Another very good weekend that was focused on travel, football, and friends.
For the second time in three weeks I left Indianapolis to attend a Big 12 football game. This trip was to Cincinnati to watch M’s Bearcats take on Iowa State. Making the trip even better, I would be hanging with my buddy, Super Clone Fan #1 Sean, and we would get to spend some time before the game with our old pal O-Dog.
I drove down Friday evening, just ahead of the storms that were blowing through and wiping our very late summer warmup away. While I drove L was at the Center Grove – Cathedral game getting soaked. CG generally pounded the Irish, or at least until CHS scored two touchdowns in about a minute to turn a 21-point deficit into a seven-point gap very late in the game. They could not corral a second-straight onside kick, though, and ended the regular season with their third loss, 45–38. This is a bye week for 6A teams in Indiana, so CHS will begin the state playoffs in a week against 0–9 North Central.
I was fortunate to be invited to stay with Sean at his sister’s home. We hung out and had a few beers after my arrival, something we regretted a little the next day. The beer part, not the catching up.
The Iowa State-UC game was at noon, thus we were up pretty early to head to campus for tailgating. His sister works right across the street from campus and her employer has a private parking lot. She graciously gave us her pass so we could park very close for free in an almost completely empty garage. I think actual parking on campus for games is a true nightmare so this was a huge bonus to our day.
We strolled over and grabbed a spot on the edge of the main tailgating area to meet up with O-Dog. I hadn’t seen him in 16 years, give or take. Many of my readers know O-Dog and probably haven’t seen him in longer. I’m happy to report he’s exactly the same dude. It was like he picked up our conversation right where he left off the last time we saw each other. We fought a dicey cell connection to FaceTime with the central point in our respective friendships, John N back in KC.
We hung with O-Dog awhile, ran up to where his family was tailgating to say hello, and then hooked up with M. I had been checking her location all morning and it seemed like she was hopping from fraternity house to fraternity house. She finally found us right before the game and we headed in. It had been gray, dreary, and cool all morning but just as we got to our seats, the clouds disappeared to reveal a gorgeous blue sky and bright sun. We all muttered that we shouldn’t have brought our jackets (Foreshadowing!).
Sean got our seats from Iowa State so we were around plenty of other Clones fans, tucked into the corner near one endzone, 13 rows behind the ISU bench. This became more significant later.
That sunshine lasted about 10 minutes until thick, low clouds rolled in. Right before halftime it began sprinkling. Then misting more steadily. Most of the fans departed for cover under the upper deck at half. M and I walked around to find food and it was hard to move. The second half was filled with intermittent light showers, never heavy enough to soak you but still wet enough to make everyone kind of miserable. M took off in the fourth quarter. Her roommate had run a half marathon that morning and she wanted to find and congratulate her. I think she also wanted to get out of the rain. Sean, being the good Clone fan he is, wanted to hang around and see every minute of ISU’s impressive win, which I totally understood. By late in the fourth quarter the stadium was basically empty except for every ISU fan who had crammed into our area. I was glad no one tried to high five me. My Bearcats sweatshirt was a pretty similar color to a lot of the Clones fans gear.
As for the game, it wasn’t the most exciting contest I’ve ever been to. UC was a five-point favorite coming in. They missed an easy touchdown on their first possession and never recovered. Like every time I’ve watched them this year, their offense struggled to put positive plays together. In fact, their offense really seems to have regressed since Big 12 play started. And their defense, which was supposed to be a strength, fell apart as the Cyclones had more time to adjust their attack. Iowa State won 30–10 and it felt like a bigger beatdown than that. ISU seemed like a mess about a month ago but they look like they’ve figured some stuff out. I had them chalked up as a win for the Jayhawks but that is now in big-time doubt. Although UC might be so bad it’s hard to make any inferences based on Saturday. There was a lot of booing by the Bearcat faithful as the offense looked progressively more inept over the day.
After the game Sean and I walked around campus a bit, stopped at M’s dorm to say hello again, then headed to the main drag right off campus. We ended up ducking into Buffalo Wild Wings to get a bite and watch some other football, including the KU game. I’m glad I didn’t get to see that entire game, because I think I would still be upset about it. I did see three KU touchdowns. But I also saw a blocked PAT, a failed two-point conversion, and dropped interception that would have been a sure-thing pick six. All important since they lost to Oklahoma State by seven. And now KU fans are back to wondering where win number six is. I hate football. And sports. Again, glad I didn’t see the entire game otherwise I would be really mad about the result.
But, again, I guess that’s progress, right?
While we were in B-Dubs, this super drunk UC student came up to our table and pointed to one of our chairs. Thinking he was just asking to borrow it, Sean nodded. Instead the kid sat down right next to me and stared at the TV with the Oregon-Washington game on it.
“You guys watching football?” he asked, with slurred words.
Sure, we were watching football.
“You watching the Washington game?”
“Kind of,” I responded. “But I’m paying more attention to the Kansas game.”
“KANSAS GAME? WHY ARE YOU WATCHING THAT?” he said, as he looked at my UC shirt.
“That’s where I went to school.”
“You went to Kansas?” he asked, not in disgust but as if he had never realized someone could go to school at KU.
“Yep, I’m from there.”
“You’re from there?” Again, like he didn’t realize people lived in Kansas.
“Yep.”
“Well, I hate to tell you this, but the Bearcats are going to beat Kansas.”
“Oh really?”
“Yep, I guarantee it.”
“Well, from what I saw today, I’m don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“I guarantee it. I’ll bet you anything.”
“The Bearcats were terrible today. You know Iowa State isn’t even that good,” I looked at Sean and grinned as he protested, “and they pounded UC”
“I’ll bet you anything they beat Kansas though!”
We stared at each other for a minute, then I turned back to my game and Sean. After a few more awkward moments the kid shook our hands, wished us well, and went back to his friends two tables away. I hope he felt ok Sunday morning.
I headed back to Indy that evening. When you drive at night it’s only about 1:45 city-to-city, which is nice. I made it home in time to see a decent chunk of Notre Dame’s beat down of USC. I called the Irish frauds last week. I should apologize because USC are clearly the bigger frauds. I guess Lincoln Riley just doesn’t care about defense, figuring they can out-score everyone, even with their sloppy ass offense that sure seems to get in its own way a lot. I enjoyed the Twitter poster who called USC an “unserious team.”
Sunday was another dreary day. I watched some football but never really committed myself to any games. The Colts were entirely too sloppy to deserve my full attention. I saw someone on Twitter respond to the Indy Star Colts writer this week that they were happy Gardner Minshew was starting over the injured Anthony Richardson because Minshew “isn’t selfish.” I’m not sure what a rookie quarterback, who by all accounts is a great kid willing to listen and learn, and just runs the plays that are called, did to deserve being called selfish. Then I looked at this person’s Twitter bio. They do not like our current president, or vaccines, or masks. They do like our former president who faces multiple indictments and they really like guns. I wondered if their quarterback preference was based on some other factor than whether a player is selfish or now. Anyway, I was secretly glad that Minshew had a terrible day – four turnovers – and that Richardson signed autographs with his non-dominant hand for half an hour before the game. Although I guess sharing the ball with Jacksonville does prove that Minshew is not selfish.
S and I took a walk after the Colts game, and L came along with us. She’s officially cleared to start basketball again today, which is good since it is the first day of the winter sports practice calendar in Indiana. Her coach is still going to hold her out of scrimmaging but she’ll be back on the court for the first time in over a week. Wednesday we find out what team(s) she will be on.
We also started breaking down and storing the pool furniture. I kept the pool open longer than I ever have, since I figured I would keep swimming as long as I could. But it’s been so cool the last two weeks that I should have had it closed when we normally do. My last swim was 12 days ago. The crew will be here on Thursday to shut it down for us.
This is a short week at CHS, with fall break beginning Wednesday. We will head back to Cincinnati Saturday for family weekend. We won’t go to the football game but are spending the night downtown. This will be our first chance to explore the city.
With a notable exception, I enjoyed a very good weekend down in Austin, Texas.
There were a couple motivations for going. One of my best buddies from college, E-bro, has lived there for something like 15 years. Another KU buddy, Billy Sweets, lives in Dallas. The three of us text pretty much every day, so much so that our wives and kids refer to the other two not as friends or buddies or pals, but as “your girlfriends.”
Also this was the final time KU will go to Austin to play football before the Longhorns leave for the SEC. I’ve been wanting to go down for a basketball game for years, but I could never work that into my calendar properly, mostly thanks to kid sports and those games often taking place on Monday nights. Once the Big 12 football schedule came out I started keeping my eye on flights for deal and nabbed a $100 roundtrip ticket during Southwest’s anniversary sale.[1]
I flew down super early Friday morning, leaving our house about 5:40. I got a couple Rock Chalks from fellow KU folks on my flight. We must have arrived the same time as a flight from Kansas City, as there were a ton of Jayhawks walking around the Austin airport.
E-bro picked me up and we headed directly to Franklin Barbecue to get in line. Despite arriving about 90 minutes before opening, there were already tons of people lined up in their lounge chairs passing time. We spent about an hour sitting in the rapidly warming sun before the doors opened and we could shuffle into some shade. It was another two hours before we got to the front of the line and placed our order. The only good thing about that was that initial rush had cleared and the tables weren’t completely packed. Even though E and I text every day, we hadn’t seen each other in person in seven years, so there was plenty to catch up on as we waited.
I ordered a Tipsy Texan sandwich, which featured chopped brisket and sausage along with slaw. It was very good, although the slaw was not my favorite style, dry and vinegary instead of creamy. Weird to have barbecue without fries, which Texans apparently don’t do. The food was definitely worth the wait, although I would not say it’s the very best barbecue I’ve ever had. I promise I was eating with an open mind, not reflexively knocking it below KC ‘cue.
The lady who was taking and building orders chatted everyone up as she worked. When she saw our KU shirts she told us she was from Wichita and hoped to move back and open her own restaurant there some day. Our little five minute interaction must have gone well from her perspective, because she gave us a couple big-ass beef ribs for free.
E showed me around Austin a little before we headed to his home in the hills of Westlake. I got to see one of his kids I hadn’t seen since he was a baby, meet another for the first time, and see his wife for the first time in over 20 years. We chilled out for a bit, I took a short nap, then we headed out to grab some appetizers and beer in a fancy suburban area.
Billy Sweets was driving down after work and didn’t arrive until around 9:30. I hadn’t seen him since my wedding, the last time the three of us were together. It was great fun both catching up and doing the obligatory telling 30-year-old stories that still make you laugh until you cry. We went to school with some wackos.
Saturday we kept it low key, just getting breakfast tacos before the game. I’ve been hearing them complain about the Texas heat for four months so was not looking forward to a 2:30 PM game in the sun. We wanted to minimize any time away from AC before we were obligated to sit outside.
We sunscreened- and hatted-up before heading downtown to the stadium. I was trying to think of what the biggest sporting event I’ve ever been to was, and I guess it’s been Chiefs games where there are 80,000 people. So pretty crazy to go to a stadium where there are twenty thousand more people than that, almost all dressed in burnt orange. There were quite a few KU people, but the orange was so overwhelming and we were so scattered you couldn’t really pick out the KU folks in the stands, only see them when you walked around the concourses. Random UT fans came over and greeted/welcomed us, asking where we were from, and wishing us luck while insisting that we enjoy our time in Austin. That was kind of great. One very nice older woman also directed us to a tent where a hospital was giving out free towels that had been dunked in ice. These might literally have been life savers.
It was in the mid–90s all day, with the sun either directly above us or moving so it was in our faces. It really makes you appreciate what the players are going through when you are suffering just standing around.
We wandered about a bit before the game. The concourses were totally packed with people hanging out in the shade as long as possible. As we walked through the crowds E suddenly shouted “DTae!” 2018 Big 12 player of the year and first team All American Devonté Graham was walking towards us. As he passed I shouted “DEVONTÉ!” and he came to a complete stop and looked at me. I reached out and yelled, “WHAT’S UP?” He slapped my hand back, saying, “Hey man,” and moved on to another group of KU people. Good of him to drive up from San Antonio for the game.
You all know I don’t do well with celebrity encounters so I felt like this was a big moment for me. Now I’ve accosted two former KU guards in public, Mario Chalmers being the other.
So we get to our seats – eighth row inside the 20 yard line behind the KU bench, pretty good! – and I get a text from one of my KU buddies in KC saying that Jalon Daniels was out for the game.
Fucking great.
Now we’re going to sit in the brutal heat for four hours against maybe the best team in the country without our starting quarterback.
We had been counting “wins” all morning, from getting a good parking spot to the cold towel tip to running into DTae. So much for any good karma we had been trying to find in the day. It would be an understatement to say we lost most of our enthusiasm for the day.
We weren’t feeling any better after KU got one first down then punted and Texas scored quickly after.
It was a weird game, though. KU couldn’t do much on offense, running pretty basic sets to account for the absence of Daniels. But we kept hanging in there. The defense would give up a big play, then hold. Texas missed a field goal late in the first half, and another in the third quarter. KU scored a touchdown on a bizarre play and it was just 13–7 Texas at halftime. We dropped some balls, Jason Bean made some bad decisions, but we were still right in it. When Bean threw a 58-yard touchdown to Trevor Wilson to cut it to 20–14, we went nuts.
Then it all came apart when we had third and inches late in the third quarter and called consecutive bad plays, fumbling on the fourth down attempt. I was 100% fine with going for it. It was going to take a lot of crazy stuff for us to win, and I thought it was worth the risk. But Bean made awful reads each time and you should never run the shotgun when you need inches to get a first down. Liked the gamble but hated the play call and execution. Texas scored seconds later and the fourth quarter turned into a rout. E, Sweets, and I watched a lot of KU football losses together back in the Nineties, so it was like old times.[2]
Even if Jalon had been healthy and played well, beating Texas in Austin was going to be very, very difficult. It was a big bummer to get the news early that JD wasn’t playing, and the fourth quarter sucked, but in between KU showed how far the program has come. A couple drunk students/recent students tried to talk some shit as we walked out, which we took as another sign of how far KU football has come.
One funny/frustrating story from the stands. The guy standing behind us was some “football expert” and broke down each play to the people around him before the snap. “OK, see how the safeties are up? This is going to be a run play.” Or, “They’re bringing pressure, we have to go outside here.” We’re not sure if the people sitting with him were listening or he was just talking to himself. The funny part was that he was wrong like 75% of the time when he predicted the play. I wanted to turn around and ask him what high school team he coaches, what their record is, and if he’d ever sent his resumé into UT. But it was too hot to turn around so I kept my sarcastic comments to myself.
It was, of course, a nightmare getting out of the stadium area. That’s a lot of freaking people in a true, big city downtown. It was probably an hour all together from when we left the stadium until we got to where we could drive the speed limit.
We landed at a restaurant for pizza and beers, then back to E’s for more beer, football, and BSing on the couch.
I was supposed to fly back early Sunday but changed my flight to the evening non-stop so that we could do a leisurely breakfast before Sweets headed back to Dallas. After he left, E and I did some more driving around, this time going through campus, his old neighborhood, some of the quirky and fun Austin areas, and the park where they were setting up for the Austin City Limits festival. We even drove by the restaurant one of my sisters-in-law helped open about 10 years ago. It was, again, like 96, so we did all our exploring by car. The Texas guys give me grief about Indiana winters all the time. Not sure how you live somewhere where it’s been in the 90s and 100s and 110s just about every day since early May.
Travel was easy, no real stories from that other than the guy in front of me in the TSA line in Austin attempting to get through security without any form of government ID. He did have a prescription bottle. Not sure how that was going to work out for him.
It was great to get away and have a dudes weekend with two pretty good dudes. They both have kids at Baylor,[3] so maybe the next KU trip to Waco should be our excuse to get together again before another 20 years pass.
I paid almost as much for parking as for my plane ticket. ↩
Sweets and I even watched KU lose to SMU in Dallas in 2001 together. ↩
E’s youngest son is a freshman at Baylor and came home for the weekend. He’s actually a bigger KU fan, and went with us to the game wearing KU gear. ↩
Three-fifths of our family spent the weekend in Ohio. You want details? I got details!
Kid Hoops
L and I went to Cincinnati for the final travel tournament of the year. We’ve never done well in these events but were looking forward to one last shot to prove ourselves on the national stage. We had six games, so I’ll keep the breakdowns brief.
We played Friday and Saturday at the event’s main gym, a building in Hamilton, OH that had 30-ish courts. It was big and nice and as the final stop on Under Armour’s summer circuit, there were some elite high school teams and lots of college coaches around. We peaked into the side where most of the high schoolers were and a few courts were packed with coaches watching. More on that in a bit.
Luckily our first game was Friday afternoon so we got up at a normal time, packed, and drove two hours straight to the gym.
Game One, Friday
Lost to a team from New York by 11. We were down 16 at halftime, trailed by as many as 20, but cut it to seven with about 5:00 to play. They pushed it back up to 15 then we went on another run that included two 3’s by L, the second cutting the deficit to six with 1:00 left. We couldn’t get any closer. This team ended up winning our age group, beating a team from Indy that features one of L’s friends in overtime.
Game Two, Friday
We played a team from Cincinnati and, again, fell behind early. This time it was something like 11–3 before we went on a 20–4 run and were never threatened. We led by 15 with about a minute to play but got sloppy and won by just nine.
Game Three, Saturday
To wrap up pool play we took on a squad from Nashville. Hey, once again we started slow, down 9–0 to start. But we battled back and were up by three at the half. We led by five midway through the second half, had two good looks to stretch it further that missed, and then went cold. Thanks to 3–4 free throws after a personal and technical foul, we tied it at 44. But they smoked us from there and we lost by nine.
Game Four, Sunday
Into bracket play. We were feeling good as the other three teams from our division had already won their opening games, all by double figures. After finishing third in our division we took on the #4 team from another division. They were from Canada. They were awkward and not very good. But they were so awkward that they kept getting in the way and our girls could not shake them. It was a 2–5 point game for the first 26 minutes until we finally put some baskets together and won by 15.
Game Five, Sunday
Semifinal time, against a team from Dayton. These girls were absolute bruisers who took us out of everything we wanted to do. We played solid D, too, so it was a brutal slog of a game. We were down four at halftime, went on an 8–0 run to open the second half, then gave it right back and played from behind the rest of the half. It was just a two-point game in the final minute but we never had the ball with a chance to tie or take the lead. We had to foul and ended up losing by five.
I said it was physical. One of our girls took an elbow in the face that drew blood…and she was called for a foul. The next play the same Dayton girl threw her to the ground…and again we got called for a foul. Not these refs’ best day. Also one of them apparently had to drop a deuce at halftime, as the girls stood around waiting for 10 minutes until he slowly walked back to the court. Then apparently he got into it with the other ref, telling him that he “fucking sucks.” They both sucked but I give this guy extra umbrage. He called L for a travel that was not a travel, wiping out her only basket of the game, so it was personal for me.
Game Six, Monday.
Third-place game, against those Cincinnati girls we beat Friday. As a bonus, in addition to our tallest, most athletic girl who we were missing all week, we lost two other girls for this game. One had to leave for a funeral, the other got strep and went home early. That left us with one sub against a team with 10 players.
They pounded us pretty good, and from the jump. The lead got up to 20 once, we cut it to 10 twice in the second half, but generally played terrible and could never match their effort or physicality. The final was 50–35 but it didn’t feel that close.
As for L, she scored 32 points for the weekend. Which sounds decent until you consider she had 15 of those in our first game again the New York team. That might have been her best game of the summer, as she scored 11 during our comeback attempt. She could never get it going in the other games, although she scored six against the Canadians. She was ok on D but was often limited by more physical guards shoving her on offense. Like playing in the varsity games in June showed, as much as working on shooting and ball handling, she needs to get stronger to compete at the high school level. She slept all the way home and was super sore when she got up this morning.
My favorite moments of hers from the weekend? When she hit the 3 to cut the NY game to six she was right in front of us and she screamed when it went in. She played her ass off in this game, and it was cool to see it pay off with good results. In the Nashville game she had an awesome blow-by hoop and earned a foul to give us the lead, although she missed the free throw. And in the Dayton game, she fouled a girl pretty hard, knocking her over. She immediately helped the girl up and checked on her. After the game they hugged. I asked what that was all about and she after the foul they talked the entire game, the girl starting it by saying no one had ever asked if she was ok after a hard foul before.
I’m proud of L for being a good teammate and hard worker, and especially proud when she has really good games. But I love that she usually handles herself really well and does things like that. There are a lot of shitty, immature, insecure players in these games, and it would be easy to follow their lead.
That was a sad way to end our travel season. It was a pretty good year. We won three tournaments and lost two championship games by one point, once in double overtime. This weekend was the only time we didn’t either play for the championship or lose to the eventual champ.
It was also this group’s last time all playing together as one team. In Indiana (and I assume in some other states), once you start high school you can only play travel ball with two teammates from your high school program. Although we have six different schools represented on our squad, we have four players from one school. So, at a minimum, we have to drop one of them before next March. That’s been a subject of whispered conversations all season. There’s no great answer to it. Even if we can keep eight of these girls together, a good player – and more importantly a nice kid/family – is going to be forced out.
There are other changes as we move forward to high school that add uncertainty, but I think the majority of this team – players and parents – would prefer to stay together at least one more year if the rules allowed it.
Tryouts for next year start in August, so we need to begin thinking about if we want to explore other programs as a hedge. The good news for L is that the varsity coach at CHS also coaches in her travel program. So we think L will have clearance to stay there. She doesn’t want to lose this good group of friends she’s made over the past two years, especially her closest friend who is going to a rival high school anyway.
Lodging
Once again we had a hotel fiasco. Despite its size, this was not a Play to Stay tournament, where registering automatically gets you access to blocks of rooms set aside for participants. Our coach also waited until three weeks ago to start looking into rooms. We all booked at a place together but a mom on our team, who is from Cincinnati, suggested we not stay there as it wasn’t in a great part of town. So another mom spent hours on the phone calling around, not finding any good alternatives that could take nine families.
Eventually our coach found an extended stay place in Mason, getting approval from Cincy mom that it was a nice area.
Then we arrived.
Yes, it was a nice area. Until we turned down the street where this place was. It seemed more aimed at folks having rough times than business travelers spending weeks in town. When we checked-in Friday night there were a series of pretty rough looking, but very friendly, people outside smoking weed. The pool looked murky. The inside of the hotel had seen better days. Fortunately the room L and I had was very clean, if reeking of a combination of Indian food and weed. A few of us parents sat by the pool and drank a couple beers while we watching the Friday evening traffic. It was interesting.
Saturday when we got back from our game, there were two fire trucks and an ambulance outside. Turned out they were there for one of the other buildings, and it was a false alarm. The firefighters acted pretty nonchalant, like they had been there many times.
Two of our families were staying at other places, one at a Marriott. We had all tried to stay there initially but it was booked full. A parent called Saturday afternoon and enough people were checking out Sunday that we could slide over there for our last night. Plus the parent already there had a code that got us a greatly reduced rate. Still, we had one more night in the dump.
We ordered pizza for dinner and the dad who took the boxes to the dumpster said he was 90% sure a bunch of dudes were smoking crack behind it. We noticed a lot of very down on their luck looking folks hanging around before the sun went down. Apparently the parking lot turned into a party after we retired for the night.
Whatever, we survived two nights there and happily checked in to the Marriott before our first game Sunday. That new place seemed like one of the hubs for the tournament. We ran into three of L’s friends from CHS, a couple girls we know that she played against in middle school, and another friend from St. P’s. L rode the elevator with an assistant coach from UCLA. And a few parents saw Kim Mulkey in all her bedazzled glory Monday morning.
Other activities
With two early games Saturday we had the afternoon and evening to kill. There was talk of going downtown – we were about 25 minutes outside the city – and going to the Reds game or wandering through the Over the Rhine area. Some people wanted to go to King’s Island. Not everyone wanted to do any of these things so we settled on spending time at Top Golf and Main Event. The girls had fun, the parents had a few drinks, and it worked out fine.
It’s always interesting traveling with a big group. Friday night we went to a restaurant right in the middle of the dinner rush. When we asked if they could seat a group of 18 – divided up however worked easiest for them – the poor girl working the hostess stand seemed overwhelmed. We only had to wait an hour, enough time to run to the hotel and back, and then she realized to ask us if we wanted to sit outside and be seated immediately. Which was fine as it was a gorgeous night. Then she seated us at tables with 15 seats so three of us had to find our own table, which confused the waiters for a moment. At least we got to eat.
M in Toledo
Thursday night M drove up to Toledo to spend the weekend with her future roommate at UC. They’ve met once before and have been talking a lot, but this was their first time spending entire days and nights together. A trial run for the next 9 ½ months. It went great.
M had a fantastic time and really got along with G and her family.[1] There isn’t a ton to do in Toledo, but she met a lot of G’s high school friends and saw her local hangouts. They went to a Mudhens game, sat in the front row, and got a picture with the mascot.[2] They saw the Barbie movie and loved it. All-in-all, they had a great time.
It was also her first extended car trip on her own. That made us a little nervous, especially since there were huge storms between here and Toledo Thursday. But she waited an extra 45 minutes to leave and managed to dodge them. She made it there and back safely.
They will move into their dorm room in 18 days. Oh, and M turns 19 today.
Double audible gulp.
Her name actually starts with an S, but since we already have an S in these posts, I’ll go with her last initial. ↩
M was amazed that I knew the baseball team was called the Mudhens. ↩
It was an extra-long weekend featuring many hours in the car.
Hoops in the Lou
L and I drove west to St. Louis for her first out-of-town tournament of the year.
The hoops were good. We went 3–1, winning the championship game by nine thanks to a 9–2 run in the final minute to put away a game we were trying to lose. We led by nine with 8:00 left, five with 5:00 left, but by just two as the clock ticked under a minute. Against a team we had blown a 15-point lead against on Saturday. Tense, but the girls got it done.
That team was a local St. Louis squad. The parents were a little rough. One dad just yelled the entire game Saturday. Mostly kind of positive things at his team with the occasional barb at the refs. But he just never stopped. And as we blew our lead, he was one of those dads who decides he needs to walk onto the court to celebrate when his team makes a big play. He was harmless as he never directed anything at us or our girls. But since he never stopped and thought he had all the answers, he was mega annoying.
We thought it was hilarious that between games he and the other parents from their team were in the parking lot sharing a joint. At like 2:00 PM on a Saturday. I checked and I don’t think this kind of use is protected under the new Missouri marijuana law, but I’m no attorney. I’m not sure if that chilled him out a little for their second game, as I was keeping score rather than in the seats and couldn’t hear him.
Sadly he was missing for Sunday’s championship game. He may have partied a little too hard Saturday night.
L had a good weekend. She scored 23 points across the four games, had 9 total rebounds, 9 assists, and had four steals alone in our Sunday morning game. Our second game Saturday was tight but she helped blow it open with a 3-pointer on one possession, then a bucket, foul, and free throw on the next. That helped push a two-point lead to 12 before we gave up three buckets in the last 30 seconds to only win by seven.
We were in St. Louis because our coach’s wife is from there, and her family was celebrating their mom’s 80th birthday over the weekend. So rather than go to the big GUAA tournament in Louisville, we went to a smaller, local tournament so he and his daughter could be with us. Good thing, since she scored six of our nine points in the last minute of the championship game.
Friday night we hung out at his wife’s sister’s house. I took some good-natured ribbing from a house full of Mizzou fans. I offered to show them the national champions sticker on my car and they politely declined. I spent a good chunk of the evening talking to the brother that played basketball at Central Missouri in the late ‘90s, mostly about the St. Louis high school scene he grew up in.
The big bummer of the weekend was our hotel. In a word, it was a dump. It was one of those places that might have been nice 20 years ago, but probably hasn’t had any renovations or deep cleanings since then. The rooms were all full of stains and disrepair. Some of the rooms – including ours – were only half-cleaned. The room across from us had two dogs in it, plus the humans with them seemed to be smoking a lot of weed. There was a room down the hall that definitely had birds in it. Several families couldn’t get their door keys to work properly. The overall vibe made you not want to touch anything.
The final straw came Saturday morning. We heard the shower in the room above us running and soon heard dripping in ours. The water damage to the ceiling I noticed when we checked in was a result of the tub on the second floor leaking directly into ours. I was off to the front desk to get a new room. Fortunately our second one had been cleaned and was away from the weed-smoking dog lovers.
We realized later that a big, municipal dump was right across the street, thus the terrible trash odor when we tried to sit outside.
A dump by a literal dump.
Hopefully we didn’t bring home bed bugs or anything, but at this point nothing would surprise me.
Also, on our trip home, the craziest thing I’ve ever seen on a highway happened. I’m honestly not sure how to describe it. Basically, it looked like a small cat fell out of the car in front of us as we were traveling at roughly 85 MPH. Like it dropped out of a wheel well or some other space underneath the car, not like it jumped or was tossed out the window. It was skidding and trying to get its footing as I went over it, definitely alive and not a stuffed animal. It was right in the middle of the lane so I sailed past comfortably but I’m assuming it met a horrible fate not too far behind me.
Thing is, I was traveling behind this car for awhile; for 10 minutes at least. Who knows when they had last stopped. Had this poor thing been hanging on for dear life for 30 minutes? An hour? Longer? Or did it come from a car further up? No one in front of me braked or swerved so I honestly can’t be sure where it came from.
Or maybe it was just all that passive weed smoke I breathed in at our hotel that had me seeing things.
There’s an obvious National Lampoon’s Vacation reference here but it feels wrong directly quoting it.
A mostly good, if weird, weekend in the Lou. We’re back-and-forth to Bloomington next weekend.
UC Orientation
Monday morning we were in the car bright and early to make the quick trip down to Cincinnati for M’s UC orientation. For the first time S rode along so she could finally take a look at campus. She approved.
That was pretty much the highlight of the day. Since M had already attended admitted students day and gone through virtual orientation plus done her advising appointment and made her schedule online, there wasn’t a ton of new information for her. They didn’t have the dorms open for tours, which was a bummer, as S really wanted a look to help focus our shopping.
M is supposed to move in the weekend of August 12. She will find out in a couple weeks what her official move-in date/time is. Because UC is such a tight campus you have to request a window for your arrival. Things should be a little easier for her as she’s going down a week before official move-in day for rush, but we still won’t know our time until the whole process does its thing. She’s hoping for August 12, as there are rush events the evening of the 13th. There is a chance, though, we could be moving her in during the day on the 13th.
A long week in the Dominican Republic to celebrate M’s senior class spring break. Not only did we take the whole family, one of C’s best friends came along with us. There was some drama, a few travel difficulties, but overall it was a pretty good seven days.
Location
We stayed at the Hard Rock Resort in Punta Cana. I never got an official headcount but around 70 kids from M’s class were there.[1] It is a huge complex, something like 120 acres, so we always had plenty of space and could get away from CHS people if we wanted to. There were students from at least three other Indy area high schools there, along with kids from Wisconsin and Michigan.
The draw for going to the DR was the drinking age being 18. As it is in Mexico, among other places, but for some reason the DR has been the “cool” place to go for CHS families for a few years. Which meant longer flights, fewer flight options, and greater expense. Joyous. We warned M and her sisters months ago that this was going to be about as much as we will ever spend on a vacation, so they needed to keep their shit in order while we were there.
Anyway, the Hard Rock was your typical all-inclusive resort. The food was decent; never great but never terrible. The drinks were watered down but plentiful. The service was a B/B+. We later learned from a friend in the travel industry that the DR has a reputation for not being as customer-focused as Mexico. We found that to be true. Most folks spoke English but some of them not very well. Most employees were very friendly but never in a hurry to complete your requests.
The biggest pain was trying to get change for tips. In Mexico we’ve never had a problem handing over a twenty and getting twenty ones in return. Or at least ten ones and a couple fives or a ten. That was extremely difficult in Punta Cana. Although the hotel website said the front desk could make change, we were often turned down. When we could get a bartender or waitstaff to bring change, they usually brought fives and tens. So we overtipped a lot. My biggest recommendation for others wanting to visit the DR is to take enough small bills to cover tips for your entire stay.
The complex had a ton of pools. Saturday was an awesome day as only a few of us were in town; most of the CHS crew was arriving in that day. We claimed a good spot at a pool with a swim-up bar, the seniors rotated in-and-out, and all was fine. Sunday almost the entire group had arrived and the kids kind of took over our pool. It was a little uncomfortable at times, between seeing them drink, them mobbing the bar so we couldn’t get drinks, watching kids who apparently didn’t pack sunscreen slowly turn red, and then some inappropriate behavior.
By Wednesday our core group of four families found a different pool were able to enjoy the day with the seniors only occasionally checking in.
The beach was ok, although we didn’t spend much time there. It wasn’t raked/plowed daily so you had to be careful where you walked. The water was beautiful, but once you stepped into it it was very rocky. And the surf was heavy all week – red flags more often than yellow – so even if I was a float-in-the-ocean person, I wouldn’t have spent much time in the water.
We never checked out the casino or any shows. We were usually coming in for the night about the time the seniors where heading to the club for their late night antics. M said the club was fun but what does she know?
Travel
Getting to Punta Cana was about as easy as we could have hoped for. We left our house at 3:00 AM for our 5:50 flight, thinking the airport would be a madhouse. I had been watching the parking lot numbers all week and was worried about finding spaces. But we found two next to each other in the covered area and were able to avoid the rain Friday morning. We had to wait maybe five minutes to check bags and enter passport information at the Southwest desk. There was one family in front of us in the TSA Pre line. Our flight was on time, we had a three-hour layover in Baltimore that allowed us a leisurely breakfast, then arrived in the DR as scheduled around 2:30. An hour in the immigration line then we pulled into the Hard Rock exactly 14 hours after leaving our house.
The trip home was a little dicier. We knew strong storms were forecast in the Indy area right around the time we were supposed to land. As we sat in the very warm Punta Cana airport Friday, we were taking collective bets on whether we would make it home or not. We got out of the DR fine, but since our plane didn’t have wifi we couldn’t track the Midwest storms or the status of our second flight.
As soon as we landed in Baltimore we learned the Indy flight had already been delayed from 10:45 until 11:30. That left us four hours to navigate immigration and customs – which was dead easy since we were the only plane that landed at that time – get dinner, and watch the weather. L and I also watched much of the Iowa-South Carolina women’s Final Four game.
We seemed to be boarding on time, albeit slowly, just before 11:00. We got on at the front of the B group, grabbed seats, and began to get settled. Then we noticed when the C group folks should have been getting on, the flow of people stopped. Soon the captain informed us that Indy was closing its airspace because of tornados and severe storms. Rather than have us sit on the plane, they were asking us to go back into the airport.
This seemed bad. There was lots of grumbling. Everyone was tired, sunburned, hungry, and ready to get home. For about 45 minutes we sat as the only people in the terminal, nervously flipping between Indy weather feeds and trying to figure out a plan B if our flight was cancelled. Our plan was easy: since there were no seats on flights out of Baltimore until Monday, we would rent a car and drive home. Problem was the rental car facility at BWI was closed for the night. And I was having a hard time finding a vehicle that could carry our six-person party. We joked about calling our friends who picked us up last year when our flight out of Sarasota was cancelled.
Luckily just after midnight they hustled us onto the plane again and we took off. Rather than fly the direct route and go through the storms, we flew almost to Detroit before hooking back around the front. We landed just after 2:30 then waited an hour for bags. We saw a number of people sleeping at IND. We are guessing their flights out were cancelled because of the storms. We pulled into our driveway at 4:10 AM. We made it!
Man were people assholes getting on the plane that second time! I was position B1, so could watch it all. The first time we boarded there were maybe 10 people in the family boarding line. The second time? At least 25, many with kids well above the age limit. The poor guy running the gate didn’t have the energy to deal with them. I can’t fault him, he was working late so we could get home. My girls were like five spots behind me and somehow at least 15 people squeezed in between us. We had rows 16 and 17 on first boarding. On second we were back in the high 20s.
Again, assholes.
Also, that Baltimore airport is dirty. Just like when L and I were flying out of there in October, the restaurants were running out of food in the evening. Fortunately we all got food or else things could have been even worse as we sat and stressed.
So so glad we didn’t get stuck there for the night.
Oh, and the storms here were legit bad. At least seven tornados in Indiana (as I write this) and several deaths. People were dealing with way worse than sitting in a dirty airport longer than we wanted to.
Nonsense
There was some nonsense of all levels over the course of the week. There was a parent-kid booze cruise that S and M went on. They behaved themselves, but S had to take care of a kid who was in bad shape after. He is a really good kid, just too much booze and sun and not enough lunch. He made sure he got a message to S later that night that he was thankful and loved her, which made us all laugh. Then the next day he found her and gave her a big hug.
Apparently some boys were pissing out the window of the buses on their way back to the resort after the cruise. Delightful.
S also had to take a look at a senior’s hand when we were waiting in Baltimore. He had it wrapped up and said it hurt. He wouldn’t admit it to S, but later we heard he had punched some dumbass sophomore several times.
A parent couple got in a huge argument during dinner one night. Like screaming and yelling and making the people around them super uncomfortable. Their kid was not around at the time (nor were we) but a lot of other CHS folks heard every word. Some friends of ours had the husband ejected from the restaurant. He also had some other serious issues over the course of the week. I’m really surprised he didn’t get his ass kicked by someone. I don’t know him, am glad he’s a stranger to me, and am thrilled our kids run in different crowds.
I know there was some kid drama, but it was fairly low key. M had one kind of rough night where it seemed like something was up with her and her friends. They next day they were fine, though. Teens gonna teen.
There was some other stuff. Like bad stuff. None of our kids were involved but they all heard about it. I think that’s all I should say about that subject.
We are lucky that our kids are mature, tend to follow the rules, and made sure they were always around friends. Still it was a stressful week. Mixing that many kids and alcohol in a foreign country has high odds of blowing up. Throw in a bunch of drunk adults and those odds go even higher. We are glad we survived our first senior spring break with our family all safe. I’m sure it can happen anywhere, but we were lobbying C and L for less exotic locations for their senior years.
Misc.
It may have been a blessing that KU lost before we left. It was very difficult to find a place that had NCAA games on. We hung in a bar Friday night that had six TVs with only one showing the games. The others had recorded soccer and NFL games from a year ago. I never turned on our TV but figure I could have found a game there or just streamed it had KU still been playing.
I met a mom who was in the same pledge class as a girl I sat next to in fourth and fifth grades. Random and crazy!
I was able to impress our friends with my music knowledge several times. I wowed people by knowing that Philip Bailey was Phil Collins’ partner on “Easy Lover.” I knew that Susannah Hoffs sang lead on “Eternal Flame,” not Suzanne Vega. Duh. And one day at the pool we heard a string of early ’90s songs that I knew artist, song, album, and year for each. The capper to that run was knowing that “Ice Ice Baby” came from the album To The Extreme. Frankly I don’t understand why more people don’t know this stuff.
If only I could somehow monetize this useless knowledge.
I learned that Michigan State people wear their gear pretty much all the time. I swear there was a lady who we flew down and back with and every time I saw her she was rocking Sparty gear of one kind or another.
C’s buddy who came with us has celiac disease. We had confirmed ahead of time that the Hard Rock had lots of gluten-free options. We found out that wasn’t necessarily true. It was hard work to find her food each day. It really made us sympathize what she, and others with true celiac, go through.
M burned her back pretty good the first day. So did her prom date. We laughed that you could pick them out in the pool based on their sunburns.[2]
While the week wasn’t a complete, 100% success, we did avoid any incidents within our travel group. I think M had fun, which was the important part. She was completely wiped out and very cranky on the way home. I think C and her friend had a good time. They kind of ignored us unless we forced them to spend time with us. Poor L got the shaft. When we originally booked, we expected a couple of her friends’ families to be on the trip, too. However, they all chose other destinations. The families we hung with had either kids a year or two younger than her or sophomores, leaving her stuck in the middle. She brought a stack of books and read them all. There was a gym and an outdoor basketball court, but she realized on our second day she didn’t bring any shoes suitable for working out. I’m not sure if you asked her she would say this was her favorite trip of ours.
As for S and I, we enjoyed getting away, especially the time we spent with our little group. We knew three of those families well but one was new to us, and we all got along great, reserving chairs together at the pool each day and eating together most nights. That said, I don’t think this trip would rank as our best spring break ever. Nothing bad, just enough to keep it from being an A or even A-.
Last summer I mentioned that we had four big trips booked. The first was our family trip to Kansas City and Lawrence. Then was L’s eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C. Thanksgiving brought our Italian adventure. And finally there was M’s senior spring break.
It’s been a fun and busy eight months. When we got home, S and I agreed if we are able to squeeze in one more trip between summer basketball and M’s departure for college, it needs to be a little more laid back. Not that all travel isn’t stressful, but we’d be fine with a long weekend someplace that is a car trip away.
What follows is an epic, old school breakdown of our Thanksgiving week trip to Italy. I spent almost all day Sunday working on it, so I hope it is coherent and interesting. I’ve broken it into sections so you can read in chunks or skip around as you like.
Departure/Chicago
The trip began a little ominously. I woke up feeling terrible last Saturday morning. All three girls had been sick over the previous few weeks, one with a stomach bug, but it seemed like I had avoided all their germs.
But there I was, throwing up for the first time in years, unable to keep even bland food down, and having a hard time getting out of bed. On the freaking day I’m going to Europe for the first time in my life. Wonderful!
Fortunately throwing up for the third time did the trick and I rallied to get ready. Thank goodness I was 95% packed, didn’t need to accomplish a lot that morning, and we didn’t have to leave our house until noon.
Our fight to Paris was out of O’Hare, so we had a three-hour drive to begin our adventure. It was cold, windy, and bright in Indy. When we got up around Merrillville, IN it started snowing. As we passed into Illinois the snow because so heavy it was hard to see at times.
Luckily these were just isolated squalls, and after driving through heavy snow for five minutes we would pass into clear skies and bright sunshine. Weird.
Parking at O’Hare was a bitch. Although we had plenty of time, it was still a little stressful to cruise around for 15–20 minutes and not see a single open spot. We finally found one on the roof level of the garage, parked, and stepped into a wind chill of 11. We were not dressed for that temperature so it was an unpleasant walk at our quickest pace to the nearest elevator.
We got TSA Pre clearance for the entire family a year ago for our Hawaii trip. We didn’t really need it on that vacation, but it paid off big time in Chicago. The security lines in O’Hare were outrageous. Even arriving 2.5 hours before our flight, we may well have missed it if we didn’t have TSA Pre. It took us maybe 15 minutes to sail through that line
I wonder if some people on our flight were stuck in those lines and contributed to the delay we experienced. More about that later.
Rome
It’s hard not to speak in cliches about Rome. The amount of history collected in a relatively small area is staggering. Diving into it can be overwhelming.
We arrived in Rome six hours later than expected, so rather than take the food tour of the Trastevere neighborhood we had booked, we went straight to our hotel and found a little restaurant down the block that had good reviews. We ordered pizzas, wine for S and I, M had her first spritz of the week (she was very excited to be drinking legally with her parents), and tiramisu. It was all very good.
Monday we had an eight-hour, Rome In A Day tour booked. We didn’t see everything the city has to offer, but we sure got a lot of it. We started at the Vatican – a 15 minute walk from our hotel – touring the museums and walking through the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. Just. So. Much. Stuff.
M was endlessly fascinated about how we could walk out of Italy into a completely different country simply by crossing the street.
That was the first two hours of the tour. We crossed the street back into Italy, hopped into vans and headed towards downtown, where we walked through the Pantheon and braved the crowds for the obligatory Trevi Fountain pics. I desperately tried to recall what my college art history instructor told us to do if we ever visited the Pantheon, but couldn’t come up with the memory.
After a break for lunch – pizza and pasta for all – we hit the Forum and ruins area. I had seen pictures of the ruins, but they kind of look fake. Then you walk through them and realize, “OK, this is really real.” You can’t help but be floored by how long ago some of these buildings were constructed. Thousands – plural – of years. We get excited here in the States when we find something that is 200 years old. The breadth of human experience on these locations was as impressive as the buildings themselves.
The tour ended at the Colosseum. Again, you see pictures but it doesn’t really come together until you see it from a mile away, then a block away, and then you are actually walking into it across materials people were crowded into centuries ago. Our guide mentioned the cliche “If the stones could talk, they could really tell some stories.” It certainly applies in Rome.
One humorous highlight of our tour was a couple that was in our group, an older Asian woman who spoke very poor English and her 20-something daughter from California. I’m guessing there was a 40-ish year age difference between them; the mother seemed a bit overwhelmed by everything and the daughter may not have been the most mature person in the world. A couple times the mother got confused and thought she had lost her daughter, only to be told they were standing 10 feet from each other.
After the lunch break we noticed they were staying far apart, the mom often going out in front of the group with the daughter straggling behind us. We wondered if they had argued over lunch. A couple times the mom started talking to one of our girls, thinking they were her daughter simply because of their size. A LOT of stifled giggles from our girls when this happened.
As we approached the Colosseum the mom became distraught when she realized her daughter was nowhere to be found. We all looked around, our guide called for the daughter on her headset, but she didn’t appear. So the mom and guide went back towards the Forum hoping to find her. We could hear our guide muttering on her microphone that we were going to miss our time getting inside the Colosseum. They tried calling her, but the mom couldn’t remember the daughter’s phone number. After like 15 minutes the daughter appeared. We never heard where she had wandered off to. Maybe she was just trying to ditch her mom?
Our guide, Monica, was awesome. Super knowledgable, very friendly, and with lots of sly comments not everyone would pick up on. She pointed out how ancient art was often propaganda for whoever was in charge, and while we should admire it, we should realize that sometimes the accepted stories behind them don’t reflect reality.
She also told us how interpretations of buildings and art we’ve held onto for centuries are being challenged with the use of modern technology. The Colosseum, for example, may have functioned differently than we have assumed. I liked that she shared these stories. We may know the broad strokes of history, but getting the details correct thousands of years later is likely an impossible task, yet one that is worth pursuing.
My favorite comment of hers was when we walked by the Italian Senate building and she gave us an update on their political situation.
“We just had our first female prime minister elected. Which was a good thing…even if she wasn’t the one we wanted.”
Several of us chuckled at that. If you keep up on your foreign affairs you may understand why.
It was a terrific way to see a ton of the city in a relatively short span. The weather was perfect, in the upper 50s to lower 60s and clear all day. If you only have one day to see the city, this was the way to do it.
We squeezed into a taxi to get back to our hotel. I don’t think we got the full Roman car experience, but it was still a rather fraught 15 minutes. Especially since I was the one pressed against the front passenger door with other cars inches away.
After an hour or so of recharging it was into another taxi to head to Trastevere for our rescheduled food tour. This was one of the highlights of our trip, and we were so glad we were able to move it to Monday.
Our guide was an Italian-American woman who now lives in Rome and is married to an Italian. She studied cooking, has a masters related to where food comes from, and works for a group that focuses on sustainable food.
Over the next three hours we strolled through the trendy neighborhood sampling various foods.
Our first stop was at da Enzo, a little family-run place that is mega popular. We were sliding in before official opening and there was already a line at least 30 people long. When we left it had doubled. Here we had appetizers, a glass of wine, and C and I shared some tiramisu (Her goal was to eat it as often as she could this week).
Stop two was Spirito Di Vino a wine-focused restaurant in a building with an amazing history. First the chef, who I think can safely be called eccentric, came out to greet us. He asked where we were all from. When we said “Indianapolis, it’s near Chicago,” our standard overseas answer, he exclaimed, “I’VE BEEN TO GARY!!!” I would love to get that backstory! Maybe he’s a big fan of the Jackson family?
One of the other couples in our group was from Columbia, MO; he is an attorney, she is a pediatrician.. We thought that was hilarious. They were nice. M decided to tell them how I hated Mizzou. Smart girl, but doesn’t always read the room well.
What made this restaurant special was its wine cellar. It was built at least 2300 years ago. You could literally smell the history when we went down to tour it. When the cellar was excavated in the 1800s, a very famous statue was found that dated to the building’s earliest days. That statue is now in the Vatican museum and we had seen it in the morning. Today it is a humble eatery.
We drank more wine and had a pork stew that was based on an ancient recipe the chef believed close to what people were eating 2500 years ago.
Next we had some street pizza at Pizzeria La Boccaccia, including one that had potatoes on it that was surprisingly amazing.
Fourth was to a little meat shop run by a father and son that specialized in these amazing pork sandwiches. I could have stayed there all night.
Our final heavy food stop of the night was Rione 13 where we had two of Rome’s most famous pastas: cacio e pepe and all’amatriciana. These were the two best pastas I’ve ever had.
We wrapped the night up with some gelato. M was very proud that she had read up on how to tell what the “good” gelato is, and our guide agreed that her research was right-on: avoid the stuff that is super bright and piled high in its bins and go for the gelato that is more muted in color and rests lower in the pan, often covered when the shop isn’t busy.
This food tour was fabulous and worth every one of the 130 Euros they charged us to reschedule when we couldn’t attend the Sunday session.
Florence
Tuesday we woke to rain, which we expected. We Uber-ed to the Roma Termini train station and headed up to Florence for our second city of the week.
By the time we arrived in Florence it was pouring. We all donned rain jackets, pulled hoods over our heads, and marched about 15 minutes to our hotel. After we let the girls take a quick nap we took John N’s advice and went to the Mercato Centrale for lunch.
The Mercato serves as Florence’s central market on its main level (duh) and has a large food court on its second level where you can grab a seat and then pick-and-choose your meal from various vendors. It was a bit packed because of the lunchtime rush, and some folks even stole our first seats, but it was fun to try different things and watch the crowds.
It was still raining lightly after lunch but we stopped at a small coffee shop for hot chocolates and coffees, and I got to experience the joys of the Italian coffee bar. Look it up on YouTube. It was EXACTLY like every one of those videos, which I loved.
Later we decided to try the roof bar/restaurant at our hotel for an early evening snack. The rain had switched to mist, but still only the indoor seats were available. The views were still wonderful. We ordered the evening special, which was a drink and “snacks.” The snacks were a bunch of small bites, which we expected, but they included an oyster, beef tartare, some smoked salmon, and other raw-ish foods. I figured, when in Rome – or Florence I guess – and downed everything but the oyster. M tried the oyster and couldn’t finish, saying it tasted like a fish bowl. The other girls picked at theirs and focused on the chips and mixed nuts. Ninety Euros down the drain for their picked-over plates, but at least the view was nice.
We began at the Accademia for the obligatory viewing of Michelangelo’s David. I loved this little museum. One of my favorite college classes was that Art History course, and, as with the Vatican museums, it was amazing to see these old pieces of art and how styles changed dramatically during the Renaissance.
L thought the David was “overrated.” I tried to explain why it was so important but she wasn’t having it. I mean, I kind of get it. It’s just a statue of a dude. But often the importance of art is as much about the history that led to its creation, and the way things changed after its appearance, as the piece itself. Maybe she’ll take art history in college and then understand.
After that we slowly worked our way through the city center, spending some time around Piazza del Duomo, passing Dante’s home, making our way to Ponte Vecchio, and ending at the Palazzo Vecchio. The Duomo is outrageous. I’d seen plenty of pictures of its dome. I don’t think I had seen pictures of its marble exterior since college. Again, a little overwhelming trying to understand how it was made when it was made, and how it has lasted this long.
After lunch – pasta for all – we wandered the city streets and did some shopping then returned to the hotel for some down time. After about an hour I was itchy to not waste time on my first trip to Italy, so took a long walk on my own. That’s when I fell in love with Florence. The sun was setting, there were already Christmas lights out, and without a hood over my head or my eyes focused on the map on my phone, I just wandered and took the sights in.
You see these movies filmed in old European cities with their narrow, crooked streets, and think “That’s just part of the city.” But Florence really is this wonderful maze and every turn brings a new surprise. I was amazed at how much shopping there was. How many art stores. How many tiny, neighborhood cafes and bars. Even with all these strange, odd-angled streets, you quickly discover how easy it is to get around once you identify the landmarks.
I spent probably an hour walking without any real plan. I found a couple cool churches not included in our tour. I got into the Palazzo Vecchio’s courtyard. I stumbled onto a very oddly dressed Asian couple who were apparently taking wedding pictures. I got back to our hotel just as the sun was setting and stood above the Arno River taking in the gorgeous view.
We hemmed and hawed and dug through our guidebook and Trip Advisor for at least an hour trying to find a spot for dinner. As we grew more frustrated we threw up our hands and decided to walk towards the city center, hoping we found something. If not, we’d just got back to the Mercato.
Which is what we ended up doing.
It was significantly less crowded than the day before. Joe Bastianich has an American Barbecue restaurant inside. We laughed about it on Tuesday. As we walked by Wednesday evening the lady working flagged us down and offered a sample, “These are burnt ends, have you ever heard of those?” We all started laughing. “Maybe you know them then?” she asked. I accepted the sample. It was not Kansas City quality.
M and I got pasta. It came from a counter where they whipped up your sauce right in front of you. Mine had pumpkin, sausage, cheese, and then a Parmesan cream sauce over everything. Fantastic. M’s had a truffle sauce, which she loved. She’s kind of become a Truffle Person. The rest of our crew got sandwiches and pizza, and S got the pulled pork sandwich from the barbecue place, which was actually pretty good.
On our way home we crossed paths with another American couple, probably in their late 60s. We heard the man say, “OK, we are not moving here, but we can come back.”
I really hope I can return to Florence one day. It was my favorite stop of the trip and I would love to spend more time wandering around the city, plus getting out into Tuscany proper.
Venice
Thanksgiving morning brought a train ride across the country to Venice.
My view of Venice was purely from movies. And I’ve never really understood if the entire city is canals and islands, or if that was only part of it.
So spending two days there was certainly an eye-opener. While Rome and Florence are full of history and charms unique to each city, I don’t know if there is another city like Venice anywhere in the world.
I realize this is not exactly an original observation.
To be honest, Venice kind of doesn’t make sense. Even after spending two days walking around the city and now reviewing my pictures, my constant thought is either “Why?” or “How?” I wonder how many cities with its level of influence on world affairs have the same questions surrounding them.
Our hotel was in the Cannareggio area, which is a quiet, un-touristy part of town. It was a little unsettling to walk the streets of the district and have there be almost no noise. When you remove cars from the equation it reduces that basic background noise level to almost nothing.
We laughed each time we saw a UPS or Amazon delivery boat glide past us.
We had a tour booked for Friday so wanted to just see part of the city while we searched for a lunch spot.
We ended up near the Rialto Bridge and stumbled into a little trattoria that looked promising. While the owner and one of the waiters spoke decent English, the man who took our orders spoke almost none. This made things interesting. But it all worked out wonderfully.
As we studied the menu, the non-English speaking waiter would bring a pan from the kitchen, ladle out a few scoops of whatever was leftover from making other people’s orders onto the girls’ plates. They got to try gnocchi and two pastas this way. C and L both ordered gnocchi after the sample. He put on a big production like we had done something outrageous and then nodded ok and walked away.
S ordered the seafood risotto. When told that feeds two people, I agreed to share it with her. One of our best choices of the trip. The risotto was delivered in a small boat placed in the center of the table. I don’t know, maybe that was kitschy and cheesy, but it delighted us. It helped that the risotto was amazing.
Last year we celebrated Thanksgiving on Kauai with a rather traditional meal in a non-traditional setting. This year it was seafood risotto in Venice. Living right I guess.
Our tour on Friday ended up being just us and our guide, which was a nice change. We took a boat through a good portion of the islands, ending up near our hotel for the walking tour. It was a little more laid back that our other two city tours, less focused on seeing, say, the Colosseum or David, than on providing a general understanding of how Venice works and the history of the island. We spent time in the old Jewish Ghetto. We walked through a secret garden at a home for retired nuns. It was a very different vibe than the other tours but a nice way to wrap-up the week.
Our guide told us how a high tide was supposed to have hit the day before, but the expected waters had not arrived. I believe I linked to a video about Venice’s new floodgates sometime last year. Apparently they worked this time. Much of the island was forecast to be under water, but it remained dry. Lucky us!
Our guide suggested another hidden spot for lunch that ended up being wonderful. The girls and S all had pasta while I had roasted eggplant with marinara sauce.
Following lunch we made the obligatory trek to Piazza San Marco. We were glad we were not visiting in the heart of the summer, when it is jammed-packed with people. We could move around relatively freely and waited in line less than five minutes to get into the basilica.
Venice has a similar vibe to Florence with all the curious streets and alleys that have been there for centuries. The obvious difference is the water that can interrupt you path. We found Apple Maps to be very accurate, but a couple times it did send us down streets that ended in water, forcing us to double-back on our path. Some of that could have been more because of network issues and my phone thinking we were one block away from our actual location.
Our only self-inflicted misses of the trip were our two dinners in Venice. Several factors went into this.
We were staying well-away from the areas where most restaurants were clustered. The front desk of our hotel recommended a couple places that were just minutes away, but they were both closed on Thursday, and we thought them too small for our group on Friday.
Restaurants seem very small in Venice, with a focus on sitting outside. It was chilly and not every place was able to squeeze a table of five in.
Our girls aren’t into seafood, which complicates things in a city known for seafood. And they were getting sick of pizza and pasta.
Maybe this was just our bad luck, but Venice also seems a little less English-friendly than the other two cities. It was the only city where we ran into people who seemed flustered when we asked simple questions in English.
So both Thursday and Friday nights we ended up in tourist traps. Thursday’s had the potential to be bad, but ended up being ok. Friday’s choice was not good. Everyone was tired and grumpy and uncommunicative and no one wanted to walk back to where we had already been twice that day in hopes of finding a good restaurant. So we ended up in a spot that took entirely too long to make crappy food.
Oh well, at least it happened on our last night and not our first. Our Rome food tour was expensive, but if you don’t have someone to guide you and are unable to make reservations ahead of time, I can see the value in doing that in multiple cities just to ensure you get good food.
Travel
We booked our trip through Costco. Highly recommended. We did this last year for our Hawaii trip and it seems like a good deal. This booking included all the airfare, our train tickets, lodging, and transfers on each end of the trip.
In general our travel was quite good. As mentioned in the Rome section, we arrived six hours late because of a slight delay with our flight from Chicago to Paris. We had a very tight window to make our connection in Paris – only 70 minutes – which I had been worried about since we booked the trip. But we also figured Costco would not have suggested those flights if that was not a reasonable amount of time to catch a connection at Charles de Gaulle.
My first tip is you really should give yourself at least two hours between flights in Paris. Even had we arrived in Paris on time, we would have had a very tough time catching that connection to Rome. There’s the matter of deplaning on a massive Airbus A350, which took a good 20 minutes. There is navigating from the inbound international terminal of CDG to the outbound terminals, which includes clearing immigration. Coming back that process took us a good hour, and that was early on a Saturday morning.
Fortunately, while we were sitting on the ground in Chicago, I sent our flight info to my sister-in-law who spent years in the travel industry. When we landed in Paris the next morning she had got us seats on a flight to Rome later in the afternoon. There were a couple earlier ones so she suggested we go to the Air France counter and see if we could get on one of them. Those flights were full, but the lady assisting us was very friendly and helpful and adjusted our re-booked seats so we were all together rather than in the scattered seats the AF agent my sister-in-law spoke with put us into.
Thus we sat in Charles de Gaulle for nearly six hours last Sunday morning.
About 30 minutes before we landed in Paris a man had some kind of medical issue. I saw him stand up and walk to the restroom, then his seat mate jumped up and seemed to be kneeling down, assisting him on the floor. Soon all the flight attendants were gathered around him and a call went out for a doctor. Someone near them immediately popped up. S was relieved because the guy who went down weighed at least 250 and might have been out of her area of expertise. Not sure what happened but they didn’t bring a wheelchair or medics onto the plane when we landed.
Air France was pretty great. The food was good, they serve wine and champagne with everything, and the fight crew was super nice. When we stepped onto our plane in Chicago I was greeted by a steward with a jaunty “Bonsoir et bienvenue, monsieur! Welcome aboard!” (Apologies if I’ve bungled the grammar; I never took French.)
The girls and I loved the plane views that were available on our video screens. One was from a camera on the jet’s belly, the other at the top of the tail. These were rendered kind of useless since our flight to Paris was overnight (although we saw some spectacular shots of the sunrise over France) and our flight back to Chicago was over clouds for most of the flight. Still fun to watch takeoff/landing.
Another slight issue was on our return trip through Paris. When we landed we checked the board to confirm our flight to Chicago, but its departure was just beyond the time window being displayed. So we headed to the gate indicated on our tickets. We processed through immigration – taking about 35–40 minutes despite the sign saying it would take 10–15 – went to our gate, and set out to find some food. Our flight still wasn’t popping up on the board so I checked online and discovered it had been moved to a completely different terminal. We were still a good two hours from boarding, but I had a moment of panic when A) we couldn’t figure out how to get out of the terminal we were in and B) I feared we would have to pass through the immigration and security lines again.
After about 15 minutes of wandering/panicking, we finally found someone who pointed us in the proper direction to catch the train to terminal M. We did have to go through security, but that was quick and we found a quiet place to sit for the remaining 90 minutes of our layover.
Sleeping on planes? Surely you jest. I don’t think any of us slept for more than an hour at a time. Going to Paris there were three little kids behind us that were absolute maniacs. The kid behind me was kicking or grabbing my chair constantly. Their parents were across the aisle, not giving a fuck or sleeping, depending on when we looked back.
Coming home we woke at 3:00 AM Saturday Venice time, or 9:00 PM Friday in Indy. A few catnaps here and there, but no extended sleep along the way. We pulled into our garage at 9:00 PM Saturday night. We were in bed and asleep within 20 minutes. We all felt pretty good Sunday morning.
That’s one way to avoid jet lag.
As our flight from Venice approached Paris, we flew over downtown and were able to see the Eiffel Tower, backlit by the rising sun. That was awesome. It was also cool to see so many people on our side of the plane leaning towards their windows to get their glance at it.
All the European airports seemed clean and nice. I’m not sure how they did it, but our bags were waiting for us when we reached the luggage carousel in Rome. We were near the front of our flight, so off quick, and made a short restroom stop, but it took us less than 10 minutes to get from the gate to baggage claim, yet there they were.
Riding the train in Italy was awesome. I’ve never been on a real train before, so riding a high-speed one through the Italian countryside was fantastic. The Frecciarossa trains are clean, quiet, comfortable, and fast. Italian train stations were cool, too. I wish I had more time to wander around in them but we only had about 10 minutes between arrival and our departure each day.
On both of our train rides S and the girls had four seats that shared a table on one side of the car while I was in a single on the other side of the aisle facing another single seat. From Rome to Florence I sat across from a businessman who worked on his laptop and took a few calls.
On our second ride a man was already seated on my side we boarded, but he got off in Bologna. When the doors closed and we began moving again without anyone taking that seat, I stretched out my legs to enjoy the extra space for the last 90 minutes of the trip.
A few moments later the door from the next car opened and a rather dazzling looking woman entered and took the empty seat. I’m telling you, a lot of my good friends would have loved seeing how uncomfortable I was facing this woman, especially with my wife and daughters three feet away!
She talked on her phone the entire ride to Venice. From the little Italian I remember from 25 years ago, I think she spent at least 30 of those minutes trying to book another series of train trips. She got disconnected once and was not pleased. She also called, or took calls from, some business colleagues and may have talked to her dad. She spoke to someone else in very halting English, tapping her nails on the table as she carefully enunciated each word.
And then she talked to “Antonio.” Not sure who Antonio was, but at one point she let out this long, slow sigh and said, “Ohhhh, Antonio.” I couldn’t tell if it was filled with longing or sadness or some other emotion, but it was one of the most erotic things I’ve ever heard. It was stereotypical of how a sexy Italian lady should talk. Again, my wife and daughters were three feet away and I could not enjoy this in the slightest. Don’t tell S, but I will never forget how that lady said those two words.
Another thing I had stressed about since we booked was our transfer in Venice. Actually the stress didn’t kick in until about a month after we initially booked, when our flight time from Venice to Paris changed, meaning we would miss our connection to Chicago. I got on the phone with Costco and within an hour they had re-booked us onto an earlier flight out of Venice. The only issue was this was a 6:25 AM flight, meaning we would have to leave our hotel super early.
I think it was Tuesday I realized, “Hey, there aren’t any cars in Venice. How are they going to pick us up?”
I figured this isn’t a new problem and had been resolved years ago, but to soothe my stress I shot an email to our transfer company. They assured me they would be there, and clarified we would hop on a private water taxi before taking a car.
I was still worried they would really be there at 3:25 AM. As usual, I was stressing for nothing. The water taxi was waiting outside our hotel door when we came down to the lobby. Big thumbs up!
Europeans do not know how to board or deplane aircraft. The lines to get onto each of our flights were needlessly slow and long. People in row 12 taking two minutes standing in the aisle getting all their carry on gear situated while 400 people stand behind them and wait. As we de-planed from each flight people from behind us came charging forward without saying “excuse me” or pretending they had a connection to make. As I yelled at L’s classmates on our DC trip when they tried to charge up the bus aisle, “We are living in a society, people!”
Coming home we were surrounded by French people who all seemed to know each other. Many of them stopped to chat with the man sitting directly in front of me. One guy talked to him for literally an hour. I was trying to watch a movie (and keep my eyes open) and he was really stressing me out.
Other Comments, Observations, and Tips
We read/watched all kinds of “things to be aware of” posts/videos over the past few months. Maybe it was being out of the busiest of the tourist season but we were never really accosted by anyone. We didn’t see any gypsies until we got to Florence, and then only a couple. We saw more homeless people – not very many – than gypsies or travel scammers combined.
Pretty much everywhere we went in Rome and Florence, people spoke good English. One cab driver was a little rough but everyone else immediately spoke English to us, even when I didn’t notice any of us wearing clothes that screamed “We Are Americans.” I had made some meager efforts to recover un pochino of the Italian I learned in college, but when I tried to use it, I often got it jumbled up with Spanish and sounded like an idiot.
I did find the old adage that if you make any effort to engage people in their language, they will try even harder to engage you in yours. I know a few key words and phrases, and I hope my pronunciations were solid, because everyone I used them on seemed thrilled I was trying.
I LOVE how people are constantly saying “Buongiorno” and “Buona sera” to each other. It is delightful.
I was pretty pleased with how I managed our cash. I think I got a total of €350 in cash over the week. We arrived home with €4.30 left, all in coins.
We were all kind of bummed at how the EU messes up your passport stamps. We got stamped both times we landed in Paris, but got nothing in Italy. I would have preferred two stamps, and an Italian one over the French.
The jetway failed to work when we arrived in Paris from Venice so we had to take the stairs down to the tarmac. M, knowing I have weird travel rules, said now I had to count France as a country since I was walking on actual French earth. Trust me, if you get a passport stamp you count the country, even if you never leave the airport.
We’ve all heard how Europeans eat light breakfasts, often just a coffee and roll. Thank goodness our hotels cater to Americans. It wasn’t exactly an old school Shoney’s buffet, but there were plenty of proteins to fuel us up for our daily adventures.
The big storm that blew through on Tuesday dropped a lot of snow at higher elevations. As we went through the mountains on Thursday the peaks were all bright white.
How awesome was it to be in Italy during the World Cup?!?! Well, not very awesome since Gli Azzurri missed their second-straight WC finals. The games were all on RAI2 and I had them on anytime we were in the hotel. You could usually see them in bars and restaurants. Over there the games are on from 10 AM until 8 or 9 PM, which was great. But no shops full of Italian national team gear.
I thought about getting a Fiorentina jersey, as they used to be awesome. But I couldn’t find one that matched those they wore in the ‘90s when I paid close attention to Serie A. Since my favorite Italian team is Juventus from Turin, I didn’t think it was a good idea to get one of their jerseys, even if they are the most popular team in all of Italy. And since my last favorite Italian player, Alessandro Del Piero, retired like 16 years ago, finding one of his jerseys wasn’t easy. Oh well…
Far be it for me to give the Italians advice on how to present their historic buildings, but I think a few spotlights on Il Duomo at night could do wonders.
Our hotels were all very nice. We had two rooms in each, always either next to each other or just down the hall. Each one had their own little quirks, though. In Rome we couldn’t figure out how to get the wand for the shower to work no matter what combination of buttons we pushed or handles we twisted. In Florence both the bathtub/shower and toilets were set on extra high bases. I was the only one in the family who could touch the floor with my feet while seated on the toilet, and it was a long step down from the shower. We never quite figured out the lights in our room in Venice, and there was a decent chance someone else would turn the lights off while you were showering because they accidentally hit one of two master switches hidden amongst the others.
L was the only person who admitted to trying out the bidet. She said she was going to make a video of it for her friends, I’m assuming from the neck up. I never asked how that turned out because I didn’t want to know.
There were air dryers at most public restrooms. But they are woefully underpowered. Even after a minute of use my hands were always still wet. And I thought their voltage was higher than ours.
The lady who checked us into our Venice hotel’s name was Shadi. S wanted me to ask her if she was the real one.
S was shat upon by a bird twice, once in Rome, once in Venice. I told her Italians believe that is a sign of good luck but she wasn’t thrilled with it either time.
As mentioned, Apple Maps seems to work really well in Italian cities for walking directions. I couldn’t help but think how that changes the traveler’s experience. It’s really hard to get lost, and certainly an iPhone is easier to read than an unwieldy map. But you also spend a lot of time staring at your phone. I made a conscious effort to find a waypoint on the map and then slide the phone into my pocket so I could take in my environment as we walked, not checking my phone again until we hit that next spot on my mental map.
We each took a small, carry-on friendly suitcase plus a backpack. We ended up checking the suitcases, because we didn’t realize there’s a 22 kg total weight limit on Air France what you can carry on. Those suitcases were all packed very tightly but it seemed to work well. I was nearly perfect in my clothing choices, so I would be happy to give you packing advice for your next trip.
M and C both bought some clothes and/or jewelry as their souvenirs. L found some Nike Dunks she had never seen in the States and picked them. That took some creative packing to make sure we could squeeze another pair of shoes in.
La Fine
My friends know I’ve had a long love affair with Italy. Most of that had to do with cute ladies I knew (or wanted to know) in my 20s, but eventually it morphed into something bigger. In the summer of 1995 I tried to spend a few months in Florence studying as part of my extended college experience. My parents nixed that for multiple reasons. I figured I would still get there one day. I didn’t think it would take nearly 30 years to finally do it.
This was an excellent week. I would make a couple minor tweaks if we were re-planning the trip tomorrow. I would add a day or two, as I would want more time in Rome and could spend another full day wandering around Florence. That’s tough to do when you’re traveling with kids during the school year. I’d also avoid that tight connection in Paris and the risks it poses to the rest of the itinerary.
Or, as I said above, I’d be fine taking a Tuscany-only trip, getting into the countryside and maybe even popping over to Bologna.
But those are minor quibbles.
We have M’s senior spring break coming up in March, but after that we may never have another trip like this as a group of five again. I’m thankful we were able to go to Italy as a family, and hope the girls will carry memories of it as good as the ones I will carry.
I had a really good week in Washington, D.C. with L and her classmates. It wasn’t all great, but we avoided the major issues that often plague these trips.
We did A LOT. I took some notes along the way, but I think the best way to share the experience is just to list everywhere we went and add a thought or two as necessary.
Monday: Flew into Baltimore and drove directly to Arlington National Cemetery. We got to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A humbling visit that I think the adults appreciated more than the kids.
Dinner at the Pentagon City Mall (kids ate fast food, adults popped into a proper restaurant).
Then a nighttime, walking tour of some of the monuments and memorials including the World War II and Korean War memorials, Lincoln and Washington monuments.
Tuesday: Breakfast at 6:00 before heading to the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception for 8:00 mass. Props to the priest for knocking it out in 34 minutes.
The kids took a longer tour of the church site while their math teacher and I snuck out to get coffee and hang out on our own.
From there it was back to the national mall for the Vietnam and Albert Einstein memorials.
After lunch the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, which was incredibly moving. I don’t know what made me angrier: confronting the reality of the Holocaust, or knowing as the survivors and perpetrators die off, it gets easier for the lunatics out there to claim the Holocaust either didn’t happen or was exaggerated. We are doomed.
Next out to Mt. Vernon. Not sure what got into the boys, but most of them were total idiots at Mt. Vernon. They asked THE DUMBEST questions of our poor guides. One of many “I’m happy I’m a girl dad” moments. There were several other school groups on the site as well. One group was from the south (based on accents and Clemson shirts several wore) and had a bunch of kids wearing gear celebrating our last president. When a few kids in that group asked their teachers if they could visit the slave cemetery, they were told no. I thought that was very interesting for a variety of reasons.
Following dinner we made a stop and the national harbor and then a walking ghost tour of Alexandria.
Wednesday: A quick photo outside the White House first thing, before the crowds grew.
Then we had a tour of the US Capital followed by a visit to the Library of Congress.
We took the metro a couple stops to near the Washington Monument. The kids ate lunch at food trucks and then scattered at the various Smithsonian museums for most of the afternoon. The parents took a longer lunch at a restaurant.
That evening we drove back into Maryland for dinner at Medieval Times. Which was a lot mentally when you are on day three of a trip. A lot of the adults were looking at each other asking “What the fuck!?!” It took awhile to get into it, but our knight won the final battle so it all worked out.
Thursday: After checking out of the hotel we went to the zoo. We saw the pandas which was about the only thing we can’t see at our zoo here in Indy. Oh, we did see an electric eel get fed her lunch, which wasn’t as cool as I hoped because she didn’t shock it, just yanked it off the hook the handler put in the water.
Another food truck lunch on the National Mall. President Biden graced us by flying over as we ate, which I thought was a nice touch. Pretty crazy to see blocks of streets shut down as police and other emergency vehicles cordoned everything off and multiple helicopters roared in before Marine One descended upon the White House.
After lunch was the National Museum of African American History and Culture. This was L’s favorite stop of the trip, and I loved it too. I could have spent a lot longer here. The slavery section was obviously incredibly emotional. That section of the museum stretches from the beginning of the slave trade in the Americas to Obama’s inauguration. I couldn’t help but think that was fitting since this country began to drift backwards into lunacy in the years after Obama was elected.
Finally we bused out to Dulles to go to the Air & Space museum. Seeing stuff like the Enola Gay, numerous fighter jets, and the space shuttle Discovery was pretty cool.
It was a two hour drive in traffic back to the Baltimore airport and a late flight home. L and I got to our house a little after 1:00 AM.
All this was exhausting, which I think is the point. I was in the midst of one of my insomnia battles which did not help. Wednesday my body finally reset and I was able to fully recharge. Those first couple days were a little rough, though. Even with all my working out, my calves were still barking after the first day of walking.
Fortunately we had nearly perfect weather the entire week. It sprinkled on us once briefly, but otherwise was in the 60s, generally cloudy, and pleasant.
As I said, we had some issues with the boys. I unloaded on the same kid three times. He’s just an asshole and I wasn’t going to tolerate it. He’s lucky he didn’t get sent home because he violated the curfew rules at least one night.
Other than that, the kids were well-behaved. We didn’t have any big incidents. L’s class is so small we could all get on one bus comfortably (St P’s usually has a boy bus and girl bus). Our driver was excellent. M’s 8th grade year they had major issues with one of their drivers.[1] And last year’s class had the bad luck of being in a hotel that couldn’t handle a bunch of middle schoolers and the water literally stopped working one night.
We stayed in Alexandria in a nice Westin. Apparently it was quite a bit pricier than where they stayed last year, but the water worked! There was another school group staying there from Lodi, CA.[2] They were checking out Wednesday morning. I’m assuming they were hitting another east coast city, because that’s a long way to fly for just two days.
My roommate was a friend of mine who also has three daughters. M matches up with his middle daughter – they are still super close despite going to different high schools – so we’ve been friends for 13 years.
One weird thing other parents also commented on: we were constantly turned around or confused about directions. Which seems weird since we all have smartphones and many of us have Apple Watches with compasses in them. I think it was because we were all in the middle of the bus and you can only see what’s out your windows. You never get a real sense for where you are headed or what cardinal direction that is.
The Capital building was in the midst of a major exterior renovation. But there were also repairs still being done from the January 6 attacks. Motherfuckers.
This was my first time in Washington, D.C. It’s amazing how there is so much to do and see in such a relatively small area. We just scratched the surface. There were several areas I would have loved to spend more time in, but I won’t complain about cramming so much into a four-day visit.
This was another Catholic school, and they attended Mass with us. The hotel didn’t clearly mark which group’s breakfast was which, so each morning there were people wandering into the wrong room. ↩
A very good weekend trip to Kansas City. Other than the heat, of course.
Travel
It was probably our easiest drive between Indy and KC we’ve ever had without driving at night. A few slowdowns, a few standard trucks passing each other or slow people in the fast lane issues. But otherwise it was kind of smooth sailing.
One side effect of me switching to a smaller car without a third row is that trips like this can be problematic. Our girls bitch when they have to ride 10 minutes to dinner three-across in the back seat. Eight-ish hours was going to be a shitshow. We decided that the expense of renting a van was worth the reduction in bitching and increase in comfort for all. That was a good call. Plenty of room for our bags, the girls weren’t on top of each other, and we got pretty solid fuel mileage.
Speaking of fuel, it saddened us that the father we got from Indy, the more the price of gas fell. I mean, it was good for this trip. But sucks that it reinforced the reality that Indiana typically has some of the highest gas prices outside of California.[1] Anyway, when I bought gas in Lawrence on Friday, I was paying a full dollar less per gallon than in Indy. Joy.
OK, onto the trip itself. Some of you know many of these details but I’ll go ahead and act like no one knows nothing.
Thursday
We mixed things up and stayed at the Hampton Inn near the Power & Light District rather than on the Plaza. We haven’t ever checked out downtown on any of our trips other than driving through, so it was cool to see the many changes that have taken place down there in the 19 years since we moved to Indy. The streetcar stop was directly below our room. More on that later.
Thursday night we met my aunt and uncle for dinner at Parlor. The food we sampled from the various vendors ranged from ok to very good. When I walked to the bar to order our first drinks, I scanned the QR code to pull up the drink menu. The bartender said that if I was a quick chooser I had two minutes to still get happy hour prices. I asked her if she had anything local. She began to rattle off the list and when she said “Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat” I said, “Two please!”
As she poured them she commented how Boulevard really isn’t local anymore since they got bought out awhile back. This very nice looking young woman sitting at the bar next to me shook her head and said, “They’re sellouts.”
Oh my!
I asked that they not hold it against me and took my beers and fled.
Friday – KU
Friday was our KU campus visit. This was my first trip back to Lawrence in 12 years, and only my second in 19+ years. Which seems crazy. It’s just hard to carve out a day in Lawrence when we have generally taken these quick trips to KC and are trying to see as many people as possible in a compressed time frame.
I honestly don’t remember the last time I took I–70 to Lawrence. It’s been well over 20 years, for sure. The girls were totally confused by the concept of toll roads.
We arrived on campus a little early, so I drove by a couple of my old apartments and then we hit the bookstore to scout out possible purchases for after the tour. M quickly piped up, “KU has way better shirts than anywhere we’ve been so far.” Score one for the Jayhawks! She was right. I think the KU bookstore had more shirts than the IU and Purdue bookstores combined.
The KU admissions presentation was outstanding. M agreed with me that it was the best of the six we’ve been to, so it wasn’t just a biased KU alum’s opinion. Most of that was because of the guy who was leading the presentation. He was great, funny and full of personality. He was a stark contrast to the lady who presented at IU last Monday, who basically read from a script and overused the word “beautiful.” KU really hits hard on being an AAU accredited school, and that got M’s attention. I told her IU and Purdue are also AAU schools, so that means KU has many of the academic benefits of those schools without the sheer size. In many ways it is the perfect blend of a Big 10 school and Miami, Ohio.
Between the shirts, our peeks at campus, the presentation, and the fat chunk of scholarship money M’s grades qualify her for, she was professing some interest. I’ll admit while I thought it was a long shot, I was getting excited about her at least applying.
Then we took the tour.
Listen, it was nasty hot and humid. It was a Friday late in the tour cycle. Our entire group seemed a little low energy. But the tour kind of sucked. Our guide wasn’t very good, he skipped some of the best parts of campus, we didn’t go inside a single building, and he did more telling than showing about the things that make KU an interesting option.
The tour walked out to a stopping point where families could grab a bus that would take them to stops at professional schools if they had appointments, dorm tours if scheduled, and eventually back to the Union where we started. We waited around for about five minutes and decided to hoof it back rather than wait, as everyone was getting hungry. I think the walk up the Hill in the heat extinguished any interest M had in KU. We were all dripping when we got back up to Wescoe beach.
On the way to the Union I walked us through the main part of campus the tour had missed. M said, “Why didn’t he take us here? This is awesome.”
Unbelievable.
I also corrected a few “facts” our guide had wrong. He was a nice enough kid and I’m hoping he was just off his game Friday.
In M’s welcome bag was a 20% off the entire purchase at the KU Bookstore, so we did some shopping. I was in heaven, but only walked out with a couple stickers. They had some amazing gear but I have purchased like eight KU shirts already this year. The girls all got nice sweatshirts, though.
So I don’t think M will be a Jayhawk. But L is interested so maybe we’ll try again in four years!
My brain was literally cramping last week trying to come up with a place to eat lunch while in Lawrence. Which of my old favorites should I hit? I reached the point of mental paralysis and consulted with brother in Jayhawkdom E$, who suggested the Ladybird Diner. This was a brilliant rec: the food and environment were fantastic. If you’re ever in LFK, you should stop by.
After lunch we did some more driving around and then made the pilgrimage to Allen Fieldhouse. This was my only misstep of the day. I didn’t research how to partake in all the new exhibits at the Fieldhouse. I figured you just walk into the building and you’ll see everything. They do have the little museum display in the main entrance. But the main part of AFH was closed off, so the girls couldn’t see the court. I assumed this meant the area with the original rules of basketball was also off limits for the day. It wasn’t until that evening that I read those are in a whole other building that may well have been open. L was bummed she didn’t see the court, but we did get to see the latest national championship trophy.
On our way out of town we swung by the house I lived in for two years, aka The Big Yellow House. Which is now brown. If you know, you know. Naturally there was an accident at 23rd and Mass when we were there. We used to call 911 at least once a week because of accidents there. Some things never change.
Friday night the Murray family graciously hosted many of you. It was great to see all of you who were able to make it.
Saturday – Raytown and More
Saturday morning we took the streetcar up to the River Market. I ate many lunches and dinners in the River Market in my adult KC years. But I don’t think I had been to the farmers market since I was a little kid. It was fabulous! I remarked at how when I was a kid it was pretty much all local Italian vendors. I did hear one old lady speaking some Italian Saturday. I was amazed by how many world cultures were represented in the area now. A Vietnamese place. A Thai place. The spice store with all kinds of exotic, wonderful smelling spices on display. Vendors selling all kinds of Asian and Latin foods. Good for KC.
We took the streetcar back down to Union Station and walked around there a bit. I showed the girls the bullet holes that remain from the Kansas City Massacre. I found that more interesting than they did.
A few weeks back M said it would be funny if we went to the Taco Bell I worked at in Raytown on our visit. That jogged my memory that I had read about a really good barbecue place that was right around the corner. We met the Nesbitt family and Stacey B at Harp Barbecue for lunch. Sure enough, the old TB building was still there, although now it is a Chinese takeout place. M asked if that was the actual building I worked in. Hell yes, it was! All it had was a new coat of paint.
Harp’s was terrific. I had the burnt ends which were top notch. The sides were solid. The rest of the family had pulled pork which they all approved of. The beer from Crane Brewery was good, too. A little oasis of culture in a town not always known for that.
After lunch I drove the girls by the three houses we lived in, my old high and elementary schools, and numerous car washes I used. We popped into a CVS and the girls were disappointed I didn’t buy any of the RHS swag they were selling.
After our Raytown sojourn, we headed to the Plaza for the obligatory shopping trip. It was sales tax free weekend in Missouri, which made the stores extra packed. Not the most fun on a day when the heat index was something like 107.
While on the Plaza I got stopped by a guy who was with Amnesty International trying to hit me up for a donation. I interrupted him and thanked him but said we were late to meet someone. That shut him down. I turned and there was a red light greeting me. So we just stood there awkwardly until it changed to green. The girls were trying to sustain their giggles the entire time.[2]
For dinner Saturday we met the Vogel family. Our first choice was going to have trouble seating us so we bopped down the street and went to Carmen’s. It was a great meal with great friends. As much as I miss the Plaza, I think Brookside is the part of Kansas City I miss most. We just don’t have an area like that in Indy. Everything that is similar is either just a couple notches bigger or smaller and lacks that special Brookside feel.
That was our weekend in Kansas City. Other than the heat and not getting into see Allen Fieldhouse, I have zero complaints. I think the girls all enjoyed it as well.
This is mostly due to our gas coming from refineries to the north, which increases the transportation cost to get that gas to us. Plus those refineries are old and both constantly shutting down for repairs and under some more significant environmental restrictions. ↩
That’s only my second-best effort at avoiding solicitors on the Plaza. Years ago I was stopped by a very nice young lady. She asked how my day was going. I grabbed my stomach and said I had just eaten too much barbecue (truth), my stomach was a little upset (not true), and I needed to find a restroom. She encouraged me to find one. I walked in mock distress until I was out of her sight. Then I laughed and laughed. ↩
L’s first true travel basketball tournament of her life is in the books. She had fun, but it was a mixed weekend results-wise.
Hoops first. Her team went 2–2 for the weekend. Friday night they got absolutely annihilated by a team from Canada. Whatever your mental image of how Canadian seventh grade girls should look and play, these girls were the opposite. Big, fast, strong, good hoops IQs, and the most athletic team we’ve played this year. They were also hand-checky as hell, which they didn’t need to do since they were already way better than us. We lost 55–11. They were still pressing in the final 30 seconds up 40. So much for Canada Nice I guess.
Saturday morning we got a sloppy win over a team from Bloomington. On the court next to us, a team from St. Louis beat the Canadians by four, but had been up by 15 most of the game before a late Canuck run. That score shocked us parents and bummed out our girls. They figured they had no chance beating a team that beat a team that beat them.
In the afternoon game, we led the St. Louis girls by one point as the clock ran out to end the first half…then the refs inexplicably counted a basket that came at least two seconds after the buzzer. Seriously, the girl with the ball was at mid-court with 1.5 seconds left and they somehow thought she took 5–6 dribbles and laid it off the glass in that span. Our girls played great that first half and had nothing left. We were on the wrong end of a 26–3 run top open the second half. But losing by 18 didn’t seem so bad given their expectations.
Of the 12 teams in our division, we finished ninth. And our reward was to stick around until 4:40 Sunday to play the 12th place team, also from Bloomington. We got worried when we arrived early to watch another of our seventh grade teams play and their opponent never showed up. I threatened to burn the building down if we stuck around until late afternoon only to win by forfeit. Fortunately our opponents were there and we even got to start about 40 minutes early. Another sloppy but comfortable win, this time by 10.
L’s performance? Not great. Her knees were barking all weekend and at times she could barely run. It was tough to watch and super frustrating for her. She scored three total points in the four games and had more turnovers per game than she’s had all year. Bad passes, getting beat physically, unable to stop because of her knees and getting called for traveling, etc. The confidence she had developed in April is completely gone. She looks unsure of herself and constantly off-balance. I know she was extra disappointed she contributed very little because she was so looking forward to this tournament. Her team has the next two weekends off and her coach told her to skip practice this week to give the knees some rest. I just keep reminding her this means she’s still growing, but I think she’s getting sick of hearing that.
The tournament was at the Kentucky Expo Center, located right between the airport, the University of Louisville athletic complex, and Churchill Downs. There were 30 or so courts and Saturday especially was kind of a madhouse. Games started at 8:00 AM and went until past 10:00 each night. Some of the courts were hand-me-downs from college arenas. L’s team played the Friday game on an old Louisville Freedom Hall court, complete with baskets that had UL Cardinals decorations on them. I didn’t walk around much but apparently there was a Clemson and Georgia Tech court, too. Most of the courts were just temporary plastic ones, though. I don’t think those helped L’s knees at all.
While the tournament was all age groups, it was dominated by Class of 2023 teams, and lots of college coaches were floating around to watch them and the sophomores. Some of these juniors are insanely big and talented. I watched one game Sunday that had at least five girls on the court who were taller than six feet. The event was NCAA sanctioned so we had to register our girls with the NCAA to compete, which L thought was kind of cool but was a hassle for us parents. You had to sit through about 20 minutes of interactive videos regarding recruiting, mental health, concussions, etc. We also had to bring multiple pieces of documentation to show our girls were playing in the right age group. Which they didn’t even look at when we checked in. Wonder if they gave the high schoolers’ docs more scrutiny.
While the basketball was frustrating, L had a great time hanging out with her teammates. We had a couple team meals, they ran around our hotel and the area we were in, and found other ways to entertain themselves.
It was fun for us parents, too. We had a big group lunch between games Saturday and basically took over a restaurant because of our group size. That night we ordered pizza and took over the hotel breakfast area. I sat with the two coaches and another dad, dranking beer and laughing for three hours. It was a good evening.
We couldn’t get a later checkout than noon on Sunday, so L and I found an outlet mall about half an hour away and hit the Nike, Under Armour, and Adidas stores, looking for some new shorts for her. She came up empty but was thrilled that there was a Crocs store. She wears Crocs all the time, including to-and-from basketball. She got a new pair along with some Gibbets.
Travel was relatively easy, although we had some very good luck. On our way down Friday I narrowly missed a hunk of metal on I–465. As we passed it, there were at least eight cars pulled over with flats after running over it. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have found anyone to install new tires on my Audi on a Friday afternoon and would have been screwed.
On our way home Sunday we saw a tractor trailer that was flipped in the middle of I–65 about an hour south of Indy. Judging from the debris we saw around the wreck, I wondered if it had blown over in heavy storms that passed through that area Saturday afternoon.
Events have lined up so that it makes the most sense to combine what should have been two posts into one today. I’ll try to be as brief as I can to both get it out and make it readable.
Spring Break ’22
Spring Break in Siesta Key, FL was largely a success. The weather was mostly good-to-great. We had the pleasure of spending time with a few sets of good friends. The girls all had friends close by for at least parts of the week. Our location was ideal – a block from the Village, Siesta Key’s central dining and shopping area – and our house served its purpose.
M brought one of her best friends with us and she stayed through Thursday. They had a couple good friends on the island and we rarely saw them other than when they came home at night and before they left in the morning.
C didn’t have any friends close, but one of her besties was up on Anna Maria, and she came down for a day, then C went up and spent the next day with her.
L had a few friends about that she kind of drifted in-and-out with throughout the week.
L’s godparents were staying not too far from us, and we spent three days with them on the beach. Two of their adult kids drifted in-and-out for parts of the week.
Our old neighbors – who we have traveled to Hawaii, Mexico, and Captiva with – flew into Ft Myers Wednesday and came up to spend Thursday with us.
There were also about a million Indianapolis Catholics on the island, so we were constantly running into people we knew.
Ahhh, I mentioned a few rough spots.
The winds were outrageous Wednesday and Thursday, while Friday morning was rainy. We still got decent beach time in each of those days.
When we arrived last Saturday the line for rental cars was massive. I stood in it for about 20 minutes when a guy came over and told us he had been in line for four hours and while he had been checked through, he was still waiting for them to give him his keys. He claimed there were two people working the desk and had to run back-and-forth to the lot to grab keys as cars were turned in and cleaned.
Who knows if that part was true, but the four-hour wait looked legit. Since we just had a reservation but had not paid, we decided to bail and get an Uber to our house. Two problems: we had M’s friend, which put us at six people and we couldn’t find a ride that would take six plus luggage. Second, only S had the Uber app on her phone and the network was fried, so my download was going to take hours.
We reserved the biggest car we could find, then asked that driver if he could hook us up with a second.
“I can call my brother! Is that ok with you!”
That was indeed ok! Especially if he let us pay cash.
Turns out they were two brothers from Colombia and thoroughly delightful. They got us where we needed to be and I had a great conversation with Mauricio over the half hour trip.
Monday I Ubered back and waited less than five minutes to grab a minivan for the rest of the week. If we didn’t have to take C to Anna Maria and bring M’s friend back to the airport, we could have skipped it. But it was nice to have.
That was minor compared to our issues getting home.
You may have heard Southwest had some issues this weekend (and may still be struggling). We got to the airport early for our 1:35 PM flight. Grabbed some seats near our gate. And sat and watched as we heard rumors that Southwest flights were having issues getting out while also watching the radar that looked completely awful just to our north. Soon the entire airport was on a ground hold because of that weather.
But our plane had made it in from St. Louis, and we watched a fresh crew walk onto it. Once the airport reopened, we would be good.
Or so we thought.
We waited for four hours before our flight was cancelled. Along with every other Southwest flight that had been sitting around. Sarasota is not a huge airport, but there were at least five completely full flights that just got taken off the schedule. Ticket counters had lines hours long. We heard there were also massive waits for help on the Southwest phone line.
As we sat around and tried to figure out what to do one of L’s friend’s moms texted me. “Mallory told me your flight got cancelled,” the text read. “We have a big SUV and I think we have room for all five of you. Do you want to ride with us?”
Yes, we did want to ride with them!
They were down in Ft. Myers, so it took some back-and-forth to figure out a plan, but they arrived about 90 minutes later, we piled all our shit in, and headed north.
We’ve made the spring break drive home from Florida at least twice, and know how much it sucks. I have to say, we totally lucked out. We drove through some weather for an hour or so, then some heavy fog for about an hour after that. But otherwise it was clear sailing all the way to Indiana. We had to make a brief detour to avoid a big slowdown near Seymour, but otherwise never wavered from our course or hit any stop-and-go traffic at all. It seemed like any other Saturday night, not one when a quarter of the country is making the same trip.
With three adult drivers we just passed off to each other and never stopped for longer than it took for eight people to use the bathroom, fill up with gas, and grab some snacks. We rolled into our driveway exactly 15 hours after we left Sarasota, which is pretty great time!
We heard lots of other people were driving back Sunday and traffic was its usual, awful spring break self. We are super thankful that our friends ignored the texts they were getting from other people looking for a ride and reached out to us, and that our drive home was uneventful.
So that was spring break 2022. Siesta Key certainly felt more traditionally “spring break” than anywhere we’ve ever gone before, between its packs of kids roaming around, more open drinking, and less stringent rules. Anna Maria, where we stayed last year, is getting more crowded, but still has a strict 10:00 PM noise curfew and more families with small kids than high school and college kids running around.[1] We would have loved to take our house from last year and plop it down on Siesta Key.
Jayhawk Talk: Marble Time
For the tenth time in history, and sixth time in my life, the Kansas Jayhawks will play for a national championship tonight.
I have vivd memories of most of those days, mostly of being unable to concentrate at school or work, or that I had a stomach bug in 2008 and watched KU win while in pain and with my head on a pillow.
I wonder how I will remember today years from now, or if being nearly 51 means the game will be imprinted into my brain much differently than the previous five.
I would love to set up tonight’s game with a recounting of KU’s cathartic win over Villanova in Saturday’s national semifinal.
However, as part of our travel issues Saturday, I didn’t see a minute of that game live. The Sarasota airport is tiny, and has only one restaurant/bar outside security. And that place was not seating anyone because they were closing.
Down in the baggage area, where we waited for about two hours after our flight was cancelled, there were no TVs at all. And because there were thousands of people flooding the cell network, I couldn’t get any sports site to load to even do a simple game cast, let alone watch CBS video of the game. I chatted with or waved to a handful of other very nervous Jayhawks looking for a way to follow the game.
So I relied on friends texting me at every TV timeout with score updates. I have to say, that’s a pretty stress-free way to follow a game! Especially when your team jumps out to a 10–0 lead and never looks back.
Our ride arrived with about 6:00 left in the game, just as Villanova cut the KU lead to six. We made a quick stop at Chick-Fil-A then I was given the first driving shift. While I ate my dinner. In a driving rainstorm. Fortunately we had a couple long red lights before we hit I–75 and I knew KU that had basically closed out the game before we got on the road.
It was the most anti-climactic Final Four game of my life. Well, I guess Villanova blowing us out four years ago was pretty anticlimactic, too. But this time I wasn’t feeling the full, pure joy I would be feeling had I watched live. I couldn’t really celebrate until we stopped in Valdosta, GA and I was able to catch up on texts and Tweets.
I did watch the game after we got home. What a performance! Ochai Agbaji found it again. David McCormack played the best game of his career. KU was fantastic on defense. DaJuan Harris and Christian Braun both hit some huge and timely shots. Jalen Wilson continued to destroy people on the boards. It may have been a reduced Villanova team, but they are still a bitch to play against and never stopped playing hard even when down 19. If KU had slipped up, they were fully capable of winning.
So much to be excited about after that game. But also so much to worry about, like the odds that Ochai starts 6–6 again, that Dave can play like that against Carolina’s bigs, that DaJuan will drill 3–5 3’s, that Jalen can do his rebounding thing against UNC, that we won’t leave Brady Manek open for 3’s, etc.
Maybe Carolina’s athletes are too much for KU, and having just beaten Duke they play free-and-loose and run the Jayhawks out of the building.
But they also have a first-year coach and just won a massively emotional game. Can do they bounce back and be as focused tonight?
I keep getting vibes off this KU team. The way they act on and off the court. Before, during, and after games. They way they keep picking each other up, with a different set of guys being the stars each night. I love how Bill Self has embraced the moment, saying it’s time for KU to make runs like this and finish them off. I love how the national narrative has become that this year is about finishing what the 2020 team was unable to do thanks to Covid.
I feel like this is their night and this is KU’s year. It’s been 14 years since they grabbed all the marbles. Anthony Davis and company kept KU from doing that again in 2012. I think Ochai, DaJuan, CB, J-Will, Big Dave, Remy, and Mitch get it done tonight, winning one for Jayhawks everywhere, and for Wilt Chamberlain, who came so close against Carolina in 1957.
Rock Chalk, bitches!
The night C stayed up there she said one of her friend’s parents got a $75 fine for having kids out on the balcony after 10. They weren’t drinking or smoking, just hanging out, making a little noise. Along with the fine came a warning that a second offense would mean they get kicked out of their home. They don’t play on AMI. ↩
