It Was My First Sugar Bowl

As mentioned in one of my posts from last week, I unexpectedly took a trip to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl last Thursday. My dad and I had bought four tickets before the teams playing were announced with the hopes of selling them and making a little money. We've had some good luck with this in the past and we were hoping to have some good luck this go around as well. Unfortunately, after listing the tickets on eBay for two weeks and lowering and lowering the price, we came up short and were unable to sell any of our tickets. So, since I had shelled out $400 for my two, I decided to put them to good use rather than sit at home and more or less flush that money down the proverbial toilet.  

I asked Nevin if he would be interested in going with me and he agreed. I guess we have become random road trip partners as of late (first Dallas, and now New Orleans). So, I booked our hotel and made plans for us to leave Thursday morning about 8:00. I first dropped The Pip off at the kennel and then picked Nevin up at his house and we headed south. The mapquest directions said it should take us seven hours to reach the hotel and with two stops, it only took a little over six hours. There were a lot of Alabama fans driving down at the same time so I guess we weren't the only ones who waited to the day of the game to drive down.

 

Not long after arriving, we went down to Bourbon Street to revel in all the crazy. When we got there, there were a ton of people trying to sell tickets and I knew I would be lucky to sell my extra ones. We found a place to eat and had Shrimp Etoufee and Crawfish pies, both were good. Along the way, we ran into and struck up a conversation with a girl who lived in Huntsville. She and her husband and another couple (from Indianapolis) were in town for a few days - but not for the game. We talked to them for a while and long story short, I ended up selling my extra two tickets to the husbands for $50 each, a fraction of what we paid, but I felt like it was about as good as I was going to get considering the amount of tickets on the street. From what I hear, a lot of seats in the upper deck were empty so I'm glad I was able to get what money I did for them.

 

The four of us shared a cab to the Super Dome and walked in and got to our seats about 10 minutes before kickoff - it was rather perfect timing. The Alabama band was just a couple of sections over from us which was great because I do enjoy listening to them play. I felt pretty good when Alabama came out and scored the first touchdown as quick as they did, but that really seemed to be the only highlight of the game. There wasn't much more to cheer about after that. There were a few moments of hope but the defense looked terrible and each time Alabama tried for a field goal, I knew that we would go home with a loss, and that's exactly what happened.

 

After the game, we had to hail a cab in the freezing cold and were turned down by a couple. Finally one cabbie must have taken pity on us and took us to our hotel a whole eight miles away which apparently was a terrible inconvenience for the other guys. I honestly have no idea what time we got back to the hotel, but I'm sure it was after midnight. I don't remember checking the clock; I just washed my face, but on my PJs and called it a night.

The next morning we slept in and finally hit the road about 10:00 a.m. I drove the first two-three hours and then Nevin was kind enough to drive the remainder of the way. Nevin's house was the first stop and then I made it to my home around 5:00 p.m. I was super tired and fell asleep for the night about 6:30 p.m. and slept until the next morning. I guess when you get older, long quick trips will really suck the life out of you; but we had a fun time and I'm glad we were able to go, despite the loss.