The Notre Dame JOURNEY

I'm using the term Journey because sometimes an adventure just has a way of defining or "theme-ing" itself.

Since South Bend, Indiana is just over a hundred miles from Chicago, it made financial sense for Roger and I to fly into the Windy City and drive from there. He flew into Atlanta from Tallahassee and I from Orlando, but we had the same flight for ATL to Chicago. His flight from Tally was delayed, so he wound up RUNNING to the gate for our connection. It was funny at the time, but set the stage for a painful aspect of our journey.

I'm very good with directions, but Chicago kicked by butt. What a tangled mess up there! Leaving the airport on a Friday afternoon at 4:30 didn't help, but Roger found a good classic Rock station and one of the first songs we heard was by the group Journey. The song was the 2nd "omen" as our rental car choices were a Kia Optima or Dodge JOURNEY :) Guess which one I chose?

By the way, today (November 22) is my cousin Mark's birthday. Mark and I are tight and I'm sure we would be good friends even if we didn't have the same grandparents and uncles and aunts and stuff. When I called him from Notre Dame yesterday to get the FSU score he told me that his son Shawn was selected to play in the big all star football game that pits Escambia County's finest against the stars from Okaloosa and Santa Rosa. Way to go Shawn and Happy Birthday Mark!

Back to our journey. Being the frugal traveler, I used loyalty points for lodging both nights. First night was in Portage, Indiana. We went to Buffalo Wild Wings (like the in Abeline) and watched the Magic beat the Celtics in Boston. It was a good quiet uneventful evening. That night Roger mentioned that his ankle was sore.

The next morning, I got up and surfed the world wide web for high school playoff scores :) When Roger came down to breakfast he had an awful limp, as the sore ankle much worse. After the ~hour on to South Bend, his ankle was a mess. He did man up, after a few advil and the more we walked around the university, the more it loosened up.

The campus was beautiful and the day was spectacular! As old as Notre Dame is, it did not look run down in any way what so ever. We spent the 3- 4 hours before the game, talking to people, taking pictures and exploring things like the Golden Dome and Touchdown Jesus. We also tasted the local fare (sp?) as the grills were out in force:) People were genuinly nice us, even though I was in billboard level Gator attire, while Roger wore his Bear Bryant - Alabama shirt:)

HALFTIME FOR THIS POST!