99.99% fun

Road trips with friends are one of those things that makes life a little more tolerable. I've been on a few, mostly good, some not so good. Yesterday was one of those good ones. It's hard for me to put it in that great category, but it's close.

Brian, Beau and I went to the Illinois/Gonzaga basketball game at the United Center where we met up with a good friend from High School, Bill Roth. We left at 6:00 am and made it to Chicago in record time. And when I say record time, I can't think of anytime I've gotten there faster. By 10:00 we were at the UC and that's after stopping for coffee at the oasis. So far, so good. The United Center is nice, clean and efficient. Really nothing spectacular and in all honestly, a little bland. Not that it's bad, it just wasn't what I was expecting. Well, I guess I didn't know what to expect. My stadium experiences extend to mostly baseball stadiums with a few college arena's sprinkled in. Maybe this is what professional arena's are like.


Anyway, the game started out very bad for Illinois. Down by 20 but battled back to within 8 by half. In the second half they took the lead, and I think at one point were up by 8. It was nice to be surrounded by orange after being subjected to black & gold for so long. Things got tight down the stretch and Illinois ended up losing in overtime by 2. That's where the the .01% of non-fun time comes in. Gonzaga made the go ahead basket with about 11 seconds left and Illinois couldn't answer. Game over.

After the game we ate at Harry Caray's. Decent food, but again, the traffic was a non-issue. We even got a parking space right in front. Unbelievable. Drive home went good and back in Cedar Rapids by 8:00. So, the entire trip lasted 14 hours, 13 hours, 49 seconds of it enjoyable. 11 seconds is all that separated this from being a good trip into a great trip. Oh well, maybe next time.