I spent the last few days on vacation, in Indianapolis. For those of you who have no clue what was going on in Indianapolis this weekend, you are probably wondering why in the world would anyone go there, of all places, on vacation. And after this trip, I would have to agree with that sentiment. It's not a horrible place, but there's really no good reason for anybody to choose to vacation in a place like Indy under normal conditions.
Of course, this was not just any other weekend, and in fact this trip was in my plans for weeks in advance. The reason for the trip? None other than our beloved Illinois Fighting Illini Basketball team, and their quest for the Sweet Sixteen in the opening rounds of the NCAA tournament.
Though the point of this trip was to watch the Illini play, this blog wil not really focus on the team itself. I don't think I will write any more in depth thoughts on this team until after the season is officially over (which hopefully won't be for another few weeks). I figure I've already written plenty about them this year, and it would give me a chance to write a better and more comprehensive reflection on the season if I were able to see how it concluded.
The games were scheduled for Thursday and Saturday, so I took off a couple days of work and we (me, Andy, Tom, Ryan) left for Indianapolis on Wednesday night. We stayed with one of their old Lambda bros (plus his fiance) who lives in the area, and they were really great hosts. I'm positive that they won't be reading my blog so there's no point in thanking them here.
Their dog, Bullet, is one of the cutest dogs I have ever seen:
Not only cute, but also ridiculously hyper. Whenever he was let out of his cage, all he wanted to do was play. And by play, I mean either tug of war with a little Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal, or fetch with the same stuffed animal. It was kind of sad when he was watching us pack up to leave, he seemed to know that we were leaving because that was the only time he wasn't harrassing everyone with his mini Pooh Bear. I must say that as annoying as he was after only 3-4 days or so, I kinda miss having that little sucker around. But that's enough about Bullet for now.
Thursday's schedule had 4 games: Kentucky vs. Eastern Kentucky and Cincinnati vs. Iowa in the first session, Texas vs. Nevada and Illinois vs. Fairleigh Dickinson in the second session. We decided to buy a grill and food from the local hardware store and supermarket, and tailgate out the back of our rented SUV in the parking lot of the RCA dome.
It was a very, very long and tiring day, but fun. They didn't serve beer in the stadium, but we drank plenty before the first session and then again between sessions, and by the end of the last game (IL vs FDU), we were all dead tired. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera that day and thus have no pictures from Thursday at all.
Out of the 8 teams seeded at Indy, I would say that either Illinois or Kentucky had the most fans there, followed by Cincy, Iowa, Nevada, Texas, EKU, and Fairleigh Dickinson in that order. As for the games, the most exciting Thursday game by far was the Nevada vs. Texas matchup, where Nevada came back from down 4 with a minute left or so by scoring the last 8 points of the game. Not only that, but the Texas cheerleaders were extremely impressive. There was this middle-aged guy one row down from us that was blatantly staring at the cheerleaders through binoculars throughout the whole game, with his wife next to him and everything. A little creepy, but funny nonetheless.
Another thing I thought was funny was the Fairleigh Dickinson mascot. Basically it was just a guy wearing a plastic horse head. Looked so cheap like it was a 4th grader's Halloween costume. Also they didn't have their own band, so during the game the Illinois band played during all breaks, and sometimes you could see the FDU mascot grooving to the Illinois band's music. I felt bad for them at first, but then they were so pesky and made the game close, so then I felt mad at myself for feeling bad.
On Friday, there were no games, so we just took the time to wander around the city for a bit. The "official" Illini bar was the Ram brewery, which we visited first:
It was pretty full there, so we didn't stay for long. Then we decided that we should try to do things that we couldn't do back in Chicago, like eat at Hooters and play video games at Gameworks:
Dinner that night was at a local steakhouse, St. Elmo's, which was very good. Then we hit up a local Irish pub for a couple drinks before going to some place called Tiki Bar and then calling it a night. There were noticeably very few Asians around town, Indy was a lot more hillbillyish than I expected. A joke told during the Cincy-Kentucky game:
Ryan: "Where's Hicks?" (referring to Eric Hicks, Bearcat player)
Andy: "All around the stadium."
(laughter)
Saturday's games were in the evening, so we stayed home, grilled some more, and watched the other games around the country in HDTV on their 50" plasma. This was actually the first time I have watched a game in High Definition, I must say it was very very impressive. After a couple hours watching HD, it was almost painful to switch back to normal TV.
The two Indy second round games were Illinois vs. Nevada, and Kentucky vs. Cincy. Both were great games, although the crowd was a lot more energetic during the Wildcat-Bearcat game because there were more fans from both sides, and the game was closer. For Illini fans, it was a much better experience than Thursday because the team played better and the fans didn't have to sit through 3 other games beforehand.
A few pics from Saturday:
In the second picture, if you look in the middle you can see two guys in orange shirts, that would be Dee Brown and Jack Ingram. Our seats were pretty good, lower level behind the floor seats. By the way, I decided to nickname Jack Ingram "Jack-Jack" after we watched the Incredibles during the car ride to Indy.
We had planned on going out afterwards, but ended up being too tired so just came home, watched Sportscenter, and went to sleep. Woke up this morning, packed our stuff, and drove back to the good old Land of Lincoln. We stopped by the casino for a couple hours too, but I didn't play. Just watching other people play blackjack isn't very fun, especially compared to watching poker on TV.
As I typically do on this blog, I would like to try and record some more thoughts on the experience in addition to just listing the things I did.
Taking a roadtrip with the boys is a great experience. It's very draining and tiring, so it's not something you can do all the time. Also we are all getting older and our bodies clearly can't handle the beating as much these days. But still, there are few experiences I can think of that are more fun and provide better male bonding than taking a good road trip somewhere. There were quite a few memorable stories (which I might share later), and hilarious conversations about some pretty random topics.
For me personally, my life was definitely getting very routine lately and I think I really needed to take this vacation when I did. Getting away from work for a while is always nice. But it also seems like I've been spending almost all my weekends and free time with the girl lately, and then watching so many people around me getting engaged, I felt more and more like the days of being young and irresponsible were passing me by too quickly. It was such a breath of fresh air to just have some time with just guys for once, and flash back to being college kids, even if it was only for a few days.
One more thing I just thought of: We did not see everyone's favorite Kentucky fan, Ashley Judd. But we did see the most well known Cincy fan, Nick Lachey. He was in the front row for the first round game and the cameras kept showing him throughout the game. Even from across the court we could see him in his cutoffs, his tattoos and diamond earring. Also, at Tiki Bar we met a girl who claimed to be Jason Gardner's ex-girlfriend.
