Sunday, September 7, 2008

The Ultimate Sports Weekend









So this last weekend, Labor Day weekend, I had the best sports weekend planned. Two of my favorites, Utah football and US Open tennis. I planned this months ago and it was able to work out perfectly. I hopped on a flight to Michigan Friday after work, met up with Jason and Adam in Detroit and got ourselves ready for the big game. We stayed in the rinky dink Fairfield Inn but for 35 bones a night, I wasn't complaining. Jason's wife Molly printed us out an awesome red U for our rental car. You can see us putting it on our car. We thought for sure it wouldn't last through the night but it did. We woke up and cruised over to the game. We got there hours before and walked around and checked out all the tailgaters. Michigan knows how to do it when it comes to fan support and making a day out of a football game. We kicked it at Sportsradio booth that gave us free food as we mingled with all the Michigan folk. We entered the gates 90 minutes prior and the Big House was quite a site. I was impressed with their fans....they get there early and wear tellow and blue. Take note Utah fans. The game was...well you all know how it was. AWESOME. It was super hot but quite the experience. After the game, we slowly made our way back to the car. One of the highlights of the day was running into these drunk Michigan fans. You can see the photo below. Only Jason and Adam can truly understand how funny these two were. The photo below really depicts these two characters to a "T". We got back and Adam really wanted to go to White Castle. No offense, but my slider was the sickest thing I have ever thrown down my throat. I made them take me to get some real food. So we went to Carrabba's as I got some real food. Well, as real as Carrabba's can be. We ran into another funny Michigan fan, Holy Toledo, who enjoyed talking to us about the food. All in all it was an awesome day. I then woke up the next morning at 5:30 as Adam took me to the airport to catch my flight to New York. I sat next to Ute fan going to NY as well. We split a cab into town and by ten in the morning I was kicking at the Marriott Marquis in our room overlooking Times Square. Jenny and Tyler showed up shortly and we were off to the Open. Hopped on the 7 Subway and we were there shortly after noon. We watched over 12 hours of tennis as we stayed passed one in the morning watching Djokovic beat Cilic. The best part about it was that as we got in to Ashe Stadium, I found some tickets on the ground by the garbage. Upon further review, these were 210 dollar tickets. So I snaked them, convinced the other guys we could get in and fifteen minutes later we were sitting on like the tenth row just eating it up. We were all dead tired but could not pass up such great tennis. We finally left and got back about two in the morning. After a quick trip to Rays for some pizza we crashed. Monday we woke up and my contact at the USTA hooked us up with night tickets that night. So we took it easy that day, just walking around then made it out for the evening session. The matches were a little dull but still fun to be there. Then on Tuesday, Jenny and went for a run in Central Park which was totally awesome. We then made it for day three. This was awesome as we were able to see Federer play in a five setter that was one for the books. It looked as though he was going to lose but hung on to win. After that we watched Roddick just annilate Gonzo. By then it was time for us to catch our midnight bus back to DC. We packed up our things, caught the bus and pulled into DC about 3:50 in the morning. All in all, it was an awesome trip and I couldn't have designed it any better!