Aloha Huskies

As expected (at least by me, considering the rest of the season) the Huskies lost. I was prepared for this, and don't mind losing when you're outplayed, but when you get screwed by bad calls, I am less pleased.

But that's the short of the story, the rest of the story begins now...

We met up with about 20 of Amy's friends in 6 cars in the parking lot of an old Costco near Aloha Stadium to carpool over to the stadium for tailgating around 6 hours before the game started. Tailgating is hard work. Fortunately, they were all fully prepared with plenty of food and drink and it was a good time. Once we finally got situated in the stadium parking lot, it was more like 4 hours to game time, which wasn't so bad. I was pretty impressed with the Hawaii tailgaters, though I must admit it was a bit of a step below the supreme tailgating that the fans at Husky Stadium provide every week.

Fast forward to game time, we made our way into the stadium and found our seats. I had gotten my tickets through the UW so had pretty good seats in the 3rd row in the upper deck right on the goal line, though most of Amy's friends had tickets in various sections in the lower deck of the end zone. I must say, it was a refreshing change to actually see the game from above, it was amazing how much you can actually see the plays and what's happening. I've become so used to watching games from the bottom 10 rows or so of every stadium, which usually involves watching the games on the big screen, rather than the actual players on the field. The nice thing was that Aloha Stadium only holds 50,000, and the upper deck isn't nearly as high as, say, Husky Stadium, so our seats were remarkably close to the field and easy to see what was going on. Added advantage was the overhang over the upper deck, which just stretched to about the 2nd row. Thank goodness for that, as at the end of the first half the skies opened up with a brief downpour, which we observed from our safe and dry seats.

The game itself needs no further commentary. After an exciting and promising 21-0 first quarter score, things made their way back downhill and the referees failed to be of any assistance (at least not to the Dawgs).

After the game we went to a local sports bar back near Waikiki and got some food before everyone basically was falling asleep and headed back home. I think I made it to bed by somewhere close to 2am, and managed to sleep until about 11:30am.

Sunday was a bit more relaxed, as I decided to go off on my own and do some sightseeing and drove up Tantalus Drive as high as I could go above Honolulu. There'll be some pictures sooner or later when I get them posted. I also walked down to the beach and wandered around Waikiki, though wasn't too impressed with it all. It was still nice, when I wasn't caught in the occasional downpour.

Tonight for dinner, about 10 of us went to a Japanese-style barbeque where you cook your own food at the table and such. It was pretty fun, though I must say a bit of a novelty and far too much work just to eat. :) However, it was darn tasty.

After that the real excitement happened as we went to a local karaoke bar. It is times like this when my sister makes me proud. So this bar is obviously a hangout for the locals, and Amy decides that she's going to win them over by singing a Hawaiian song. She proceeds to sing (very well, I might add) some Hawaiian favorite, and indeed wins over the crows with quite a glowing response. It is at this point she screams out a "Go Huskies!" immediately negating everything she had just achieved. She was instantly booed and heckled. That's my sister. It took her at least another half hour to work over the locals and convince them she wasn't so bad. :) She did a good job, but all of us wouldn't let her off the hook as easily as they did. It was a classic moment.

I proceeded to be the designated driver for three inebriated and loud fools, one of whom was my sister, back to the hotel, where they wandered over next door to continue celebrating the last night here. I had had enough and now am here relaxing and catching up on some blogging. Tomorrow we head home... and it's about time to leave the world of vacation, but I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to return to the real world of work. More on that later.