Alright, a few days late (had to fly back to Pittsburgh and finally get onto Blogger).
In keeping with the gangsta feel of my pre-trip post, I’m pleased to relay that the planes I flew to and from Phoenix on (with Northwest) all had “NWA” painted in big letters.
As for the service, I did make it to and from Phoenix in one piece, so here’s to NWA for that. Otherwise, too many connections; the stewardesses were not nearly hot enough (one from Pittsburgh-Detroit-Milwaukee was cute, but the others were middle aged women or screamingly gay men). Of all the airports I visited, I’d say Phoenix sucked the most – no people movers (there were three different terminals, though, so maybe the others had better amenities). Minneapolis-St. Paul was the largest, Detroit was so-so, but Milwaukee had the best looking women by far. Who would have thought? Milwaukee? I don’t know what it was: maybe it was Wisconsin students flying in and out – either way, tons of good looking 17-34 women. Even the moms were attractive – the town could be renamed MILF-waukee! They also have a Miller beer pub there, as well as a General Billy Mitchell museum. I spent over 5 hours in that airport, drinking some kind of Red Lager (Lienenfleguel-von-farhfergnugen or something?) which was very good, and watching the hotties walk by.
Anyway, I finally got to Arizona around 6pm Friday, December 31. My buddy Mike, who I went to both HS and Pitt with, and who painted Mountaineer Field in whiskey spiked vomit back in 1997 (missing the great 4th and 17 OT), arrived earlier that morning and picked me up in his pimpin’ Chrysler rental car. Sadly, it was stuck on high beams, so we wisely chose to take a cab to new year’s eve celebrations – nothing says “pull me over, I’m drunk!” like driving around town with high beams. Mike had been up to the Pitt HQ hotel (the Princess resort – very swanky) for the afternoon gathering, and picked up some free Pitt stuff – a ticket holder, a button that said “boot the Utes!” and some Pitt mini towels.
We called up one of our law-student interns who attended ASU as an udergrad, and we met him and his crew in Old Town Scottsdale for the block party there. Good fun, but too many dudes. I was still on Eastern time, so I enjoyed drinking until 4am EST. The weather was much cooler than expected – we could see our breath at the block party, and I caught a little bit of a cold.
The game was at 6:30pm MST (8:30pm EST), so we headed to Tempe and Mill Avenue for some pre-game fun. The weather was 60’s and beautiful. We ate some Mexican, drank some beer, and headed towards the north end of the stadium for the Alumni association pre-game. We had two extra tickets, at $85 in the upper level 35 yard line – the best offer we got was $15 for both. Utah fans, clad in red, were everywhere, and very few Pitt fans were in sight.
We had to completely circumnavigate the stadium and the surrounding hillsides (it is so close to those two “Buttes”, or hills, that you see on TV that you can’t walk between the butte and the stadium to get to the other side. After that long walk, we finally entered the Worlds Largest College Football Party, and quickly found the Pitt section. This is the only time we didn’t feel completely outnumbered the entire time we were in Tempe. We watched the Rose Bowl, drank some more beer, and watched the band march in and play some Pitt songs. We met a lot of Pitt fans, and everyone was very friendly – I guess safety in numbers breeds camaraderie.
The lines were so long at the Utah tent for food they started coming to our area – a few good natured exchanges took place, with the occasional Mormon joke – all in good fun. They were giving away blue and gold beads (mini footballs, actually) and more of those towels – they ran out of beads, but we loaded up on towels. Then, after drinking several beers courtesy of our new friends (we met some business people and a young lady named Kerry, a recent Pitt grad who lives in LA, who’s father is from Mike and I’s hometown), we departed for the long walk back around to the other side of the stadium – the only way in!
To our dismay, we were corralled into a path that prevented us from getting to the other side of the stadium before we had to present our tickets – thus we had to eat the two extra $85 tickets. That made us want to drink – and drink we did! Beer was sold at the stadium, and the Utah fans seemed to only want to buy food and soft drinks.
Mike and I went up to our four seats in section 204, while Kerry went down to section 7 – her aunt is on the Board of Trustees and got her tickets at the 50 yard line, sitting a few seats down from Nordenberg. Our seats were good, however – 35yd line bleachers with backs. [Our law-student intern and his friends bought $175 club seats for $30 a piece – booze, food – everything but a complementary hand job. I was pissed!] Still, we were in a relatively pro-Pitt section (about 60% to 70% for Pitt), which was nice considering about 90% of the rest of the stadium was in red!
The Utah fans in front of us were cool. Two young late 20’s early 30’s couples, with one wife possessing two ample breasts bursting through a tight red sweater, complete with one black Utah pin over each nipple. Very nice. The guys were knowlegable about football, and we spoke of the power of the porn-stash (they were skeptical of Wannstedt’s hiring, but we set them straight).
Larry Fitzgerald was the honorary Pitt captain, and the Pitt band played well – Utah fans near us had band-envy (their band must suck ass).
The game: sucked. Pitt did not have an answer for the Utah offense, and Alex Smith was amazing. They could run, pass, and always seemed to get the key first downs. I think they punted once! I don’t remember Pitt turning the ball over at all – it was just that Utah drove the field. No defensive adjustments – what could they possibly do? I blame Rhodes a little, but Utah had better athletes making better plays.
Pitt’s offense was offensive, and in a bad way. Palko was running for his life the whole game. No adjustments by Harris – no extra fullback or TE to pick up blitzes, no quick shuffles to thwart the blitzing linebackers, and no running game whatsoever. And what the hell did Harris try that field goal for?
I’m not trying to shock anyone, but Mike and I actually left the game early. Yes, you read that correctly. I was too disgusted to watch anymore, and there were several hours of drinking ahead of us. We met Kerry and some of her friends who didn’t bother with the game out in a nightclub in Scottsdale. Drinks were expensive, but VERY strong. There were a couple of former Pitt players at the club as well – I recognized their names, but I can’t remember them. We drank to 4am EST, drove back to the hotel (yes, drove with the high beams on), and I promptly passed out on the lazy-boy chair.
I awoke at 8am MST the next day to hear Mike talking to his kids on the phone in the next room. My head…the pain! I had forgotten how my old room mate was a morning person, and it was really pissing me off. Anyway, I slept until lunch time, and Mike and I hit a really bad strip club on Scottsdale Road, Babes. Not all nude, no VIP section, no food, no Canadian style lap dances – we were the only two patrons in the bar, which made it kind of creepy. The two dancers were so-so, both too skinny and small breasted (the hostess was nice, and cute). There, I drank the first non-alcoholic beverage of the entire weekend – I went all of Friday and Saturday without ingesting a single pop, glass of water or juice that wasn’t mixed with booze.
Mike took his rental car to the airport, flew back to Dallas Sunday evening, and I just walked around near the hotel, and got some good local Mexican food. On Monday it rained like hell, and it caused flight delays at the airport. All in all, a fun trip. I regret not hitting an Indian casino, but I probably would have lost too much money anyway. I highly recommend going to a bowl game – just one closer to home so it isn’t such an expensive trip.
