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.