Final Four Wrap-Up
By: Mr. Wilson on
December 18, 2005
- First, I apologize for not blogging throughout the trip. The keyboard on the laptop I took along decided to spaz out, making typing incredibly frustrating. Typing even a single sentence took forever, so I gave up.
- How come the one Schlotzsky's we have in town sucks so bad? The place is a dump. Contrast that with the Schlotzsky's we ate somewhere between Lincoln and Oklahoma City. It was clean and attractive, and they even had a mini internet cafe. I can't believe Schlotzsky's hasn't built a couple new locations in Lincoln to replace that dive on North 27th.
- My mother was ill -- very ill -- the entire trip with some sort of major head cold or sinus infection. If, after spending all that time in the car with her, the rest of us aren't laid out with the same thing it'll be a miracle.
- She's feeling better today.
- Driving along I-35 in Texas reminded me of two facts about sprawl: 1) it's horrible, awful, ugly, repetitive, and boring; and 2) it's remarkably effecient in an automobile-based society.
- If I ever see another gigantic parking lot-slash-strip mall claim to be a "Town Center" or "Town Square" it'll be too soon. There was a lot of evidence of "New Urbanist" type claims all along the I-35 strip. You know what? "New Urbanism" is 99.6% bullshit. Its core principles are fine, but the fact is the phrase "new urbanism" has been co-opted by developers who don't have the slightest idea what New Urbanism is supposed to be. (Are you listening, Fallbrook?)
- There were a lot of Husker volleyball fans down in San Antonio. A few thousand, probably. Three, maybe four thousand, I'd guess.
- The Riverwalk is only fun when it's crowded and/or when the weather is nice. It did get crowded on Friday evening, but the rest of the time it was pretty blah, and the weather stunk. I imagine it will be crowded as heck in a couple weeks when the football team heads down that way.
- San Antonio's citizens appreciate our tourist dollars. I'm not just assuming; several of them told me so. San Antonians love Husker fans.
- Washington vs. Tennessee: Both teams looked very beatable, but Tennessee was especially weak. Washington didn't look like anything spectacular.
- Nebraska vs. Santa Clara: Nebraska had their way with Santa Clara, though Santa Clara played at least as well as Washington had played against Tennessee. This National Championship thing might be a piece of cake...
- Nebraska vs. Washington: Let's be honest folks, Nebraska looked like crap. Big, stinky, awful-smelling crap. Sadly, Washington wasn't even the cause of Nebraska's crappiness. Nebraska was crappy all on its own. Take out Nebraska's constant shooting of itself in the foot (service errors, horrendous passing and ball-handling, unexplainable miscommunications) and we would have had a helluva dogfight on our hands. Instead, Nebraska rolled over from the first point of the match. Washington played well enough to challenge -- and maybe even beat -- a great team. Instead they were handed a relatively easy win by a bad team. It's very unfortunate that neither Washington nor Nebraska got the match they deserved. A huge congratulations to Washington for playing National Championship-caliber volleyball.
- And, of course, a huge congratulations to Nebraska for an awesome season. Second best is, well, second best, but it's still pretty dang good.
- A surreal moment on the drive home: I'm cruising up the road, everybody else is fast asleep, and what do I see on the side of the Interstate in the middle of the night? A series of signs that said: "How...'bout...them...Hippos?" That was enough to keep me awake for a while.
- Actually some more signs followed: "Git...R...done!" and "Win...State!" Oh, that explains it. I kind of wish I had only seen the first four signs. It would have made for a better story.
- A note to Mo: Can you believe that I didn't hear 'Roxanne' a single time the entire trip? All those hours in the car, and not once did I hear our song. I should have known from that alone that the trip wasn't going to go as hoped.
- Texas knows how to take care of its Interstates and highways. They are in really good shape. Oklahoma? Not so much. At one point the guy riding in the far back of our vehicle said he thought I had fallen asleep and gone off-road. It was that bumpy.
- I'm exhausted. I only slept a couple hours in the car. I'm going to grab some lunch and then take a nice, long, Sunday afternoon nap. Later, y'all.
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