Okay, Ingrid says I need to blog about our trip to Iowa City last weekend. And if Ingrid says I need to do it, then clearly I need to do it.
Last weekend Will and I met my parents and my aunt in Iowa City where my sister and Ben and my cousin Chad already were.
The football game, mercifully, was at 2:30 p.m., so we didn’t have to get up too early to start tailgating.
[Flashback: last year my birthday was on a Friday. My sister called me and we talked for a while. There was a big game the next day, I believe at 11:00.
A:You'll have to get up pretty early to start partying before the game, right? (I was thinking maybe around 9:00.)
I:Yep. We'll be drinking by 6:30. (very matter-of-factly, as if this is a perfectly rational thing to say)
A: !!
I: ...
A: Okay, well, then, I guess I'd better let you go.
So now you should have some idea of the world we entered when we got to Iowa City on Friday.]
As I said, we thankfully did not have to start drinking at 6:30. Ingrid’s plan was to start tailgating at 9:00. She already had a space staked out in a popular tailgating parking lot that is conveniently across the street from her apartment. I asked her if there would be breakfast food at the tailgate. She said there would be burgers and hot dogs. And beer.
So, my parents and my aunt and Will and I decided to grab some real breakfast (well, okay, muffins and coffee) and hit the tailgate a little late, around 10:00. True, that left us only 4.5 hours to sit around and wait for the game to start. Happily, it was a beautiful day (70 degrees on Nov. 7th!), and we had a great time.
The only downside to our tailgating was the smoke. There was this guy who had his tailgating gear set up right next to ours. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but rather than a simple portable grill (like the one we had and like the ones the other 1000 people in the parking lot had) Smoke Man had brought along one of those portable firepits in which one burns one’s sticks and leaves. He had brought along sticks, leaves, and even logs, and he insisted on burning them THE WHOLE TIME we were sitting there.
Now, I could see the utility of such a portable fire pit on a day like today, when it is 20 degrees outside. But why Smoke Man needed to make a fire on a 70 degree afternoon I do not know. His fire didn’t seem to do much other than create a surprisingly large volume of thick, white, smoke which billowed in our direction all day long. At one point my mom stood up and started fanning the smoke wildly and obviously, and Smoke Man just looked over and said, “Oh, sorry.” He did not, however, get up and douse the fire.
Our epic struggle with Smoke Man reached its climax when my sister (who was fairly intoxicated by this point), started yelling “Whohoooo! Smoke! I LOVE smoke! YEAH! Thank you SO MUCH for all the SMOKE!!!. WHOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!” (This was perhaps the highlight of my weekend.) Smoke Man didn’t even flinch. Someone suggested (loudly enough for Smoke Man to hear) that we might as well just head over to the bars, since sitting outside wasn’t keeping us safe from lung cancer. Smoke Man piled on another log. Sigh.
So we spent the rest of the day smelling like a fire pit. But the Hawkeyes won, even if (as both Will and Ing have already pointed out) it was because they didn’t make quite as many major mistakes as Purdue did. And all-in-all, it was an excellent trip to the Great State of Iowa.
