Road Trip!

Wow, what a crazy, busy and fun weekend. The CFO picked me up from work on Friday afternoon, I hopped into her new CRV and we headed south towards Missouri. It rained off and on during the drive and three hours later we were crossing the great Mississippi river and entering the city of St. Louis. We quickly navigated our way to the hotel and I ran in to get our room keys while she stayed in the car out of the rain. We unloaded our bags into the entry way and she waited there while I parked the car. Yes, even though it was raining, I’m still too cheap to pay for valet parking!

After finding my way back to the street level (I got a bit disoriented in the maze of an underground parking deck), we grabbed our stuff and headed up to the room and were greeted by a huge room with a living room (with a wet bar) and a separate bedroom. It was the second largest hotel room I’ve ever stepped foot in, the first being the Suite my friend had when he got married in Vegas. What made the big room even better was knowing that we were only paying $70 per night to stay there, thanks to Priceline. According to the Hyatt website, the cheapest room in the hotel was going for $169 per night for the weekend we were there! Yes, the name your own price ads on tv are dumb, but you can really get a good deal on rooms in nice hotels. However, based on our experiences with them, we have determined that you really only get great deals in big cities where they are probably never fully booked.

Saturday morning, we walked down to the arch, checked out the baseball stadium and noted that there weren’t many restaurants or stores in the down town area. When travelling, we typically spend more time shopping and eating than anything else, so the downtown area wasn’t going to cut it. Not surprising, the CFO had already identified several nearby communities of interest (read that as places with local stores, art galleries and restaurants), so we got in the car and headed west, stopping at two small communities to roam around, shop and eat. After that, we continued west, stopping at my favorite, Chick-fil-a, for an early dinner. It was so good… I wish we had one in Bloomington! While we were out roaming around, it seemed like every time we turned a corner we would run into someone dressed in UGA attire. Every time that happened, we received an enthusiastic “Go Dawgs!”  from them.  It is funny how something like a football game can bring together complete strangers from all walks of life.

The Arch in shadow

We finished our westward trip and arrived in Columbia, MO about 1.75 hours prior to the football game kick off. We were happy to see a good bit of UGA red and black mixed in with the Mizzou black and gold. We spent the better part of half an hour driving around looking for a parking spot and found one on campus at a lot where no one was charging for parking. Sweet, free parking! We didn’t see any obvious “no parking” signs so we parked next to some other UGA fans and started the 1.25 mile walk down to the stadium. The energy on campus was high and the locals were talking a little bit of smack… I decided to take the high road and just responded with a “we’ll see” and a polite “welcome to the SEC.” (for those of you that don’t know, this was MIzzou’s first game as a member of the Southeastern Conference and they were hoping to prove that they were worthy of membership by beating UGA)

We got to our seats with about half an hour to go and were happy to see that we were nestled right in the middle of the biggest group of UGA fans. We watched the teams warm up and before we knew it the game started. The first half was a blur of bad plays and missed opportunities and there was a serious sense of unhappiness growing in the UGA section. I would say that most UGA football fans are not supporters of UGA’s offensive coordinator, we all think that he is a horrible play caller.  No one is really sure why he hasn't been fired, but every year he shows no sign of improvement. The first half of this game was definitely chocked full of his signature collection of poor play choices, repeated plays back to back and stupid screen passes on third down and long plays. We did not travel all this way to see this crappy play calling!

The packed stadium

During half time I went on what turned out to be a grand adventure trying to find a restroom in the stadium. After walking what seemed like halfway around the stadium, I finally located one and was greeted by a line that wrapped around itself several times… evidently the mizzou facilities might not be sufficient enough to support sold out football games. They definitely need to add some more restrooms to the stadium. Georgia finally woke up in the second half and the mood in the UGA section improved tremendously. Then we jumped to a 14 lead and you could almost feel the entire section take a deep breath and enjoy being at the game. Once we hit the 21 point lead, we all started laughing as the Mizzou fans started streaming out of the stadium before the game was even over. Suddenly, all you could hear inside the stadium was the sound of chanting UGA fans.

What were we shouting you might ask? Well… last week one of the Missouri players made some twitter comments that watching georgia’s first game was like watching “Old man football.” Evidently he wasn’t impressed with their play. As you might imagine, that got the fans and the team all stirred up and “Old Man Football” became the chant of choice at the end of the game. I’m sure that mizzou player was wishing that he had never typed that. I saw an article online that said that he apologized about the comment to UGA’s coach after the game. Georgia ended up winning by 21, giving the Missouri Tigers a fitting “Welcome to the Southeastern Conference” beating.

Game over!

The walk back to the car was filled with groups of Dawg fans chanting “it’s great to be a Georgia Bulldog” and much more humble Mizzou fans. We got into the car, battled our way through poorly directed traffic to the interstate and headed east back to St. Louis. We decided to Stop at a McDonalds about 20 miles outside of Columbia and were surprised to see that we weren’t the only ones in need of snack. The restaurant was full of UGA and MO fans, even though it was 11:55 and they were supposed to close at 12:00. When we finally got our food and left, it was about 12:25 and the place was still full. We got back to the hotel around 2am and crawled into bed for some much needed sleep.

Seriously old fashion donut shop

Sunday morning, we used our iphone to locate a highly rated “mom and pop” donut shop and went there for some breakfast. The owners were a couple who had to at least be in their 70’s, but still working very hard. He was in the back rolling out dough and she was filling orders and keeping track of the prices in her head. The donut pricing made me laugh: caked donuts for 49 cents, glazed for 51 cents. I guess you have to pay for that extra sugar in the glaze somehow! We took our donuts to the Missouri Botanical Gardens and spent the morning walking through the gardens. It was a nice and peaceful end to the weekend, happily interrupted by a few more “Go Dawgs” when we ran into other members of the UGA family.

Here are a couple shots from the Garden:

 Cool wooden garden gates topped with Dale Chihuly glass.  We are huge fans of his work and have a glass piece that was made by someone who studied under him.  Maybe one day we'll be able to have an original by him!

 A view across the pond in the "Japanese" style garden.

A feeding frenzy of asian carp in the pond shown above.  This photo was taken at the bridge where a coin machine provides fish food.  These things were positively huge, look at the normal sized ducks in the upper right for a sense of scale.