I sometimes wonder if I missed out by skipping college. I've always lived my life bound and determined to be a self made man. Proving to myself that I could make it through this life without higher education. I'm happy to say that I've reached most of those goals at this stage in my life and can appropriately say I've lived my life mostly regret free. I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason and my lack of a college experience has helped mold me into the person I am today.
I know for a fact that I'm a fairly different person than who I was at 18, 20 or 22. The new experiences I've enjoyed at 30 I would have hated at that age. I'm more open, friendly and comfortable in my own skin now.
For this adventure my buddy Chris and I traveled to Louisiana to hit up a big time SEC game. One of the things I like to ask new people I meet (or old friends for that matter) is "what's something they've always wanted to do?" This whole opportunity presented itself when I asked Chris that question a couple months back when we were at the Foo Fighters concert. Unlike most everyone I ask who answer travel abroad or skydiving Chris had something unique that he wanted to do. He'd always wanted to attend a college football game in the south. From the moment he told me I was in. Goals like this fit my 30 for 30 perfectly and I wanted to help my friend reach his. I'm not a big college ball fan or huge sports guy in general but this was an adventure with a bunch of things I've never done before.
For starters I've never been to the South and really only as far east as Las Vegas a half a dozen times. Nor did I ever think I'd be in Louisiana for anything but Mardi Gras. Little did I know, I had a whole different type of party to go to. Now this was pretty much a pack everything we can into a weekend trip. But center it around LSU, the football game, the tailgate and the experience. Friday was pretty much a bust losing almost a day to the time change, layovers and traveling 2,500 miles. By the time we got in, it had been 12 hours of traveling and we were pretty spent. First on the agenda; establish base camp and dump our bags off. We jumped in a cab....which by the way can I just say how F'ing dumb, expensive and gross cabs are? Our cab driver was a typical say nothing crabby asshat that got us to our hotel in an overpriced crappy crown vic. Once we got settled we had to take a moment to get a feel for all the things going on over in France. Which is kind of a scary moment when you're out traveling on the road with no definitive way to get home. What other things might happen over the weekend? What if they grounded all aircraft? What if something happened stateside and they declared marshall law while you're in another state? Those are some creepy thoughts to have running through your mind. But we pushed them aside to go get our adventure started. Chris made friends with another Chris on the airplane who told him about a couple big LSU bars that we needed to hit.
First up was Walk Ons, ESPN's #1 rated bar in all the country. We Uber'd over which made a mountain of difference. Our Uber drivers all weekend were awesome, friendly and would give us really cool pointers and tips about were to go and more or less where not to go. All of them were great people with nice clean cars and even the most expensive ride was still half the price of our shitty cab ride. We got dropped off at Walk Ons and well..walked in. The place kinda had a whole Red Robin meets Hooters vibe to it. All of the waitresses were dressed in tight cheerleader outfits and the place was bright with tons of TV's playing a bunch of different sportsball games. The place was pretty busy and after a while trying to order a beer we managed to find a couple spots at the bar. I wasn't really sure of what to expect next but the place felt like an ordinary sports bar to me. I did end up making friends with one guy named Chester who instantly provided that southern hospitality and overall friendliness that people had mentioned. I wish I could convey his accent over a blog. It was awesome, the way I saw it, there was about 3 levels of southern accents and this fella hit a high 3. He invited us to his tailgate telling me he'd get us off to a good start.
We pretty much hung out at the bar and ate dinner there. I had to go for the alligator. This was easily on my top ten best things I've ever eaten list. Maybe it was just how it was prepared, blackened and seasoned. But this was so delicious. You know how lobster is kind of like shrimp if shrimp were a steak? Well alligator taste like chicken if chicken were a steak. I was really amazed at how fantastic it was. The only other southern food we tried was Boudin Balls. These were also very tasty. Spiced pork balled up with rice and red beans then battered and fried to hold together. After some great local beers we pretty much called it a night as we had a big day ahead of us.
The next morning we walked alongside the freeway to get to a waffle house on the side of the interstate. It was a perfect little greasy spoon diner that had good breakfast choices. I got a peanut butter waffle & your standard breakfast staples. I had to go for grits being in the south and all. Have to say though. My dad makes grits waaay better. I thought it was a little funny seeing some of the signs they had hanging up on the walls. No shoes No shirt absolutely no service and no profanity of any kind will be tolerated. Definitely lets you realize you're in a different culture when they have signs like that posted.
After breakfast we got a really nice BMW M3 uber. This driver was really cool too! He ended up giving us some really good pointers about where to get some good LSU gear. He told us that we need to hit up a place called Tigerland after the game and which where the best bars to hang out at. He ended up dropping us off at the sports shop and we both grabbed some pretty cool LSU shirts. It just helps to fit in if you're flying the right flag. If you've ever been to any tailgate you'll know there's a definite almost gang like mentality if you're wearing the wrong colors. I guess we fit in pretty well because we ended up having someone from the away team (Razorbacks) ask us where a good place to sit down and have a drink would be. We both kinda laughed, telling the guy "you couldn't have picked the two worst people to ask; we're from Seattle!"
Before heading into the next big LSU Tiger bar (The Chimes) we decided to go walk the campus and get a lay of the land. These people don't mess around when it comes to their football or tailgating for that matter. Rows and rows of tents each with their own flatscreen TV's and generators. Speakers and lawn games the smell of BBQ around every corner. These people go big. This is like a religion down here. People pretty much camped overnight to get their spots for the tailgate. We walked and walked doing a full loop around the campus until found our way back to The Chimes. However we still weren't quite ready to go in there and decided to try to find Mike the Tiger's cage. LSU has a real Tiger that they keep in a 15,000 sf habitat. We wandered around long enough and with sparse directions from people that we ended up finding it. Alas, there was no tiger in the pen which was a total bust. I was a little bummed out and was looking forward to seeing a big cat once I had heard they had a tiger. We trudged back to The Chimes and walked into a bar that was so packed it was standing room only. Managed to make it through the crowd to be able to get a beer. More hot bartenders, one of which was in a tight little tiger costume with ears, tail and everything. I picked a triple hop IPA which was a poor choice for the first beer of the day. I like a good hoppy beer, but this was hard to swallow. We made a couple of loops through the bar to see if we find the other Chris who invited us to his tailgate. He had mentioned that he'd be there for a little while. But instead we got stuck watching a couple football games on TV and my uncomfortable and awkward level rose substantially. I started to get too deep into my own thoughts and instead of just enjoying the ride I was becoming paranoid about the crowd. There were so many people I just couldn't get comfortable. I didn't like this anymore, I was getting anxious and worked up over nothing and started to shut down. Told Chris that we need to get out of this place and I needed some air. Once we got back onto the street I felt much better. But still didn't have my game face on and needed an energy drink to bring myself back up to a more friendly and sociable demeanor.
We got a text from Chris and managed to make our way over to his tailgate. We were met with arms wide open by four really cool guys in their 40's. Chris, Garret, Scott & Alan. These guys were instantly friendly with us and invited us to help ourselves to their cooler and taught us how to play washers. Washers is basically another version of corn hole except with a flat box, heavy metal washers and three holes with higher points for the further the distance. We played a couple of rounds with our new friends and started to gain an audience. It's a tough game that Chris and I were only able to score about 6 points at the most. We ended up meeting another group of guys doing the same thing we were doing except they were from New York and had a group of 10 dudes. This was their fourth year going down to a SEC game. I have to say that's a pretty cool tradition to get going and it's hard enough putting something together for a couple of guys let alone 10! After a few more drinks the guys invited us to partake in their BBQ as well and wouldn't accept no for an answer. There was so much good stuff I don't even remember what I ate but the brisket was mouth watering delicious. In the middle of us grabbing a bite a police motorcade came though the street. Followed by two tour buses with all the players on them. Not long after came the marching band. Hundreds of brass instruments & drummers followed after the buses walking along the street. We chased them down the street to be able to catch their performance and managed to make it to an opening to see the whole thing go down. It was great! It's been many years since I've seen a marching band parade and it's really great to see how passionate the fans are. This literally reminded me of the Seahawks Super Bowl celebration parade where people just poured into the street following the back end of the procession.
After the parade headed into the stadium we marched back up to our friendly tailgate. I ended up meeting a lovely young lady named Rachel who was equally as friendly as everyone else we've met throughout the day. The guys started to give me a bunch of grief to make sure I got her number before she disappeared into the game. I did, but that was really the end of that whole interaction as it was the wrong number. Who knows if it was intentional or if she accidentally typed a digit incorrectly into my phone. She was super cute, but the same age as my younger brother and 2,500 miles away. Not much you can do to improve those situations. After gathering up a few things we headed down to the stadium with the guys and soon found out that we were sitting in the visitors seats. We thanked our new friends for the hospitality and parted ways.
This stadium was enormous! I guess you really have to be to hold 100 thousand people! The vibe and feel; even some of the architecture reminded me of the Colosseum in Rome. There was a sea of purple and yellow with hardly a bare spot in the house. This was it, the moment our trip had culminated to. The big SEC game to cap off this whole experience. Now, I'm not a huge sports fan..and honestly could care less about college football. But the amount of passion, love and attention this sport brings to people. That's something I can rally behind. These people love their football. The moment for me wasn't really seeing the game itself but it was seeing the people care about their team. What caught me off guard was how good they were to one another. For a group of 100 thousand and from at least what I noticed there was nobody getting rowdy. No one belligerent, no drunken buffoonery, really just sweet caring people enjoying their sport. Wish I could say the same for our fans back home. I've never experienced that passion. People say the 12's are a passionate fanbase, which is as true as you can be for a bunch of bandwagoning transplants. But Baton Rouge has us beat when it comes to respectable. Maybe it's because the stadium didn't serve alcohol? Or maybe it really just is the difference in culture. Either way it was refreshing to see. As for the game itself, the Tigers ended up losing. Maybe that had something to do with everyones demeanor. It was a good game although not a close one and probably one that they should have had especially at a home game.
Once the game was over we made our trek to this fabled Tigerland. I'm not sure how we got there. No real directions just basically following a herd of college kids. It was kinda like the road to Oz. There was only one way to go. We met a couple of girls on the road. They said that they were heading home and not traveling onto Tigerland. From this point on they became known as Caitlin and her cute drunk friend. I had no idea what to expect from Tigerland. The group of guys we hung out with most of the day had never heard of it before. I guess for good reason too. By the we got there it was all too apparent that we were past our expiration date. This place was for kids..immature stupid college kids. All four of the bars had huge tents expanding out into the parking lot and were playing crappy music with obnoxious DJ's doing their thing. Each bar had a cash only cover that we were too smart to fall for. At this point we were too sober to enjoy anything around. Stupid kids having ridiculous drunk conversations. Young girls being caddy talking about their roommates behind their backs. Nothing about this Mcdonalds ball pit of bars was appealing. The night still being young we figured we'd hike back to Walk Ons where at least we knew we'd have a good time. Instead of calling an Uber Chris got a text from Caitlin and her drunk friend. They were at one of the bars in Tigerland looking for us. Chris convinced them to meet up and give us a ride to Walk Ons. We hung out there for a while getting Caitlin's whole mess of a story. She was basically in town checking out the place as a new prospect to move to with her 2 year old son. I guess her baby daddy cheated on her with a stripper and ended up having another kid with the stripper. Really didn't get much more out of her drunk friend except I need to puke faces. Actually never even got her name. After the girls left we stayed a little longer then called it a night. I can't help but imagine it would have been a much different night and story if Rachel gave me the right number. Ah well, its the story we ended up with.
The next day was also our last day in town so we tried to do a bit of sight seeing as well so we grabbed an Uber and went downtown looking for a breakfast spot. Our driver dropped us off in the heart of downtown and it was like a ghost town. Nobody around for blocks, nothing open and it was eerily still. The occasional car would pass by but this felt like the apocalypse. Silent, still and dead to the world. We wandered around trying to find anyplace that was open for breakfast. Deli after closed deli. Spaces and signs for a farmers market that didn't exist. Restaurants and diners all shut down and closed up tight. Nothing going on, no breathing, no activity. One guy road by on an old beach cruiser bicycle which he could have made it a really creepy scenario if he wanted to. We walked a few blocks towards the Mississippi River and wandered down a random street that had cars on it and seemed more inhabited then the rest of downtown. Stumbling onto a sorta fancy hotel, figuring they'd have a concierge that could point us in a direction of some breakfast. We head in and they reveal that they have a breakfast buffet. Without a person in there?! There were maybe two other tables of people in a restaurant that probably sat 200. All fantastic food with a full omelette station to boot.
After eating at our abandoned hotel reminiscent of the Shining. We made our way down to the River making it all this way you've got to at least see one of the biggest rivers in the the country. It was pretty cool; surreal. You hear all kinds of stories like Huck Finn when you're a kid and imagine these types of places in your head. It's kind of neat to actually be there and see it with your own eyes. Taking a moment to just let it all sink in and enjoy a peaceful moment of mediation.
The next stop was anything in a distance to our eyes. Which just so happened to be the old city hall. According to our Uber driver, Mark Twain called it the ugliest building in America. I disagree, this was an amazing old building that looked like a castle. It now served as a museum for political history and was closed, as was the trend for downtown that day. Wandering around the rest of downtown we saw their art museum and some cool old architecture which had that Bourbon Street vibe to it. We walked and walked until we settled in the one area that actually had people. A bustling little town square with huge TV monitors playing the Saints game. Football...yup, that's what brings people together. Some people have church, some have politics....but everyone has football.
What I learned today
Pay the extra money to avoid layovers...it's easy to put a price on your trip before you get there
The South is full of a bunch of loving people that are as far away from the Seattle chill as you can get
Uber is by far the safest and best way to get around in a new city
College bars are for college kids for a reason
Football is America's game
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