The Longest Day

Warning: Very long blog post ahead. I hope I don't bore you!


Yesterday we went with our friends, and all their friends, to the Iowa vs. Arizona game in Tucson. Our friend coordinated the bus load of 45 people (most of them Iowa fans) along with the tailgate party. This ended up being a very long day since Andy and I began the day at 6am and ended the day at 3:30am on Sunday morning. Here is what made it the longest day.

6am - 8:30am: The alarm goes off and we have 30 minutes to get ready before we have to leave the house. In this time I had to do my hair, makeup and somehow wake-up. Andy was in charge of getting the dogs ready to spend the day and night at Born to Run. Surprisingly we left on time at 6:30am to drive 45 minutes to the dog place. After dropping the dogs off we made a pit stop at the Campbell's to fill Andy's car with some of the tailgate items that won't fit in their car. Following our last minute pit stop we went to two different Fry's (which is a grocery store) to purchase one of those folding "camping" chairs for us to take for the tailgate. To continue the morning craziness we stopped at Dunkin' Donuts to pick up breakfast for Andy, myself and our friend Kelly. We were heading to Kelly's house since it is close to the bus pick-up place at noon and we did not want to drive 45 minutes backup north to hang out for two hours and then drive back down. Instead we picked up breakfast to head to Kelly's house. He was expecting us by 8am, but with the extra pit stops it was more like 8:30am.

8:30am - 11:30am: We arrived at Kelly's with a dozen donuts and our Gatorade to hydrate ourselves for the upcoming sweat-fest in Tucson. The guys were watching football immediately so after my breakfast I decided to go get my toes done and to leave the boys to their football watching. Here is the picture of my toes with a cute design.


11:30am - 2:30pm: The bus pick-up location was at my work in Tempe and the bus was planning on leave at noon. The plan was to load the bus from 11:30am - noon, so we arrived right on time to load the items we brought (our cornhole set, a folding table, pop-up tent and a cooler) and the items we picked up at the Campbell's bright and early this morning. Sometime after noon we hit the road with the bus stocked with beer, liquor and mixers.

Andy and I on the bus.


Here is our friend Amber playing bartender. I must say, if teaching doesn't work out for her she has a future in bartending.


2:30pm - 7:30pm: We have arrived at the University of Arizona and everyone from the bus worked together to get it unloaded and our tailgate area all setup. We had a great setup with three pop-up tents, plenty of chairs, food, beer, liquor and cornhole. About an hour into the tailgate party some drunken idiot (Iowa fan) jumped on our Badger cornhole boards and broke it and this was because earlier the badgers beat ASU. Ok, who would damage someone's property just because their football team didn't win? What a jerk! Anyway, Andy and I didn't see this happen, but our friends did. All I know is Amber looked pretty pissed and was calling Andy over (ok, she more or less demanded him to come over). I saw this and figured something was wrong by the look on her face and she was pointing towards the cornhole setup. She briefly explained what happened. I was ready to let them have it, but we get over there and the guys-friends-girlfriend was mortified this happened and handed Andy money to pay for the board. If she didn't look so mortified and sorry I wouldn't have let it go, but I felt bad for her. She grabbed him and made him come back to apologize, but Andy told him to get lost. Amber did the same thing. I heard later from another friend on the bus that Amber yelled at them when it happened, so I was happy to hear that since I didn't get the job done. I am not upset about the money the boards cost, but that I had them custom made and it was difficult to get these boards. I am just hoping that I can contact that guy from three years ago and have him make me one board so that it matches our other board. Here is a pic of the damage.


For the tailgate at UofA there was a roaming Mariachi band that would stop at parties to get tips. I thought this was odd because it's not like it was the school marching band that was touring through the tailgate parties like they do in WI. I have a pic below of the Mariachi band. I would also like to point out that during this time it was about 105 degrees all afternoon and it was borderline miserable. I was sweating so bad that I could feel the giant sweat beads rolling down my back...super gross. My clothes ended up being 100% moist of sweat by the time we even headed to the game.


7:30pm - Midnight: This was game time and the sun has set so it's not a blazing 105 degrees anymore and there is a slight breeze. We walk to the stadium and since our seats are the second row from the back on the upper level we had to hike up the winding ramp. It was quite the workout and I was glad to finally reach the second level, but then I realized the workout wasn't over. We had to climb tiny stairs to row 40! By the time we reached our row we were out of breath and our legs were shaking. I have never sat in the upper deck before, but it was great! One might think these seats were bad, but with being so high up we had such a cool 95 degree breeze blowing by. I don't think the people down below could feel the "cool" breeze...I bet they were jealous. The stairs were such a workout that you did not want to go to the bathroom or get food because that meant hiking up the tiny stairs again. Here is a photo from our seats.


Midnight - 3:30am: So, we left the game early because Andy was not interested in either team and was more interested in having drinks back at the bus. We chilled back at the bus waiting for the rest of the people before we could take off. I think we finally left sometime between midnight and 12:30am. You would think this would be a long and boring ride, ok it was long, but definitely not boring. Since Iowa lost to Arizona the Iowa fans decided to drown their sorrows in booze and they provided the entertainment for everyone until they passed out. So, when paying for our tickets and the tailgate Amber never said it included entertainment for the ride home as it was so entertaining that she could have charged an entertainment fee on top of the game ticket and tailgate fee. So, we finally got home at 3:20am and were in bed at 3:30am just in time for three hours of sleep before we had to get up to drive down to Gilbert to pick up the dogs.

Yup, yesterday was a very long and sweaty day!