By: Andy Gripshover
It's 11:39 PM on Christmas Eve as I type this. In just over 12 hours, it's national championship time. I'm a total ball of nerves right now. So how do we unwind? Relive all the wild and crazy stuff Brian and I got ourselves in to on this trip!
-We left College Park on Wednesday afternoon at about 3:45. We rolled in to our Marriott hotel here in Winston Salem at about 11:45. That's EIGHT HOURS, folks. Boy, did it drag. To be fair, part of it was spent eating dinner at Uno (excellent pizza, fantastic chocolate cake which the picture tells you I enjoyed, absolutely epic and unprintable dinnertime conversation) but a big shout out goes to my friends Mike and Olaolu for texting with me for much of the trip. Unfortunately I won't have that luxury on the trip home but I'll hopefully have a national championship game story to work on. And some celebrating to do. Hopefully.
-Thursday lunch was at Dill Pickle, a very nice little lunch place where I got a fried chicken sandwich, some chips, and an epic cookies and cream slice of cake. It didn't fill me up enough however and I had a massive headache almost all day which prevented too much happy fun times. It was cured by night though and I got to see FlashForward as it aired, which is rare for me because I usually have a Thursday night class. Show was awesome, as usual. Unfortunately, I missed an absolutely epic banquet for the Final Four teams because there was only one ticket and Brian got up earlier than me to claim it (there had better be video of Emma Thomas from this particular evening.) Ah well. I dragged him to Mellow Mushroom though, where I threw down an 11 inch meatlovers pizza. Yes, I ate pizza for dinner two nights in a row. Nice healthy diet I have going on.
-Friday was game day. Silly me nearly made us late and got us mock applause from Missy and Marybeth for being the last ones on the bus. Gotta step my game up tomorrow. You know about the game by now (hopefully) so I won't go in to that. Instead we need to discuss Friday's lunch before the game, which inspired the title.
-Prior to this trip, I only knew "Pho" from Moses Malone's "fo, fo, fo" Sixers in the early 80's. Not anymore. "Pho" is the Vietnamese soup place where I learned to use chopsticks after, well, failing miserably. A little backstory: I am from Carroll County, which is about 40 minutes west of Baltimore and basically lily white. "Pho", to be quite frank, was culture shock. I went in scoffing at $10 for soup...and then I saw the size of the bowl of soup that we got. Holy goodness. It was solid and I can only imagine how epic it would've been if I were sick. And then of course there was the chopsticks. I first used them by holding one in each hand and like converging them together to literally "pick up" the noodles which...did not go well. Then I just followed Brian's lead, which worked a little better. It took me a while to pick up though and I think that in part almost made us late as you read above. I was just on fire on Friday as you can tell.
-Friday dinner was basically Chik-Fil-A that we copped from the media room when we came back with the team for the second half of UVA/UNC. Dressed in jeans and a long sleeve fleece blue shirt with a media pass around my neck, I threw down Chik-Fil-A, a bag of Fritos, a soda, and like four Rice Krispy Treats (not counting the two I had before the press conference after the Maryland game.) Basically, I was the walking stereotype of the lazy sports journalist. That combined with the "Fo" paux from earlier and nearly making us late...my family must be so proud. They'll also be proud of the following.
-Friday night was spent exploring around downtown Winston Salem (no, not an oxymoron, to the disbelief of both Brian and I.) The highlight: we found a place with a pink neon sign that read "GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS" with an arrow. It was called "Harper's Cabaret" and it was like two blocks down from our hotel. Also, it was sandwiched between two dark alleys. We weren't trying to die. We exited stage left very quickly. We ended up getting some snacks from a place called "Kernal and Kustard." I got a hot fudge sundae with caramel and rainbow sprinkles to keep up my ungodly diet, Brian got a North Carolina hot dog that had chili, cheese, hot sauce, coleslaw, relish, and mustard on it.
-Oh and we also discovered that the local CVS closes at 6 PM every night. Winston Salem night life, everybody!
-Went to practice this morning and met the CBS College Sports (which I call CBSCSTV since it used to be CSTV and "CBS College Sports" takes too long to say) broadcasters, who were very nice and very in awe of the Terps. With good reason. Can't tell you too much of what we saw at practice; that's what our broadcast tomorrow is for :) After practice, we came back here and got some lunch at a place called Namo (I guess you could say...*puts on sunglasses a la Caurso from CSI: Miami*...we were finding Namo. YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.) I got an absolutely unreal fried chicken sandwich that was so big that, combined with my fries, basically put me out of commission for the afternoon. BK's pizza also knocked him out as he took a nap for most of the afternoon. Too bad for him, he missed Charlie Weis almost surely losing his job as UConn beat Notre Dame in double overtime. We both saw that crazy LSU/Ole Miss finish though where the Tigers couldn't get the final play off after converting the 4th and 26. Ahh, college football is awesome. Then we prepped, talked with Missy, and went out to dinner (Mellow Mushroom again; I got a chicken parm hoagie, BK got a take home pizza.) Got home in time for the epic Oregon/Arizona finish (again, college football = good) and now I'm writing this.
-And to wrap up: Just now, BK notices that Katie O'Donnell is the "Terp of the Week" on our website (www.wmucsports.com) Without missing a beat, I respond with "shouldn't she be like the Terp of Our Lives?" Kind of sums up the weekend. Hopefully. Go Terps! Bring the 'ship home tomorrow. Take care, everyone.
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