The Big Game

The sports pundits had our Wildcats as 12 point underdogs for this game. The sportswriter for the San Antonio paper suggested Monday that it was really kind of dumb even to play the game, it was such a foregone conclusion. We arrived prepared to be pounded, as we were by Nebraska 8 years ago.

Instead, we were treated to quite a show. The 'cats finally lost in overtime, but not before taking us on a wild ride.

Daddy-Daughter Solidarity

During the Great Period of Uncertainty, before Kate had made her college choice, she would occasionally find herself in cool weather without adequate warm clothing. It seemed that every time this happened, her dad was there to offer his holy Northwestern sweatshirt. Each time, she would don it saying, "remember, a sweatshirt is not a binding obligation!"

Well, now that she has applied and been accepted at Alma Mater, it's probably ok if the matching tattoos are binding...

Pre-game Festivities

Monday evening, we decided to avail ourselves of the pre-game festivities outside of the Alamo dome. It was mostly chicken tacos and football toss games, though the field goal kicky thing was kind of fun.

Brand Awareness

In a nation full of national chains, it's always interesting to see regional takes on products.

As Illinoisans/Indianans for whom the Ozark Mountains are close enough to be sort of taken for granted, it was entertaining to find that apparently, in Texas, they are exotic symbols of purity:




And no, we are not mature enough to fail to be amused by the name of this chain of gas stations:

Hecklers

Rather than play Apples to Apples, Sam and Jim assumed the Statler and Waldorf positions and heckled from above:

The Road to San Anton

As evening came, it was time to set off for San Antonio. With Sam and Bram as added starters, we settled in for the ride:

Cookie

Sam contributed this delicacy to our feast:

Understatement

We are certain that Doug's neighbors appreciated the touch of class our vehicle brought to their neighborhood

Dallas

We rolled into Doug's in Dallas around midnight, where we caught up over pizza.

Sunday, we slept in, enjoyed Brett's famous Sunday Morning Special Breakfast of pancakes, bacon and sausage, and then lazed around watching British soccer followed by the Bears/Vikings/Cowboys debacles. It's sort of a hard year for our crowd to be football fans.

More Water Management

We are still not sure why the shower nozzles were left on, but that appears to have been how our fill-up of the water tank quickly led to the filling of the grey water tank and the soaking of stuff stowed in the shower.

Over lunch, we offered various theories on why our trips together tend to be plagued by inclement weather and assorted technical issues. Linda has a truly impressive collection of travel horror stories, so it might be her personal cloud. But we also note that in each instance of water-on-possessions in this trip, the target has been electronic items owned by Jessica. We are considering offering an iPod to the weather gods, to see if that helps.

Sigh

This is our weather. We are driving the front line.

At 1:30 Central, we were in Sullivan, Missouri, where there were 5 different weather alerts, among them, tornado watch and severe thunderstorm warning.

Experienced midwesterners that we are, we recognized driving rain, orange on the weather map, and the sight of semis pulling over as prime indicators that it was lunch time.

But before we could eat, we had to deal with a skylight which had popped open, and would not close. The intrepid dads decided to drop us at the Applebees (why is it always Applebees?) and circle back to the gas station where they could work this problem under the canopy over the gas pumps.

Glitch

On the road to St. Louis, we noticed that the shower had water in it. This would be no big deal, except that we'd stowed some suitcases in there!

We pulled off to get gas, paper towels, and 1st officer Jim inspected stuff. The greywater tank was showing full on the instrument panel, which is odd because we hadn't produced any grey water yet.

Theorizing that the issue might be having over-filled the water tank, the guys drained it a bit, and the shower drained too. we opened the suitcases and started arranging wet things artfully around the RV. On the road again, Jim checked the manual, which helpfully tells us that while there is instrumentation for the main water tank, it's difficult to tell when the auxiliary water tank is full, but the shower filling with water is a sign that this could be the case.

Thank you ever so much, RV engineers!

At this point, having used up 3 rolls of paper towels, Linda and Val decided it was time to begin the vacation in earnest. Jim mixed up some bacardi and cola, and we raised a toast to the adventure that is bowlmobiling

Settling In

Water management

The first order of business was to fill the water tank. We figured the easiest place to do this would be Jim's office, but the water has been turned off there and the faucets capped. Fortunately, our friends the Haddens came to the rescue, so we could fill our tank.

On the road again

Way back in December of 2000, the Spencers and Bocks took an Epic Journey to the Alamo Bowl to watch Northwestern be pounded by Nebraska. The story of that epic journey is not here, but was enshrined on the web in the pre-blog era at http://www.vcbconsulting.com/bowlmobile.

Today, we make this journey again, and already, it has the makings of an epic.