My '05 Alamo Bowl Trip
***sorry about pics, taken w/ a disposable***
For those of you who don't know, after BuckinMich had won and declined the two tickets donated by TallIndian for the '05 Alamo Bowl, I had acquired the tickets by being the highest bidder on the open auction for those tickets. Here are the events that followed. After the auction concluded, it was arranged that Clarity would send me the tickets through the mail, via UPS air. He sent the tickets out on December 22, in plans of the tickets arriving at my house by the 24th, plenty of time to catch the game on the 29th. Since we, my two brothers and girlfriend, were planning on leaving on the 27th and then driving to the game. Little did I know Mother Nature would reveal her merciless hand. Just as my tickets had reached Louisville, the snowstorm/blizzard of the winter had unleashed its fury. So the 24th came and i didn't have my tickets... No big deal, tomorrow is Christmas and we're not planning on leaving until early afternoon on the 27th. So I obviously don't get my on Christmas. I'm starting to get worried. I call UPS early Monday morning, get my tracking code from Clarity, and find out that my tickets are still in Louisville. Shit. Now the whole trip is in question. I call UPS back, they assure me the tickets are going to be at my house on Tuesday. Ok, we'll take that gamble. If we leave now, i can just have my dad over-night the tickets to our hotel in San Antonio. So monday, the 27th, we leave from Vanlue, Ohio at around 5:00 pm. 20 hours later of nonstop driving, we sleep and drive in shifts, we get to san antonio. The drive was nothing special, crossed the Mississippi in the dark, noticed the "flatness" of Missouri, and took in the open range of Texas. So we get to the hotel, unpack the bags, and call home. No tickets. I'm pissed. I call UPS and bitch them out. Luckily, on the way to our hotel we noticed on a billboard near the Alamodome, that there were still tickets available through Ticketmaster. We have no other choice. We call and get a group of 4 "best available" tickets for 50 bucks a pop. At least we got in, it's now time to drink and eat on the Riverwalk. We get there and do some walking around and we're about ready to get something to eat, when i wanted to go pick up a couple disposable cameras to capture this trip. So we walk to a CVS that was on the Riverwalk, pick up two cameras for me and a cowboy hat for my brother and get in line. Then i saw them... Doug Datish and A.J. Hawk had come in and were two people behind me in line. I hurried up, paid for my cameras, ripped one open and got my picture w/ those two.
I was pumped... good thing i wasn't wearing sweatpants. I never realized how big they were until i got up close to them. I wished them luck and picked up my jaw. My brothers/girlfriend did the same. We were excited the rest of the night looking for more buckeyes to get pictures of. Didn't see anyone else the rest of the night, but did see a lot bottle bottoms... The next day, we just did some sightseeing, the alamo, and some other landmarks..
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v376/Mothra9/alamo/sightseeing.jpg
I think we look alike. I don't know. From left to right; middle brother, youngest brother, me, girlfriend. We went to the pepper rally next, then back to the hotel, threw some down and left for the game. We were going to pick up our tickets outside of the stadium. Here's a pic of the dome from our car.
So we get to the dome and go pick up our tickets. Section BB. Alright, we're probably 28 rows up, not bad. Get inside the dome and try to find out where we're going to sit. Talk to the usher and he tells us that we're two rows from the field! We, collectively, about crapped our pants. One problem though, since there was going to be an ESPN camera in our line of sight the whole game we've got to move to the other side of the dome and sit in pokes' cheering section, but still two rows from the field. ESPN bastards! So, in a sea of orange, there is a sprinkle of scarlet of gray. Here are some shots before the game...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v376/Mothra9/alamo/start.jpg
and here are some during the game...
opening kick...
ted ginn run...
touchdown!
After the game celebrations...
JT!
The game was awesome, but what happened afterwards was incredible...
Here are my two brothers w/ ryan hamby..
Here's a pic of Mike Kudla w/ the Alamo Bowl trophy... notice my hand is on the trophy...
and here's the best one, in my opinion, of the bunch.... so we're waiting after the game trying our hardest to coax some of the buckeyes over and here comes you know who... NUUUUUUGE! We call for him and comes over and jump in the stands, practically on our laps, ala green bay style... Notice the excitement in our faces...
I got this picture blown up and when mike nugent came to findlay for an autograph session, where i met OilerBuck, i had him sign two copies of it... i need to frame those. Anyways, he remembered taking that picture and when i showed him the picture of my touching the alamo bowl trophy he said that was closer then he got to it. He told me that he never even got to see it, so i thought that was pretty cool. Anyways, what's a great time in Texas w/out an authentic Mexican meal. O LAY! i'll be posting more pictures from the trip in this thread shortly.