Days 6 and 7: Frank Kush and a little more tush

Good evening from New Mexico, where today's itinerary had to take an unexpected turn toward Albuquerque.  Our original plan was to head up to the Rocky Mountain Showdown between Colorado and Colorado State in Denver, which would have required a 13-hour drive today.  That was quickly derailed when the alarm went off at 3:30am this morning and Matt informed me that he hadn't been to sleep yet.  The big ass cup of caffeine-loaded Coke he drank a couple hours earlier might have had a little to do with that.

Rather than driving bleary-eyed to Denver, we decided to take a day off from the football extravaganza and drive toward our next destination in Norman, OK for tomorrow's game between Oklahoma and Louisiana Tech.  I'm a little behind in my blogging, so this entry will cover yesterday's activities as well as today's.

Yesterday started in Ontario, CA where we hopped on I-10 and headed east toward Phoenix, eventually making our way on Highway 62 toward Joshua Tree National Park.  The route was dotted with solar panels and wind turbines as we approached the park.  Once there, we popped in the requisite CD and made a quick stop at the visitors center, where I made a highly original entry in the visitors journal.  

We then winded our way through the 60 miles of the park, stopping at various points along the way.  The sky was perfectly blue and the trees and rock formations provided a stunning background for all the pictures we snapped along the way.

At this point, Matt and I had been in the car with each other for multiple hours and he was starting to get on my nerves, so I pushed him over a ledge.

He survived, so we made our way through the rest of the park and on to Tempe for that evening's game between Arizona State and Weber State at Sun Devil Stadium.  The field is named for Frank Kush, who was a 5'7" 150-pound all-American defensive lineman at Michigan State from 1950 to 1952 and who later went on to become head coach at ASU.  Here's a picture of Kush during his playing days.  

For comparison sake, here's one of our current defensive lineman.  He's 6'6" and 286 pounds.

We arrived at the stadium just as the game was kicking off, which was punctuated by fireworks and drunk undergrads stumbling to their seats.  The temperature at the 7:30pm kickoff was still in the triple digits, but cooled down to a frigid 98 degrees by 10:30pm.  The game itself wasn't very competitive, but we were able to take advantage of a number of photo ops and managed to find the interest and energy to stay until the final whistle.

We still had hopes of getting to the hotel in time to get enough sleep to make the long drive to Denver the next day, but that was quickly dashed by my 3:30am wake up call courtesy of Matt.

Today's activities started with a trip to the ASU bookstore so I could pick up a pint glass, a call to Stub Hub technical support to sell our tickets to the CSU-CU game, and a hard-hitting interview I conducted with a local news crew at a gas station.  With cameras rolling, the reporter asked me what people should watch out for when traveling over the holiday weekend.  I replied, "Idiot drivers."  He seemed taken aback by my response and asked if there are a lot of them out there.  I replied, "Everyone except me."  End of interview.  I have a history of messing with local news reporters.

Realizing we weren't going to make it to Albuquerque in time to catch the MSU-Jacksonville State game on TV, we instead stopped in Flagstaff, AZ and found a Buffalo Wild Wings in time for kickoff.  We couldn't afford to get any further behind in our schedule, so we got back on the road after the first half and started the 4.5 hour drive to Albuquerque where today ended.  Tomorrow it's on to Norman for the second game of our revised 4-games-in-5-days football extravaganza.

Day 5: Booties, burgers, and backhands

Greetings from Ontario (no, not that Ontario), where the breakfast at this Best Western will be getting a highly positive review on Yelp.  They even had sriracha for the hipsters.

Yes, that's ramen that Matt's eating.  And, yes, he's also drinking a beer.  At 8:30 in the morning.

Yesterday started in Oakland, where we left Tanya's around 10am to make our way down to Chino Hills.  Matt needed to be picked up LAX at 7:30pm (or 9:30pm depending on your perspective), which didn't leave Tanya and I enough time to drive down the coast along Highway 1.  Instead, we got on the monstrosity that is I-5 and headed south through the central valley.  The record drought you've heard about is real.  The entire trip consisted of nothing but dry, dusty fields punctuated by the occasional green tree or weed.  Tanya commented that it looked like a black and white movie except it was brown.

To pass the time, Tanya got me caught up on all the latest pop music and confidently declared it the summer of the booty.  And she was right.  Every song we heard talked about skin tight jeans and shaking hips.  Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj, and some sensitive guy pleading with his woman to stay with him were a few of the ones I remember.  All in all, though, I was much less impressed with this year’s offerings compared to the pop songs Tanya educated me about last summer.

Having given up on the radio, Tanya thumbed through my CD collection and quickly declared all of it to be “white people music.”  Imagine her surprise when she stumbled upon my Stevie Wonder CD.  Imagine her surprise when she learned that he, too, was from Saginaw.  Imagine her skepticism when I tried to convince her that I – tone deaf and rhythmically challenged – taught him everything he knows.

It was sometime after this conversation that she decided to curate an exhibit of me stuffing my face.  I give you all 16 pieces:

I got my revenge by taunting her with my toilet sunglasses, repeatedly putting them in my mouth and reminding her that I haven’t washed them since the unfortunate incident in Wyoming.

It struck us both that despite being on the road for 3 or 4 hours, we still hadn't come across any tourist traps worthy of our attention.  That’s when she consulted http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ and found us this gem of a fiberglass animal, which she perfectly described as a mutant mix of a cow and a sheep.

Time was getting late, so we hopped back into the car and high-tailed it down 5 to 210 on our way to Chino Hills, hitting a few traffic back-ups along the way and seeing a few familiar sites in Pasadena.  We eventually made it to town, where Tanya took me to the courts where she developed her wicked two-handed backhand.  

We then made it to her parents’ house, where I was warmly greeted by her dad and two sisters.  They packed provisions for me for the road, including some Thai sticky rice and mango.  Thank God they didn't offer me any durian. 

We said our goodbyes and I made my way to LAX, where Matt kept me waiting for nearly two hours.  He finally stumbled out onto the curb, loaded his bags into my car Beverly Hillbillies-style, and we made our way to the hotel in Ontario, where the day finally came to an end.

Today’s activities include a drive through Joshua Tree National Park (that's the second boner joke of the trip for those of you keeping score) on the way to our first football game, Weber State vs. Arizona State at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe.  More pictures and half-truths to follow.