45 hours after we first left Nashville for Memphis to see the first of what would be two crushing defeats over the weekend, Jumpstop and I are back in the Vanderbubble. I wanted to deliver a running diary entry for you over the course of our bogus journey, but that idea died when I realized that a running diary about a 45 hour time period might have been a 20 page long post. I will try to re-create for you somewhat the atmosphere of what happened by writing this now, the first thing that I’m doing back in Nashville. I just dropped off my car in the garage, and before changing, before napping, before doing real work, I am going to write this. I don’t think that I am able to perform simple multiplication at this moment, having spent 30 of the last 34 hours on the road, 36 of the past 45, and having slept a mere 5 interrupted hours since Thursday night, so I don’t know exactly how this will turn out, but here it goes.
At 1 PM, I walked over to my fraternity house to eat lunch and hang out for an hour before leaving for Memphis at 2, ensuring us plenty of time to get delicious Memphis pork bar-b-que and still make it to the Forum to see shoot-around. Michael Edwards, the third member of the Minneapolis leg of the trip, did not get the car to us until 3. I was upset because when I make a plan for a road-trip, there is sound reasoning behind the time that I pick to depart, and in this case the reasons were to miss Nashville traffic, to have a relaxing drive to Memphis, to have plenty of time not spent in the car between trips, and to be in the car right as my post-lunch coma hit so I could get a few more hours of sleep. Unfortunately, we left at 3 because people don’t trust me when I said I had my reasons for leaving at 2, so I drove to get us there fast enough to have a shot at seeing tip-off. We wen
You know what, screw it. I just spent a paragraph explaining why I was upset when we left at 3 instead of 2, and we haven’t even made it onto the road yet. I’m just going to try to give you the moments that stand out the most to me in the blur that this weekend has become. As you may have come to realize, I am not the writer that gives you accurate game breakdowns. I know two things about the NBA: that I love the Grizzlies, and that I like and understand the college game better. I apologize if this isn’t what you were looking for from me, but I have an absolute advantage in long, rambling, somewhat mean-spirited posts, while LJ, Owen, and every one of the other contributors have comparative advantages on material that is pertinent, so I write this fluff that hopefully is somewhat entertaining and a bit of a change-of-pace for the blog.
I remember very little about the game on Friday night other than the Grizzlies clearly just didn’t care at all about the game. The scalpers were out of tickets by the time we got there(Edwards fault), so we paid 20 dollars for tickets at the box-office that were approximately 100 rows behind and 50 feet higher above the ground than where our 20 dollar tickets in Minneapolis were. I was flummoxed, as I always am when sitting in one of the 200-sections, to have my ticket scrupulously checked while I was being looked over like I was a suspect of armed robbery. Seriously Grizzlies, what the hell? Why do you care? I’m obviously not trying to sneak into a seat that’s better than the one I have a ticket for. Why would I pick the very top corner of the arena to sit in? And if I did, why would it matter? There are 10-15 fans in each of those 300ish seat sections. I paid for a ticket for the game and showed up when my team decided not to, why the heck am I treated like a criminal? You’ll understand better why that stands out to me when I talk about the Target Center later.
After we lost to the Rockets, I heard a small amount of trash talk from the Houston guys that we went to the game with, and of that small amount that we heard, most of it came from the smallest guy that we went to the game with. I’ll take a moment now to mount some personal attacks against him, because clearly the Rockets deserved to win that game and there’s nothing insulting to say about them. Bret, your nickname is Bret “Dingle” Berie, you look exactly like Bobby Hill, and you’re a ginger. Even though your team beat my team and now has a better record, you cannot talk crap about anything to anyone, ever. That was a little bit too mean, I’m sorry for that, I was joking about almost everything, but definitely not about the Bobby Hill part, here’s a side-by-side of the two:
As we got in the car to head immediately back to Nashville, I was already shrugging that game off. After all, if the players weren’t going to care about it, why should I? Besides, I had an epic road trip to look forward to, and I wasn’t even considering a possible loss to the T-wolves. I was filled with hope, not despair, the thought of bouncing back, not the idea of a growing losing streak, of course, that was all completely mistaken, but I was happy at the time. After all, before the game we were treated to Bar-B-Que Shop by the Montagues, which is easily my favorite sandwich in the city, and we were listening to Hot 107.1 on the drive back. At worst, the food and the music balanced the scales with the terrible display of basketball that my Grizzlies put forth and made the first leg of the trip a wash.
Driving back to Nashville, I decided that, nevermind the detailed driving schedule that I had made to keep Jumpstop, Michael, and me safe during the 30 hours that we would spend on the road to and from Minnesota, I was just going to drive until I couldn’t drive anymore. I was feeling it. Dropped off at our dorm, friends that Jumpstop and I saw as we prepared to leave offered words of encouragement and astonishment, while one or two said something nice about grizzlife.com. This trip was going to be extremely successful; I had a great feeling about it. As we picked up Michael over at the freshman dorms, we had another omen as a random guy that we asked to take our picture before we headed out told us that our going to Minnesota was “awesome” and that he really liked Mayo and Gasol.
We hopped on the road at 2 AM blaring rap and wide-awake with excitement. Ross fixed this by taking a Tylenol PM and passing out in the backseat so that he would be ready to drive by the time that I started to fade. With Michael riding shotgun and me driving, we were making incredible time, with no cops around at
Crap, I started giving a blow-by-blow again. Sorry. I’m out of it.
What I got out of my first leg of the drive is that snow is scary, and Indiana just sucks to drive through in general. Going 40 miles an hour over a couple inches of accumulation on the road, I feel like I almost got blown off the interstate and into a snow bank about 10 times an hour.
I kept driving until Gary, Indiana, finally giving up the wheel to Ross after fearing for my life on the stretch of I-65 near West-Lafayette as it was covered in black ice and subject to the most inexplicably consistent wind gusts that I have ever seen while driving.
I almost directed us to Milwaukee instead of Madison when going through Chicago, which would have added a couple hours to an already lengthy trip. Never trust me when I give you directions. I get lost everywhere I go, luckily, Michael and Ross already know this and distrust everything I say with a map in front of me, so were able to suffer only a 15 minute detour and quickly correct my mistake.
Craving Waffle House at this point, which was 10 AM while driving through the Chicago-land area, we began to suspect that there were no more Waffle Houses this far North. Our suspicions were confirmed when an i-phone search yielded no results. Behind seeing the Grizz lose twice and eating my own weight in cookies that my mom gave us for the drive, not eating at a Waffle House was my biggest regret of the trip, especially because we passed somewhere in Kentucky where there were dueling WaHo’s literally directly across the interstate from each other. How large is the demand for waffles and patty melt’s in that state, that two of the exact same restaurant can survive within a stone’s throw of each other? Do they undercut each other’s prices? How pissed was the first Waffle House when the second moved in? Do they try to steal the best employees from each other? Is one for UsucK and one for Loserville fans (I’m a pretty funny guy)?
Somewhere in Wisconsin, I received a phone call from Hank McDowell, one of the voices of the Grizzlies as a radio analyst for the team. He had heard about our journey and put tickets at Will-Call in Minneapolis under my name. Having this done for us really made the trip to a certain extent. People inside the Grizzlies organization knew about us, and while it was from my brother’s friend’s mom, Mrs. June Baber, rather than from reading the blog, it’s meant a lot all the same. We are very thankful and appreciative to Mr. McDowell for his helping us to support the Grizz.
I fell asleep for an hour on the way up. Until 3:30 AM Sunday morning, that would be the only hour of sleep that I got in the 40 or so hours from when I woke up Friday morning to when I quit driving Sunday morning because I mistook a yield sign for a person and took ten times longer than I should have to navigate through a pay-toll outside of Chicago.
We got to the Twin Cities around 5 PM Saturday night, and went straight to the Target Center to see shoot-around and try to get autographs, both of which were successful. We also met up with two other Grizz fans while we were there whom Ross and Michael talked to and learned a fair amount about. I know nothing about them though because I was pretty much mentally exhausted, so I spent my time before the game taking pictures of the shoot-around, getting more caffeine and food to wake me up, and being shocked by how nice all the people in Minnesota were.
Being from the South, I expect everyone living below the Mason-Dixon to be kind and helpful, to exude Southern Hospitality, to represent us well, and, hearing about stereotypes of Northerners, and to a certain extent, seeing evidence of them at school, I expect much less warmth and hospitality from those above the line. Obviously I love all my family that live in Chicago, and they were my exception to that general rule, but I think the Midwest may need to be taken entirely out of that rude Northern stereotype after my experience in Minneapolis (aside: sorry for talking about stereotypes, but they exist, they’re discussed regularly, and they’re stereotypes for a reason. I know that one of them for the South is being ignorant and backwards.). The people that worked at the stadium were incredibly kind and helpful, they believed me when I told them that I had a seat in Section 124(which I did) but had left my ticket at my seats(which I had), and they were just good people. The fans around us laughed at/with us rather than be upset with us for rooting for the Grizz. They talked basketball with us. They were kind and hospitable. Add to that that many of the T-Wolves dancers were classically pretty, not skanky, and the Target Center was a more enjoyable place to watch a game than the Forum.
Unfortunately, both experiences ended in Memphis losses. I still have no idea what happened in the second game. I am utterly confused as to when the Wolves got the lead and where I was when that happened. As I’m falling asleep while typing this, smell like death, have hours of school-work to do, am certain that 90% of what I’ve written is awful, and am sure that 100% of what I would write in the next little bit would just be terrible, I’m going to call this part 1 of a series on our excursion over the weekend. More to come later.
Big Shot Bob
