The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it. -Patrick Young-
so this weekend i took my first football roadtrip since i went to indiana with my family a few years back... we figured that since gatech was in the acc championship game it would be worth the relatively short drive to jacksonville to watch them play. i really hoped they could rise above the disaster that was last week's georgia v. gatech game and really put together a good game for the championship.
i managed to get my mom's van for the trip which worked out great because there were a lot of us going. we started out friday night with me, peters, and the forestners in the van. after a rather eventful drive to savannah (including us spending a lot of time to figure out that you can't get out of the car when it isn't in park thanks to the auto locking doors) and a near peeing-in-the-pants incident thanks to some wild turkey, we made it in about 11 at night only to find an empty house. we just let ourselves in and immediately started playing wii while i gave margaret the grand tour. after the boys got back from buying beer we proceeded to drink a lot of beer and play wii. we realized just how dangerous the game could be when forestner almost took his wife's arm off with an overzealous forehand while playing wii tennis. since we had to be up by 6:30 the next morning for the last leg of our journey we headed to bed around one.
we were up bright an early the next day and out of the house around 7:30am... our group of four was now five since we also had huey in tow. it was a fun drive down to jacksonville and the two hours flew by rather quickly. our number grew by 3 more as we stopped at the airport to grab soon-to-be-mrs.-peters and the ottos on our way to the stadium. a quck stop for beer and ice and we were there by 10:30, ready to drink and cheer our game onto victory...
and that's when the rain started. the cold weather was bad enough, only multiplied by the fact that we were in florida and were expecting much nicer weather, but the rain really sucked. it never really rained, per se... only drizzled. which of course wasn't enough to make us try to find ponchos or really get prepared for a good soaking... but after a few hours of standing in on-and-off constant drizzle you kind of end up wet through anyways. this, along with the fact that they didn't sell any beer in the stadium, was a bit of a downer... but we were determined to cheer on our team to victory!! we chugged beers and headed for the stadium...
the next three hours can only be described as painfully boring to watch. it's bad enough watching your team lose, but having to watch a football game in crappy weather where fieldgoals are the only points... *yawn*. about half way through the game, i was sitting all huddled up against the windy drizzle that was smacking me in the side of the face, leaning over on huey's shoulder and slowly falling asleep as the front half of me got damper and damper. i considered many times standing up and trying to be more active in order to keep myself awake, but realizing it would just make my seat wet and therefore leave me standing up and wet all round the rest of the game kept me down for awhile. eventually we perked up only to leave the stadium disappointed. luckily we had a night of partying in savannh to look forward to, so we tried not to feel too down about it.
savannah also turned out to be cold, but luckily not rainy. we hit a few highlight spots and had a good seafood dinner before deciding around 12:30 we were old and tired and wanted to be in bed, not out dancing and downing shots until 4 in the morning. we got up at a decent time the next day and spent some more time in downtown shopping and stuff before we headed back to atlanta. i drove the whole way back (after getting out of it the entire rest of the weekend) and we listened to christmas music. by the time we got back to atlanta, we were all pretty much done for the weekend... it had been a long one.
did the weekend suck? parts of it. was it worth it? totally. there is nothing better than taking a short roadtrip to get your mind off more mundane things like school... finals... the upcoming holidays... the christmas party... i needed the break. but now real life has come crashing back down on me and i realize that finals start in three days and i'm completely unprepared. christmas party is in two weeks and i still have no idea how many people are planning on coming. my car is still in the shop after almost a week and they have no idea when they'll get in the brake pads for it. and with all this i have christmas coming up... a whole other kind of headache in the big scheme of things.
sometimes i just wish life was more... simplified.
