it wouldn’t be easy to find out. The only indication on northbound I-5 that the park is there is a large “Six Flags California” sign on the west side of the freeway, similar to a McDonald’s sign. When we finally withdraw into the woody driveway back to the Six Flags property, we turned the corner and there it is. X. In all of its purple-and-gold glory (I know now that the paint crews are Vikings fans). We will be riding it soon enough. However, the visuals are incredibly intimidating as you drive in. And that is to a seasoned flatride veteran.

After being relieved of $9 by the parking troll (trolls aren’t completely vanquished off the mountain), we roll around to the enormous parking lots behind the park. The people there for WCB were among the first people there, so we parked directly behind Colossus. The sheer size of the parking lots made my head spin. I would NOT like to be at this park when all of these lots are full. Also, being here at the Uof M without a bike means that I am in pretty good walking shape. I needed it just to get to the front gate without the parking tram.

At the front gate were Rideworld’s fearless leaders, Chris and Natalee Godsey, handing out credentials and wristbands for the ERT. There were a lot of familiar faces from the previous days at Knott’s, and it was a reassuring sign that we heard the “clear the lift” horn from X while we were waiting at the gate. Also, I was surprised to see metal detectors at the entrance of SFMM. I thought it was strange, but it was explained later that SFMM has had problems with violence. Metal detectors were their way of keeping weaponry out of the park. There is also a LA County Sheriff and Valencia PD sub-station near the park entrance.

X is like Johnny Cash. It doesn’t fit into one genre, rather it’s in its own league. It is not the most intense ride I’d ever experienced, not by any reach of the imagination. I thought that Ghostrider and some of my cycles on the Space Roller flatride were more intense than X was. It certainly is the most unique, though. However, X was a headbanger. Even in the front row, wheel seat, which is where I took my first run. All of the rides were taken on the right side of the train. The last maneuver was the worst. Major head-bashing on all three cycles from all seats, even with active counter-headbashing maneuvers in place. I had my fill of the head-banging after 3 rides.

I then headed towards the rest of the park and the other coasters that were open for ERT. Jerry suggested that because of my height that I pass on Riddler’s Revenge. He also suggested that Goliath is Wild Thing with an attitude problem. I kept that in mind as I meandered towards Goliath. Six Flags Magic Mountain is a BIG park. It’s also kind of difficult to make your way around unless you know what you’re doing. Anyway, I found Goliath, and was impressed with the theming in the queue. Queue theming is one department where SFMM does a very good job. Goliath was a fun and FAST coaster. No killer airtime in the back seat (there is airtime on the second drop), but I would not have liked to go through the helix on Goliath without the heavy braking on the second brake run. I was beginning to gray out as it was. Anyway, took 3 runs, enjoyed front car and back row.

Carefully deliberating Jerry’s advice, I decided to give Riddler a whirl. It was at the lockers for this where I got the crap scared out of me. I had originally placed my stuff in a locker. SFMM is a locker park, which means you have to place your loose articles in lockers at the bottom of the queue. I was going up the stairs when I realized that I had forgotten to put my glasses in the locker. I return to the locker panel to put my glasses in the locker. I figure I’d eat 50 cents and keep my stuff in there. I open the locker, put my glasses in, and go back over to the panel to rent the locker again. Problem was, the panel didn’t give out the same locker. And the door was locked, which meant I couldn’t get at any of my stuff. I had to go up to the platform and have someone open the locker for me.

After this brief scare, I took a ride on Riddler. I had no problems with the standing restraints. With no offense to anyone who reads this trip report, the restraints adapt a lot easier to excess height than to excess girth. The ride is very much a B&M, both by the roar and the smoothness. Also, the bottom of the first drop pulls a LOT of Gs. Bear in mind that by this time I was still under the influence of a rough GhostRider and an X-tra large headbanging (sorry, had to throw that one in) from earlier in the morning, so I was having issues with my vision tunneling all day through high-G elements. That aside, Riddler is not compact and super-intense like it’s counterpart down the street, Batman, but it’s still a coaster that means business. It has moments of high-Gs, although high G loadings aren’t particularly appreciated by me on a stand-up coaster. I thought Riddler was very hard on the knees and quads. One ride was as much as I wanted for the rest of the day. For the rest of the day, we took one ride on all coasters mentioned.

After Riddler I went back up the bridge that goes out to X to meet Jerry, who had been riding X during the entire ERT. At this point, the line for X stretched all the way back to the end of the bridge, and it looked like you could be there a goodly portion of the day. We then started to make our rounds of the park. Going over the hill towards Psyclone and Déjà Vu, I noticed a portion of inverted track that used to be red, but now had some sections of track that had started to rust. That is a coaster named Ninja, and it wasn’t open when we were there. The ironic part is that the rusty track could be seen behind a wall with a Sherwin Williams paint advertisement.

Passing the large green lawn statue that is Déjà Vu, we came to SFMM’s take on the famous Coney Island Cyclone. Psyclone was a joke of epic proportions. Not only was it hard on the body (rough), it was also very hard on the ears. The trim brakes squealed like a stuck pig with a high-frequency whine that would make your ears bleed. Did anybody say WD40? Also, it was here that the differences between Six Flags parks and Cedar Fair parks (or at least Knott’s) became apparent. Six Flags appears to be in the game for the money. Knott’s M.O. was customer service. The reason that I began noticing this was that there was only 1 train on Psyclone. This could lead to ridiculous lines in the summer when the aforementioned huge parking lots were full.

After leaving Psyclone, I got to thinking. The crews on all the coasters I had been on seemed thoroughly disinterested in being there. What if you combined the ride staffing of Knott’s (fantastic) with the ride firepower of Magic Mountain? Now I am not slamming KBF for their rides. In fact, you could make a good case for KBF being on par with SFMM as far as thrills go. The setting for Magic Mountain is fantastic. However, it’s the customer service aspect of their operations that leaves a lot to be desired. Also, some of the physical plant at the park left a lot to be desired, namely the horrible squeaking in the trims on Psyclone and the rusty track on Ninja. Considering Magic Mountain is one of Six Flags’ premier properties, I was surprisd how crummy some portions of the park looked. I was also quite surprised at how fast steel corrodes in southern California. The queue railings on X looked like they had been there for 15-20 years instead of 3 or 4.

But anyway, back to the TR. After Psyclone, we headed over to Batman. Batman had the best queue theming I can remember. (Disclaimer: I have been to WDW, but I was 7 at the time, so I wasn’t paying attention to stuff like that) It is also a night-and-day difference from Silver Bullet in intensity. Line was less than 10 minutes. I rode in Row 2, and WOW! Lots of Gs, speed, and a lot more intense than Bullet? Being in Row 2, I couldn’t see what was coming, so it made the ride all that much crazier. Jerry wasn’t so lucky, however. The OTSR was ¼ inch away from the seat belt clicking shut. Alas, he waited for me from the exit lane. I can see why people were so quick to roast Bullet. After riding Batman a ton, I can see how Bullet could be a disappointment.

We then went down the big long hill to Scream. Scream is SFMM’s newest attraction, another B&M concoction, except this is a floorless coaster. After depositing my stuff in the locker, we had a short wait for the front row. This is another very smooth B&M, and like Batman, gives a helluva ride. Being in the front row, and having obscenely long legs, I thought I was going to kick the track. Since I was in seat 2, and there was a little knob on the car below my feet, I placed my feet on it for the last run to the station. Call me a cop out, but the illusion was very convincing.

Next, back up the hill to eat lunch. The food was decent (I had chicken strips and fries), but the prices weren’t (it relieved me of the remaining cash I had brought with me into the park, and I vowed we weren’t eating dinner in the park). No surprise there, huh? It was here where the weather began to come into play for me. Since we were parked a very long ways away from the gate, I gambled that the sun was eventually going to come out, and left my sweatshirt back in the car. It was now about noon, the sun showed no signs of coming out, and it didn’t look like it was going to warm up any. Since we sat down for roughly 20 minutes, I had a chance to cool off from walking around. And when we got started again a few minutes later, I never really got warmed back up until we got in the car to head back to LAX.

Prior to lunch, Jerry had been eyeing up two blood-curling attractions in the back of the park, Verti-Go and the Skycoaster. Verti-Go is some combination of Ejection Seat and Skyscraper that was originally at Cedar Point. A long and detailed story later, and it ends up out at SFMM. Jerry bought tickets to VertiGo, and he was subsequently loaded into the vehicle. Well, lo and behold, no sooner was he loaded into the seat than the thing broke down. He was shown off and told to come back later. In the meantime, he went over to get his Skycoaster ride. The Skycoaster is quite a spectator sport, and “Holy Sh**” seems to be a popular reaction among those who watched the Skycoaster run. Jerry pitched heavily up and down while the cable was still slack, then after the cable went taut, it was your average garden-variety Skycoaster ride. This ordeal took about half an hour, and by that time VertiGo was running, so he went to redeem his flight.

At this point, we hiked up Samurai Summit towards the hilltop attractions. The name of the park is Six Flags Magic Mountain, and they mean mountain. If you don’t take the Orient Express up to the top of Samurai Summit, your quads get a very good workout. When we got up there, just about everything up there was closed. Ninja, Sky Tower, and the pizza joint were all closed, with no signs of opening. The only thing that vaguely looked open was Superman, and the queue was out the door onto the plaza. I figured that the wait was going to be over an hour, so me and Jerry split up, Jerry to the Superman line, and myself back down the mountain to the Gold Rusher. Gold Rusher is a quaint little Arrow mine train with manually-operated lapbars. The line for this was a surprising 40 minutes. Again, a one-train operation. There were two larger guys on the train right ahead of me who literally got stuck under their lapbars, and the operators had a fit getting them loose. After seeing what happened (I was in line for row 3 of car 2), I switched places with two smaller kids who were in line for the front row of the car after the gates were opened, and had no problem getting the lap bar to close. This was the only ride on which I have felt like needing to duck, for fear of losing the services of my head to low clearance underneath the log flume. This ride has a lot that is hidden. It’s a nice little coaster. Not worth a 40-minute wait.

Back up the hill to meet Jerry. Jerry reported that Superman’s launch was less intense than Montezooma’s, and that the wait was only about 40 minutes. Oh well. On our way towards the front of the park for Viper and Revolution, we stopped and talked to an enthusiast from Boston for a while. He had a similar opinion of things that I did. We then walked down to get our credits on Revolution.

All of you familiar with Revolution know the story. Those of you unfamiliar can go here: Anyway, the wait for Revolution was short enough, and I rode in the third car, first row. I had no trouble with the OTSRs bashing my head around. Then again, I’m tall enough where my ears are above the collars. The ride was very smooth, just as a Schwarzkopf should be. The way the greenery has grown up around Revolution makes the ride even better. You don’t know what’s coming, except for the long downhill run into the loop.

The line for Viper looked short enough, so we went over there next. There is one major problem with the queue for Viper. Once in the lower level of the station, the line splits into three lines, and where each line goes is not marked. Now, if you use logic, you can figure out that the line to the left goes to the front row, but that could be above the thought level of much of SFMM’s clientele. As for the coaster, I am tall enough where Viper, whose train design is similar to Valleyfair’s Corkscrew, is a automatic front-row ride, mostly because I can’t fit into anywhere else in the train. It is also similar to Corkscrew in that it is rough. Even in the front row, while taking evasive action away from the head-banging. There is no way that anyone is able to eat a banana while in the back row, like Donald Sutherland did in the movie Space Cowboys. Viper is all right. The front of the train has a lot of hangtime at the top of the corkscrews. Not zero-G hangtime, but lean-into-your-OTSR hangtime. Another one-and-done.

There was only one coaster left that neither of us had ridden so far during the day, and that was Colussus. The star of the park entry sequence of National Lampoon’s Vacation and one of the biggest wooden coasters around, Colussus is showing its age. Mostly, the paint job is what is showing the age. The left side of the train was the only side running that day, and it was only one train. The right side looked like it had not been used in a long time. The tracks had no grease/wear marks on them, and there was no trains on the right side. During this line, Jerry started filling me in on some of the details he had heard about what RideWorld and SFMM want to do with this event next year. All I can say is this: If the event is what the rumors say it is, every coaster enthusiast worth their salt should be marking their calendars. Something to the effect of returning the coaster record to Valencia. I know I am.

But enough with fueling the rumor fire. Jerry talked me into wearing my glasses on the ride. Big mistake. I should have left them back at the station with my hat. I was too concerned with making sure the wind blew my glasses onto my face to enjoy what is left of Colussus. Apparently it is a mere shadow of it’s former self. The ride is fairly smooth. No major poundings. Just a really long line for it.

At this point, it was 5:30, and we had ridden everything in the park that we wanted to ride. Plus, we wanted to be on the highway before the park closed. Also, I was now chilled to the bone. Put it all together and it means that our time at Six Flags Magic Mountain had come to an end. We started making our way back to the front entrance. We went by the previously mentioned Mooseburger, as well as the infamous Tweety Bird Cage kiddie ride. On our way out, we ran into Chris and Natalee Godsey, and gave them major props for organizing the event. Jerry also took a cute picture of the two of them. After that, we went out the gate and decided that we could walk to our car faster than the tram could take us there. We weren’t dragging yet, and we weren’t that far away.

After refueling at a Denny’s in nearby Newhall, me and Jerry started making our way back to the gargantuan zoo that is LAX. We return our car to Avis, and this is where I luck out. The previous day, Knott’s had given all of us souvenir “bullets” that were used as pens. The park director of operations said at lunch to not carry these objects on board the aircraft, as TSA frowns upon such things. Now Jerry and I were in a fix, as neither of us had checked any baggage. Jerry talked someone in Public Relations to mail his bullet back to Minnesota for him. I, however, had not done so. I was prepared to wander around LAX until I found the airport post office. Lo and behold, just before we turn into the Avis lot, voila! The airport post office is just across the street. After we get all the paperwork taken care of, I go over and mail the bullet. I guess today is my lucky day.

Anyway, there isn’t a whole lot else to say. Jerry and I part ways, he goes to the Northwest terminal to fly straight back to MSP, while I go to the Delta terminal to go to Cincinnati first. Eight hours, two flights, two hours in a Comair puddle-jumper, and a train-and-bus ride later, I stagger back into Frontier Hall, tired, a few hundred poorer, but having thoroughly enjoyed my fast-moving weekend in southern California.

THE END

Why This Is Here

2008-06-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. This blog is a convenient dumping ground for all of my trip reports for various things, ever since I started writing them in 2005.