Dec. 26, 2008
Blog #14 December 23, 2008
San Antonio has been a blast so far. We landed in Texas on Monday, at about 1 p.m. We headed to the Hyatt Regency where we were greeted by tons of media and a great hotel staff. Everyone has been really nice and it seems from my point of view that everyone we talk to is pulling for Northwestern.
After we got settled in and got our rooms set up, we met in the team room where the Alamo bowl committee introduced themselves to us. Among the members of the staff was Priest Holmes. Priest gave a great speech on what it means to have the opportunity to be able to play in the Alamo Bowl and represent Northwestern in one of Texas' greatest cities, San Antonio. After the Alamo Bowl committee finished, Coach Fitz talked to us on what was expected of us.
After the team meeting we headed out to grab some dinner. San Antonio is a really cool town and we had a great time walking up and down the Riverwalk. The group of people that I went to dinner with consisted of the older offensive linemen and
Mike Dinard. When we were deciding where we wanted to go to dinner, we came up with two musts that the restaurant had to have. First, we wanted the most authentic Mexican food that we could fine. We didn't want to pay twenty dollars for some fancy taco plate. We wanted cheap food where refried beans were plentiful and you had to search through all the slop on your plate just to find the tacos and enchiladas. The second must have was that it had to be relatively cheap. We knew that we were hungry and we knew we would have to get food all week, so it was necessary we went to a place that kept both our appetites and wallets full. We found just the place after a couple of strikeouts. Mexican Manhattan fulfilled all of our needs. Not only was the food exactly what we were looking for, but the food also came in mass amounts. Most of us at the table ordered the Manhattan Royal. This dish consisted of a guacamole salad, tacos, enchiladas, tamales, rice, and beans. It was everything that I wanted. After dinner, we waddled down to the river walk and tried to walk off some of the dinner by checking out the local scene. When we got down to the Riverwalk, a couple of the Chicagoans started complaining about watching the Bears game. We headed into this Irish restaurant called Durty Nellys where they had the Bears game on. Durty Nellys was awesome! It had a great environment. Not only were there unlimited peanuts that you could throw on the floor, but they had two great pianists who knew every song we could throw at them. A bunch of the other upperclassman met up with us there and we joined Keith (the pianist) in singing songs like: Piano Man, Friends in Low Places, Benny and the Jets, and the football team's favorite song, the Northwestern Fight Song. At one point we had the whole establishment singing "Go U Northwestern." A couple of Texas alums tried to get their fight song played, but we tipped Keith more than them so he played our fight song again instead of theirs.
We had practice this morning and it went well. Trinity University was nice enough to lend their facility to us and we really appreciate it. The practice was about an hour long with less emphasis on physicality. Our two intense practices will be tomorrow and Thursday. We went over our game plan and got to run around a little which was good because we had the last two days off. The highlight of practice however was the bus ride home. At one point during the ride home I turned around and saw Kurt Mattes sing "Working for the Weekend" by Loverboy. I couldn't stop laughing. Anyways, I was walking around today and saw some Missouri fans around town sporting their colors. I can't wait to see the Wildcat Nation come take over San Antonio! Thanks for reading. Go Cats!
