Hail to the Victors !!!!

Once again, you have a guest Blogger. I was able to fulfill a dream of mine this past weekend and travel with my Brother up to Ann Arbor, Michigan to watch my favorite team in all the land open their football season.

My family and I lived in Michigan when I was very young, and for some reason, I fell in love with the Wolverines. I've been an avid Michigan fan since I was about 8 years old...watching every game on TV, collecting tons of Michigan memorabilia over the years, spending a lot of the money I made in High School on Michigan clothing, etc. I even remember back in 1991 when Florida State was ranked #1 in the nation and came into Ann Arbor to take on our Wolverines. I was soooo jacked for that game, I made a homemade Michigan flag and when we scored an early Touchdown I literally went and ran around the outside of our house waving the flag and screaming (we lived in Indiana at the time). Michigan ended up losing pretty badly that day.

As a kid I had a couple of chances on family trips, etc. to visit Ann Arbor and even to go inside "The Big House" onetime, but it wasn't during football season. Just so happened the day we were there they were tearing out and replacing old bleachers. I was able to get a piece of an old bleacher and hung it on my wall for many years. To this day I follow the Maize and Blue fanatically, which has been especially painful these past couple of years when then haven't been very good.

Well, finally with a little help from our wives, Troy and I decided it was time to make this trip to our own personal "mecca." We decided to get tickets for the first game of the year against a good team, UCONN. Not only was it the first game of the year but Michigan Stadium (The Big House) has been receiving a 3 year facelift/renovation project. This year was the first year of the "new" renovations and rededication of Michigan Stadium.

The circumstances for us getting to do this were wonderful: 1. Cheap tickets 2. Ridiculously cheap airfare ($47 each way) 3. We stayed with Troy's in-laws in Indy, the Kohls. 4. The Kohl's let us use their vehicle to drive to AA, huge blessing. All of the planets aligned for this trip and....it felt like something special was going to happen on the field as well!!

This was pretty much Christmas for me, or at least how I felt about Christmas as a 5 year old having a hard time sleeping the night before and bursting out of my room at 5am to see what Santa brought. We arrived in Ann Arbor at 10am for a 3:30 kickoff and spent the many hours preceding the game walking around AA, checking out the many different tailgates, walking to downtown AA for lunch, and then getting to watch "The Victors Walk" where the fans line the concourse entering the lockerroom where the players walk from the buses into the stadium. It was awesome!!!!



Pre-Game Tailgaiting



The Pearly Gates??



The Victors Walk - Pregame



The Student Section View from our Seats

The game was amazing and truly couldn't have gone any better. We drove home that night thoroughly enriched from our experience. As I told my dad on the phone earlier that day "Dad, I now have a better understanding of what the Celestial Kingdom will really be like....minus all the alcohol :-).



Final Scoreboard Shot



The End of the Game - Happy Trent


Now, the only question to be answered....When Do I Go Back!!!