A-Day Disaster

Apr 26th, 2007 by Andrea in Random

What do you get when you combine the desire to spend time with your parents with a weekend getaway to a small town and 92,000 people converging on an even smaller town to worship the new coach of the University of Alabama football team?

  • The knowledge that 72 is not the same as Alt 72…
  • And that just because you can hear the television changing channels next door doesn’t mean there’s anyone staying in that room.
  • Roseanne Cash, the “celebrity”, secretly in the room next door with a blaring TV
  • A pastry from the continental breakfast that I needed a knife to cut.
  • The knowledge that 1.5 hours is not enough time to go 20 miles
  • 20 miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic on a Saturday in the spring
  • A 6 block walk to a very confusing the stadium
  • A brief climb up a never-ending spiral ramp to section BB that can only be accessed from the ground, which we realize as we wave to my parents down below
  • A brisk walk back down the spiral ramp to be told by the policeman guarding the gate that we can’t leave
  • An almost-argument with a policeman about why we should be allowed to leave and then, being told we can’t come back in when we finally find the right gate
  • A leisurely rest in BB next to my parents for about 20 minutes (1 abbreviated scrimmage quarter) and $7 worth of bottled water, followed by hearing my dad say, let’s go ahead and leave so that we can “beat the crowd”
  • An hour and a half in the car with Harry and my mom, wondering if my dad and his friends have fallen off the face of the earth because they’ve been trying to get out of the parking lot along with 91,997 other people and 66-year-old men don’t believe in cell phones.

And finally, learning the moral(s) of the story: Tuscaloosa is too small of a town to sustain a crowd of 92,000 people AND Harry is a very patient man.

(For a boy version of this story, see soulinprocess.com.)

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