Blame Kevin

I know, I know... I have been delinquent. I totally blame Kevin. See it's a chronological thing. And he was holding me up. At least that's my story and I am sticking to it!

A few weeks ago Kevin was invited to join his boss Scott on a whirlwind road trip - first to the University of Alabama for the Alabama/LSU college football game then on to Texas Motor Speedway for a Nascar race. Sounds like it was a quite a trip. But don't take my word for it, here's Kevin's account of of the trip - lewd bar behavior and all.

This was a big weekend. First, I did some scouting on one of the possible University of Texas’ opponents in the National Championship. Scott, Justin (one of his sons), and I drove to Tuscaloosa on Friday to watch the LSU versus Alabama game. We ate dinner with one of Scott’s old friends from college the night before the game. After dinner, we hung out on “strip.” There were a bunch of bars. We went to one called the Houndstooth. There was a good mix of Alabama and LSU fans. One Alabama girl had a tiger stuffed animal on a leash and had people kick it as they walked by. Another slightly inebriated Alabama girl was high fiving everyone saying “Roll Tide.” Some LSU fans wouldn’t do it and she would act sad. We saw lots of interesting people. At any rate, it was an fun evening.

Gameday was awesome. We started the day early and spent a lot of time walking around campus. I even bought a Roll Tide shirt for the game. We did some tailgating before the game and watched the players go into the stadium and watched the cheerleaders, dancers, and band perform outside of some library. They definitely have tailgating down. The campus was really nice. It was more like A&M’s campus. It was very spread out. The game itself was good too. The adventure started with the ticket staff telling us we couldn’t go into the game. Scott bought the tickets off Stubhub and it turns out the person who sold them to him had ripped off part of the ticket. We finally talked to one of the main guys, and he let us in primarily because Scott had his Stubhub receipt with him. Close call! When we got to the seats, we were a little concerned because we had seats in the very top row and there was some sign thing behind our seats. It turns out that while we could hit our head against it if we leaned back, it wasn’t really a problem. Our seats were in the end-zone section. Probably not considered primo seats, but the view of the field was excellent. Also, we were sitting next to some cool girl and her husband who work for the University. Neither team has a high powered offense, and it showed during the first half. No points in the first quarter and the first half ended Alabama trailing 7 to 3. The second half had more offense. The final score was Alabama 24, LSU 15. That is the outcome I wanted because 1) I hate LSU and 2) Scott and I are hoping to go to the game if Texas plays Alabama in the National Championship. After the game, we did more tailgating and ate burgers and hotdogs. At about 8:30 pm, we started towards Dallas. We had to drive a long way because we had to get close enough to Dallas such that we could drop Scott’s son off at the Dallas airport by a certain time in the morning.

Early Sunday morning, we headed to Texas Motor Speedway for the NASCAR race. Our favorite driver is Jeff Gordon. He was second in points heading into the race, but Jimmy Johnson had a huge lead with only a few races left. The flyover was a military bomber. However, even cooler was the massive military helicopter that came into the stadium, landed, dropped off the pace car, and then flew away! Before the race, we talked about how we needed Jimmy Johnson to get knocked out of the race. The race started awesome! Jeff Gordon had the pole position. Jimmy Johnson had a huge wreck and destroyed his car just a few laps in. Jeff Gordon lead the race in the early laps. If Gordon wins the race, the standings for the Cup would be extremely close with most of Johnson’s lead gone. Sadly, Gordon didn’t have a good race. He ended up spending most of his time in the 15th to 17th place and finished the race in 13th. Disappointing given he had finally won at Texas Motor Speedway in the Spring. The end of the race was entertaining as the leader ran out of gas in the final couple of laps. The traffic was HORRIBLE leaving the stadium. Scott and I tried to get to the car quickly to beat the crowd. There was already a massive line of cars. In the next hour and a half to two hours, Scott moved about 5 car lengths. I spent most of that time talking to Scott’s friends who we always meet at the race and having a burger they cooked.

Overall, it was a great weekend. The NASCAR race is always fun, and the Alabama/LSU game was incredibly fun. You can’t beat the college football environment.

Kevin still hasn't produced the photographic proof of their adventures, but I am sure if I pester him enough he will eventually get around to coughing them up. :)