Day 3 - 10/6/07
Unfortunately, after a late-night game, we had to wake up early 
and drive a couple of hours to Bloomington, Indiana for the Minnesota at Indiana game at noon. On our way we waited in one McD's drive-thru (pic) for several minutes, drove away and looked at the line in two others before we found a fourth with no line. This is only important, because they were only serving breakfast for another 10 minutes. It took us a little under 2 hours to get to Bloomington and the last 45 minutes was on a windy two lane highway. There was no scarcity of flea markets or opry houses along the way. When we were almost there, I asked my nephew, Jaxon if he had seen the camel a ways back. He asked me, "Was it peeing?" "No." "That's not interesting then." Now I know, a camel is only interesting to Jaxon if it is peeing. We made it to the stadium right at kick off (pic), and it was a little bit different atmosphere. Less people and a much quieter, calmer crowd. Indiana is having a great year at 5-1, and 2-1 in the Big Ten, but the place, even with a conference rival in town, was not close to sold out. Kellen Lewis, Indiana's quarterback, is amazing, very athletic and accurate thrower (pic). During the game, a commercial was played for the Big Ten Network, and the crowd booed. It made us laugh since the Big Ten and Mountain West fans are having similar problems with their ability to get games on TV. (Both conferences have signed contracts with their TV networks for exclusive distribution on either cable or satellite, and they can’t come to terms to distribute it on the opposite form.) We did ask the fans sitting in front of us, what a 'Hoosier' was…We left the game without an answer! After the game we stood in the exits and handed out ZipCodeSports post cards, around 100. We were very tired from sitting in the 90 degree and 90% humidity for 4 hours. Once we got the sicky Bruce to bed, Wayne and I took Jaxon to experience White Castle sliders. We forgot our camera, but he made some great faces as he choked down 2 of them. Sliders at 9:30pm, nothing better. Oh, I did some research and the Indiana University website had this answer for the term Hoosier, I will not comment.
Day 4 - 10/7/07
Since the Colts played the late Sunday afternoon game,
we again slept in. We walked around downtown Indianapolis (pic) for a little while and ate at BadaBoomz (pic), it had great food and atmosphere. The Colts are moving to a new stadium soon, but I didn’t think the RCA Dome looked that old and thought it was a fairly nice stadium. We were 3 rows from the top and the view was still great (pic). The new stadium is huge and from the brochure we saw in the game program will be very, very nice. This is only my second pro football game, the other being a Arizona Cardinal game at Sun Devil stadium, but I could not believe how many jersey’s were being worn (pic). I would guess that at least 80% of the people (men, women and children) had a jersey on. Watching Manning pick apart and destroy the Tampa Bay defense was amazing. He takes the entire play clock to figure out the defensive setup and positions and it seems that he knows exactly where he is going, to exploit the defense, when he finally snaps the ball. The game was completely dominated by the Colts. After the game we all stood outside of the stadium and handed out ZipCodeSports post cards, around 250. We left the game and drove to Cincy.
Day 5 - 10/8/07
Since we all booked Super Saver flights, we had to get out of bed way too early. Another uneventful flight, until we landed and were informed that there was a minor medical emergency and paramedics will need to board the plane and take care of it, before we can deplane. I always think this is funny, not because someone is sick, but because everyone on the plane turns to see who the sick person is. They are already embarrassed and self-conscience about the experience, why should we heap on some anxiety by staring. Great weekend, great football and a great way to have a tax deductible business trip.
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