Tuesday, January 5th
The alarm on my cell phone started ringing promptly at 7 AM, and I jumped out of bed, eager to get the day started. We had been waiting for this day for almost a month, and finally it was here. I hopped in the shower and started going over last minute details in my head. I sure hope I remembered to pack everything. I really didn’t have any reason to worry—I’d been obsessing over the details of this trip since the second week in December. In fact, Travis had threatened at one point that if I didn’t stop worrying about everything, we weren’t going to go. We would just stay home and watch the game on TV.
It had been the perfect football season to end our time in Tuscaloosa. I had just graduated from nursing school a week after the SEC championship game, and Travis was set to finish up in May with a double major in electrical engineering and physics. This was our last football season as students, and it was one that we would never forget. We had made road trips to Atlanta for the season opener against Virginia Tech, to Oxford for the Ole Miss game, to Auburn for the exciting, last-minute victory in the Iron Bowl, and back to Atlanta for the SEC championship game against Florida. We’d seen every game in person except the Kentucky and Mississippi State games. The only thing that could make the season any better would be beating Texas in the BCS National Championship game in Pasadena in a few days.
We had been presumptuously tossing around the idea of going to Pasadena for the big game all season, before we even knew that Alabama would end the season undefeated. But, moments after the last second ticked off the clock in our huge win over Florida at the Georgia Dome, I knew in my heart that we were going. We couldn’t just stay home and watch it on TV. If we could get tickets, we were going to go. Somehow, some way we would get there.
Thankfully, we were able to get tickets through the University, being 5th year seniors with more hours than most other undergraduate students. The tickets cost $200 each, and we gladly forked over the money. Six of our closest friends were going with us as well—Alan, Mollie, and Jeremy, who went to Northwood with us; Laura, my best friend from nursing school; and Ashley and her husband, Seth. Ashley had been my roommate in Riverside, the dorm I lived in for my first 2 ½ years in Tuscaloosa. It was a great group of friends, and it was going to be a great trip.
I had somehow assumed the role of trip coordinator in the beginning stages of our planning. That was back during finals week, and almost everyone else was busy but me. I had already taken all of my finals and finished up my preceptorship, so I wasn’t cramming for big exams like everyone else. I knew that the most important details were getting the flights and hotel rooms booked, and I spent hours searching Travelocity, Expedia, Priceline, and several other websites for good deals. Shortly after the SEC championship game, prices started skyrocketing. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and most of Wednesday passed, and we still hadn’t booked anything. I was starting to worry, but thankfully, Travis spent most of his afternoon and evening on Wednesday helping me find the best deal. We ended up booking through Travelocity; we would leave from Huntsville and have two connections on the way out there and two connections on the way back. We also made the decision to stay in Long Beach because it seemed to be much cheaper than staying in Los Angeles or Pasadena. The overall cost for the flight and hotel room ended up being $407 per person.
With those big details out of the way, I took care of getting most of the other details planned (i.e. transportation, sightseeing, etc.). A week or so before the trip, I sent out what was practically a novel in email form with details about the trip to everyone in our group. None of us had ever been to the Los Angeles area, and most of us either hadn’t flown at all or at least in several years. With this in mind, I tried to make sure we were all as prepared as we could be since we didn’t really know what we were about to get ourselves into.
So, going over all this and more in my mind, I got ready for the adventure ahead of us. Travis got dressed and ready too, and we packed the last couple of things in our suitcases.
Seth and Ashley showed up to Baugay’s around 9 AM that morning because they were going to leave their car in her driveway and ride with us to the airport. Baugay graciously offered to drive us to the airport since it was only about 10 or 15 minutes from her house. She dropped us off right outside the front door, and we walked inside to find Mollie and her mom waiting on us. Not too long after that, Laura showed up with her fiancé, Clayton, who was dropping her off. Jeremy was right behind them, and we all decided to head upstairs. Travis and I had printed out everyone’s boarding passes on Delta’s website the night before, so we handed them out to everyone that morning. I had tucked them securely in an old green binder along with our flight itinerary, maps, and schedules for the Long Beach bus system and LA Metro system. That binder contained a lot of important information! Alan showed up about 10 or 15 minutes later, and we took our luggage and headed through security. We had all decided to pack everything we were bringing in our carry-on bags since we were supposed to switch planes several times. This proved to be one of the best decisions we made for the whole trip! We took off our shoes, belts, watches, and cell phones and put them on the belt, along with our Ziploc bags full of 3 oz liquids, our backpacks, and our suitcases. We made it through security without any problems, and we headed to Gate 10 where we were supposed to board our flight. The plan was that we would fly to Memphis for a 1 ½ hour layover, hop on a plane to Salt Lake City for a quick 32 minute layover, and then catch one last plane to Long Beach, CA where we were staying. If everything went smoothly, we would arrive in Long Beach around 5:45 PM Pacific Time. The screen at our gate showed that our 11:25 AM flight to Memphis was on time, so we were all excited as we sat in anticipation of what the next few days would hold.
There were several other groups of Alabama fans decked out in crimson and white all sitting in the same area as us. We chatted casually with a group of three women who were going to be on all of our flights that day to Long Beach. We also played cards to the pass the time while we waited. Seth had brought some Rook cards, and he taught me how to play (Ashley and Mollie already knew how!). We also looked through the guide books about Los Angeles that I had bought online and brought with me. As the minutes passed, I got more and more excited, knowing that it wouldn’t be too long before we got on our way.
We hadn’t been sitting there very long before one of us noticed that the screen on the wall nearby was now flashing “Flight Delayed – Further Details Coming Soon!” A few minutes later, the screen showed that instead of us leaving at 11:25 AM, we would now have to wait until 12:50 PM, and we wouldn’t arrive in Memphis until 1:45 PM! This presented a bit of a problem because our flight from Memphis to Salt Lake City was set to leave at 1:35 PM! Inside, I felt like panicking since I’d put so much time and effort into planning the trip. If this flight was delayed, we would miss all of our other flights to get us to Long Beach! I tried to stay calm though, and everyone else in the group was a little worried but not too upset.
Around 11:30 AM, we were told that the flight had been canceled altogether due to mechanical problems with the plane. The Delta representative told us to get in line if we needed assistance getting a new flight. Travis, Alan, Mollie, and Seth went to stand in line, and Laura, Ashley, Jeremy, and I waited patiently with our luggage. We knew it would be hard to get us rerouted to Long Beach since there were so many people flying out there for the game already. The Delta representative was really nice though, and she spent a long time searching for a way to get us out there that day. Since we had 8 people, there weren’t enough seats left on any flight that day going to Los Angeles, Burbank, Ontario, or Long Beach, so she had to go with Plan B. She ended up reserving us seats on a 5:30 PM flight that evening to Washington D.C. She booked us 4 rooms in the Hyatt and gave us $30 each in meal vouchers. From D.C., we were supposed to leave the Ronald Reagan airport at 9 AM Wednesday for a direct flight to LAX, the main airport in Los Angeles. She also put in a written request for us to get free ground transportation from LAX to our hotel since Long Beach is probably 20 miles from that airport. She really took care of us and tried to make up for the inconvenience. I was still disappointed that we wouldn’t have as much time to spend in California, but I didn’t let it bother me too much.
By this time, it was already about 1:30 PM CST, so we decided that it would be best to just hang out for the afternoon in the airport rather than calling around to get someone to come pick us all up and bring us back in a few hours. We moved all our stuff to Gate 8 and spent the afternoon playing cards, reading, and surfing the Internet. At some point that afternoon, I checked on our new flight on the board, and it was now saying that it was delayed until 6:45 PM. I relayed the message on to the rest of the group. At this point, we all started to get a little irritated. Would we ever get out of Huntsville? A little while later, the board showed our flight was delayed until 7:20 PM! Seriously? Maybe we just weren’t meant to go to this game!
Around 4 PM or so, a lady that we’d met earlier in the day came up to Alan, Mollie, and me and asked if someone in our group had lost an earring. I figured it was probably Laura’s or Ashley’s, so I walked down to McAllister’s where they were playing cards with Jeremy, Travis, and Seth to check. It turned out to be Laura’s earring, and she was so glad to get it back!
Not too long after that, another Delta representative came up to them while they were still playing cards and asked, “Are you guys the 8 college students who are flying to D.C. tonight?”
“Yes,” they curiously affirmed.
The lady quickly responded, “Well, your flight is canceled. Hurry, we need to get you on another flight to D.C. tonight!”
So, they all ran back to where Alan, Mollie, and I were sitting with our luggage and told us the news. We gathered up our things and went running down to Gate 1. This flight was supposed to leave at 5:30 PM also, so we didn’t have a lot of time. The woman got us all set up to go, and we didn’t have to wait very long until it was time to board the plane around 5 PM. Finally, we were actually getting on an airplane to go somewhere!
The flight to D.C. only took a couple of hours. Travis and I got to sit together since the plane wasn’t full. I was a little nervous before we took off since I hadn’t flown since 8th grade, but it ended up being a fairly smooth ride! It was actually Laura’s first time to fly ever, and I’m sure she was even more nervous than me. When we landed in D.C., we grabbed our bags and hurried to find something to eat. It was getting close to 9:00 PM EST, and most of the restaurants in the airport were either already closed or about to close. We found a T.G.I. Friday’s that was still open, and we had a great meal using our meal vouchers. I think we each paid $2 of our own money for a tip, and that was all! Travis devoured his wings, fries, and half of my sandwich before most of the group was even finished, which is unusual since he is such a slow eater most of the time! After everyone was finished eating, we headed downstairs and hopped on the shuttle bus to take us to the hotel. There were several pilots already sitting on the bus headed to our same hotel. One of them was an Auburn fan who greeted us with a big “War Eagle!” when we got on the bus. Laura teased him about how Auburn enjoyed “several wins” over Northwestern during the Outback bowl a few days earlier. That pilot and a few of his buddies recommended some restaurants to try while we were in Long Beach.
It only took about 5 minutes to get to the Hyatt from the airport, and before we even went in, we could tell it was going to be one of the nicest hotels we’d ever stayed in. Mollie and I took our papers from the Delta representative at the Huntsville airport up to the desk and gave them to the worker. He barely greeted us or looked us in the eyes at all (I guess because we didn’t fit in there!), and he told us, “No partying allowed here, please.” We laughed and told him that we were planning to go straight to bed since we were so tired from our long day. We took the elevator up to the 8th floor where our rooms were. Travis and I shared a room; Ashley and Seth shared a room; Alan and Jeremy shared a room; and Mollie and Laura shared a room. The rooms were super nice, and they had an awesome view! Travis and I pretty much went straight to bed after watching a little bit of the Georgia Tech/Iowa game on TV. However, it took me FOREVER to fall asleep! I guess I was too amped up from the crazy day we’d had. I think I was awake until at least 1:30 AM, and we were supposed to wake up at 5:45 AM!
Wednesday, January 6th
Needless to say, I didn’t feel very rested when I woke up in the morning. But, excited about the fact that we would finally make it out to the West Coast that day, Travis and I hurried to get ready and meet everyone downstairs in the lobby by 6:50 AM. When everyone was together, with Starbucks coffee in hand, we caught the same shuttle bus back to the airport with most of the same pilot friends we’d met the night before. We made our way to the Delta check-in counter, and the representative told us that we actually needed to go down to the Alaskan Airlines counter since that’s who we would be flying with. So, Mollie and I took our papers up to that counter, and the lady was very nice and helpful. She was able to get us seats on the plane that were all on the same two rows. We were just thankful to be able to get on the plane at all!
After getting our boarding passes, we went through security (which actually wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it might be in the nation’s capital), and then we found a McDonald’s where we all got breakfast. Using our meal vouchers again, Travis and I each bought a chicken biscuit. While we were sitting down eating our breakfast, we saw a security guard walk by carrying a huge semi-automatic rifle! That was something we definitely never saw at the Huntsville airport! Especially in light of the attempted terrorist attack on the plane heading to Detroit a few weeks earlier, I could understand why they were increasing security. After we had all finished eating, we found our departure gate and sat down to wait. Laura worked on a crossword puzzle, Mollie and I snapped pictures, and Ashley and Seth surfed the Internet. Our flight said “ON TIME”, and it actually was! It was such a relief! We took off around 9 AM, and we were scheduled to arrive at LAX at 12:10 PM PST.
Our seats ended up being in the emergency exit rows in the middle of the plane. I sat in between Travis and Mollie on one side of the plane. Alan sat on our same row, but he was across the aisle sitting by a man and his wife. Laura, Ashley, and Seth sat in front of Alan, and Jeremy sat by himself right in front of us. While we were sitting in our seats waiting for the other passengers to board, a Texas fan passed us, heading for her seat in the back of the plane. Mollie commented on her bag being cute, and the girl told Mollie that she liked Mollie’s shirt, but that we better get ready to lose! That was the first smack talk we encountered on the trip, but definitely not the last!
Mollie and I enjoyed talking for the first couple of hours of the flight about what we had been up to over the Christmas holidays, while Travis read some of his book, Technical Analysis (a.k.a. boring stock market information). Alan had taken a Dramamine before the flight, so he slept for several hours. As the time passed, he kept slumping over more and more, and we figured by the time we got to LAX, his head would be resting on the woman’s shoulder beside him. Unfortunately, that never happened, but we got a good laugh just thinking about the possibility! Laura used her neck pillow and eye mask to sleep for a little while also. Towards the end of our flight, Travis, Mollie, Laura, and I played Spades; Laura and I were partners, and we barely ended up winning. The flight took about 5 hours and 45 minutes, so we were definitely ready to get there by the end of it! When we were close to LAX, the pilot came over the intercom and told us that we had about 60 miles to go. We looked out the window, and there were already houses, buildings, parking lots, and cars covering almost every square inch of the ground. Los Angeles is definitely huge!
When we finally landed, we gathered our things and hurried to find somewhere to eat. Even though it was about noon Pacific Time, it was 3 PM Eastern Time, so it had been a long time since breakfast. We followed the signs for a “Food Court”, and the only place to eat was Burger King! None of us were really in the mood for Burger King, so we asked someone where there were more places to eat. The woman told us to go to the International Building. We had no idea that we would actually have to walk outside and down the sidewalk for several minutes to get there! Unlike the 20 degree weather back home though, here it was actually very pleasant outside. It felt like those few spring days in Alabama where the weather is absolutely perfect outside. We wandered inside the International Building, and I don’t think I have ever seen more foreign people in one place in my whole life. It was definitely called the International Building for a reason! (I think that was where people had to check in if they were flying to another country.)
We eventually found the “food court”, which consisted of Mexican fast food, Chinese fast food, and McDonald’s. Great! Why did we walk all this way for that? Since I really didn’t want to eat Mickey D’s twice in one day, Travis and I got in line at the Chinese place. We ordered our Chicken teriyaki bowls, and once again, we paid for our meal with our meal vouchers (I think we had to pay $3 of our own money). There were absolutely no empty tables, so we ended up having to sit on the dirty floor in a corner. We didn’t mind too much though since we were all so hungry. Alan was so hungry by the time we ate that he was feeling lightheaded. While we were sitting there, a Hispanic man rounded the corner with his kids and said something to us in Spanish that none of us understood. Travis replied, “Si”, and Ashley chimed in, “Hola”! We definitely didn’t fit in! In fact, it seemed like we were the foreigners.
A few minutes later, Mollie exclaimed, “There’s Nick Saban!” In a flash, we all turned and looked behind us where she was pointing. Laura was about to jump over the side rail when Mollie added, “Oh, I meant he’s on TV. Sorry!” It was hilarious to see how excited we got at the mere mention of a Nick Saban sighting!
When we finished our late lunch, we grabbed our bags and headed to find the Delta counter, where we were supposed to meet with someone who would hook us up with ground transportation to our hotel. We walked back outside and toward another building that someone had directed us to. We went inside and there were probably 10 different Delta counters with lines full of people. We found one labeled “Special Services,” and we figured that our request was pretty unique, so we hopped in that line. After waiting for a few minutes, we got up to the counter and explained our situation and request to the lady working. Apparently, we weren’t the first people to have this sort of situation, but it had been a long time since she’d dealt with it, so it took a while for her to get it straightened out. She eventually had to make up a fake flight in the computer because she kept getting some error message when she tried to enter it correctly under our canceled flight! At this point we didn’t mind what she did as long as it would get us to our hotel! She finally told us to go outside and look for a Prime Time Shuttle van, which would take us to our hotel in Long Beach. We walked out to the sidewalk where tons of people were hopping in vans, taxis, and buses, and we looked for our van. Well, we saw one Prime Time Shuttle van go by full of people, then another, and then another. None of them would stop for us even though we were waving our arms like crazy! After a few minutes, Alan found a Prime Time Shuttle worker who was standing a little ways down from us with a clipboard. The guy told us that our van would be coming very soon, so we were relieved.
Shortly thereafter, a van with a “Long Beach” sign in the front windshield came screeching to a halt in front of us, and a short, older Hispanic man with a tuft of white hair on the top of his head jumped out to grab our bags. We helped him pile our luggage in the back of the van, and then we climbed in and buckled up for dear life. As soon as we were all in, the driver took off. The traffic in L.A. is insane—we could tell that before we even left the airport! The interstates are all 5 or 6 lanes wide, and people, including our driver, just switch lanes whenever they feel like it. It’s comparable to Atlanta, but worse, in my opinion. On the way to our hotel, I was surprised to see that the area we were driving through really looked like a dump. It was definitely not the idea of “glamorous Hollywood” that I had assumed that all of Los Angeles would be. This was just the beginning of a very eye-opening tour of the big city. Once we actually got to our exit in Long Beach, things started to look nicer. It took about 20 or 30 minutes total, and we finally arrived at the Courtyard Marriott in downtown Long Beach. Our hotel was sandwiched in between several others on East 1st Street near the beach. It had a beautiful mural of the Queen Mary along the shoreline painted on one of its outside walls. Thankful to be finally arriving at our hotel in one piece, we grabbed our stuff and headed inside.
Travis had wisely thought to call the hotel the day before when we found out that we wouldn’t be able to check in that night, and they had assured us that we would still have our rooms for Wednesday night and Thursday night. The lobby was fairly deserted when we walked in, and Travis and I walked up to the desk to check in. We were given keys to two rooms side-by-side on the second floor. Our rooms were very nice—nothing like the Hyatt, but just fine for our needs. Parting with the boys at the door, Mollie, Ashley, Laura, and I dragged our bags in our room and collapsed onto the two queen size beds. We were exhausted by this point! I felt like I could crawl under the covers and sleep until the next morning, and it was only about 3 PM! After about 10 minutes of relaxing, we decided to have a pow-wow with the boys to see what they wanted to do for the afternoon. They filed into our room, and we sat around discussing our options. The group consensus was that we would head down to the beach for a little while, and then we would walk to Wal-Mart to buy bottled water and stuff for breakfast.
So, we grabbed our cameras and headed out. Travis brought along the trusty GPS in case we got lost, but the beach was pretty easy to find. It was only about ½ mile from the hotel, so we were able to walk there easily in just a few minutes. There were a few people out playing with their dogs, flying kites, and walking around when we got there as we made our way to the water. It felt great outside! It was sunny and fairly warm—perfect weather for a t-shirt and a light jacket, but definitely too cool to swim! We all wanted to say that we’d touched the Pacific Ocean, so some of our friends took their shoes off and stuck their feet in the water. I had on my tennis shoes though and didn’t want to get my feet wet, so I decided to just touch the water with my hand as a wave was coming in. But, being the incredibly graceful person that I am, I picked the wave that came in farther than any of the others! Just as I was bending down to stick my hand in, I could tell the wave was coming faster than the others, but it was too late to do anything about it. It quickly washed right over my feet, tennis shoes and all. So much for not getting my feet wet! We took a ton of pictures while we were out there. The girls tried several times to get a good “jumping” picture, and we finally succeeded with Laura’s amazing camera. We also captured a jumping picture of Travis and Alan that is definitely priceless! Alan paid for it though because he fell all the way to the ground on his rear end instead of his feet! We also decided to leave our mark in the sand with a huge “Roll Tide!”—just in case any Texas fans happened to come by later :)
After the boys were tired of taking pictures, we decided to head to Wal-Mart to grab some groceries. Travis led the way with the GPS, and it took us about a little under 30 minutes to walk there. On the way, we passed some really neat stores and restaurants. The architecture was definitely cool! Even the Wal-Mart looked unique from the outside; on the inside, though, it was just like any other. Two guys tried to sell us their rap CD as we were walking in. When we declined, they said, “Well, at least take our picture,” so we did. We ended up buying some snacks, Pop-Tarts, cereal bars, candy, milk, and bottled waters. Alan also bought himself a pair of sunglasses since he’d accidentally left his at home. Being a typical engineer, logical Seth had the idea to open up the case of bottled waters and put 4 or 5 in every plastic bag, so that one person wouldn’t have to carry the whole case all the way back to the hotel.
After we walked all the way back to our hotel, we were all worn out. Ashley and Seth talked about going to see Disney on Ice at the Long Beach Convention Center, but they decided against it after realizing how tired they were. Travis, Alan, and Jeremy fought through their fatigue and went to church at the Studebaker Road congregation. They took the public bus system there, and from what we were told afterwards, it’s a good thing none of the girls went! Apparently, it was pretty sketchy to say the least. They made it there safely though, and they even saw Bill and Debra White from Northwood. We’d run into them at the Huntsville airport on Tuesday, but it was ironic that they saw them again the very next day at church! The Whites ended up giving the guys a ride back to the hotel after church, which they very much appreciated. As for the rest of us, we pretty much passed out in our beds. I think I was in bed by 7:30 or 8 PM! I think we had a good reason to be tired, though, because going by Pacific Time, we’d actually woken up that morning at 2:45 AM! No wonder we were so worn out!
Mollie and I ended up sharing a bed, and Laura and Ashley shared a bed. Earlier that afternoon, Laura had confessed to Ashley that she likes to snuggle at night. This freaked Ashley out because she doesn’t like to touch anyone while she sleeps. Laura then confessed one more thing: “Ashley, I also forgot to tell you that I sleep naked…” Ashley shrieked, and the look on her face was absolutely priceless, and then Laura admitted that she was just kidding. Thus, Laura earned the nickname of the “Naked Snuggler”, and Ashley proceeded to build up a wall of pillows to separate their halves of the bed. The four of us slept great that night, excited about what the next day would hold.
Thursday, January 7th
We woke up early Thursday morning so that we could be ready to hop on the Metro by 7 AM. After getting decked out in our game day attire, we met out in the hotel hallway at 6:45 AM. We were all excited and pumped about the game even though it was early in the morning. We tried to be as quiet as possible as we walked out of the hotel and headed for the Metro. The sun was just beginning to rise as we walked down 1st street. We got to the station and bought our day passes for $5 each. Only a few minutes passed before the subway came rolling down the track and stopped in front of us. The car we got in was empty at first, but it didn’t take too many stops before it filled up with people going to work for the day.
On the way, Alan began to tell us about the nightmare he’d had during the night, and Travis, Jeremy, and Seth began cracking up and helping him retell the story. Apparently, in his dream, someone stabbed him in the side; Alan then looked down and saw his “insides” coming out. He stuck his hand inside of himself and began to scream; only, he was really screaming in real life because he woke the rest of the guys up! According to Jeremy, Alan began whimpering in his sleep, screamed, jumped out of the bed, and woke himself up when he hit the floor! All of the guys started laughing at him, and Alan’s only response was “Ouch.” Needless to say, Alan slept on the floor the next night!
We rode the Metro that morning with some interesting characters. Two of them were a couple of middle school age guys who were heading to school. I never imagined that kids might take the Metro to school and back, but it’s just a totally different way of life out there! The crowd was even more interesting on the way back to the hotel after the game, but we’ll get to that later. We had to switch “lines” twice on our way to Pasadena. The Blue line took us from Long Beach to one part of LA. Then, the Red line took us to the other side of LA, and finally, the Gold line took us from there to Pasadena. We didn’t see too many Alabama fans until we got on the Gold line, so apparently most people going to game were either staying in Pasadena or had a rental car! All in all, we probably rode the Metro for an hour and 45 minutes or so. It wasn’t quick, but it sure was cheap—and we got a sightseeing experience out of it!
When the Gold Line metro reached the Memorial Park station, we got off along with all of the other fans going to the game. We didn’t really know where we were going, but we quickly found a police officer sitting in his car in a parking lot and asked for directions to the stadium. The officer seemed a little surprised that we were planning to walk that far, but he gave us some general directions and streets to look for. Happy to be almost there, we took off, walking quickly downhill for about a mile or so. We were hoping to get to the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center soon because that’s where we were supposed to pick up our tickets. We were allowed to pick them up anytime between 9 AM and 1 PM, and it was already a little after 9 AM. Jason had called Travis while we were still on the Gold Line asking where we were, and he said that he would go ahead and hold us a spot in line. After we had walked for several minutes, we came upon a building with the name Parson on the outside. Outside of it were several shuttle buses taking people to the stadium. Yes! It was our lucky day! We immediately hopped on one; after all, it was free, and it would surely be faster than walking! A buzz of excitement filled the air as the seats around us quickly filled up with a sea of crimson and white. The bus got us to the stadium in about 10 minutes, winding through neighborhoods along the way, and it dropped us off in a parking lot right in front of the stadium! Awesome!
We hurried off the bus, looking for the Aquatic Center. A security guard pointed us in the right direction, so we walked as fast as we could to join Jason in line. We were hoping he wasn’t up to the front yet. It was about a mile from the stadium, and when we got there, the line was incredibly long. Jason was probably about 1/3 of the way to the front when we found him. He hadn’t been joking about how long the line was! We were so thankful that we didn’t have to start from the back!
Once we got in line, we started plotting about how we were going to get the tickets off of the extra Action Cards that we had. Ashley had originally paid a friend of mine and Laura’s from nursing school, Carrie, for the ticket on her Action Card because Ashley didn’t originally qualify for a student ticket since she was a first semester grad student and didn’t have very many hours. However, Ashley ended up getting a ticket on the second wave of distributions, so we decided that Mollie would use that extra ticket if we could pick it up without hassle. (Mollie had graduated in May 2009, so she didn’t have a ticket at all yet). Another friend, Arefeen, had sent Ashley and Seth with his Action Card since he had bought a ticket and had then decided not to go. He was hoping they could pick up his ticket and sell it to make a little money. Alan also had Aaron Smith’s Action Card; Aaron was never planning to go the game; he was only hoping to make some money off his ticket. All in all, we had three extra tickets we were trying to pick up.
The line moved quickly, and we soon found ourselves as the next group to pick up tickets. We decided that we would just pile all of our Action Cards and drivers licenses together, and one person would hand them in—that way we might not look so suspicious. At the last minute, some random guy also asked if he could jump in our group and, although we didn’t really know why, we said that was fine. Also, at the last minute, Ashley and Seth chickened out and decided not to throw Arefeen’s Action Card in the mix, so it was really confusing how many “people” we had in our group. We ended up bumbling around for several minutes; I’m sure they knew that we were up to something, but they didn’t give us any trouble. Alan was excited that he was able to pick up Aaron’s ticket because Aaron was hoping to make enough money to buy a new TV. And, Mollie was glad because she would get to sit with us! The tickets were distributed row by row so that everyone in a group would be able to sit together, and ours ended up being on the 8th row in the Alabama end zone.
We were so excited and relieved to finally have our tickets in hand! They were very impressive as far as tickets go, bigger and glossier than any I’d ever seen. After counting and recounting to make sure we had the right number of tickets, we started heading back toward the stadium, snapping plenty of pictures along the way. We took pictures of signs with the Alabama logo on them that were lining the parking lot, the Rose Bowl sign on one side of the stadium, and the gorgeous mountains off in the distance. Everything was beautiful, and the weather was absolutely perfect! It was sunny, but the breeze was just cool enough to keep us from getting too hot. We decided to walk around for a little while, exploring the sights and soaking it all in. Alan was hoping to get about $800 for Aaron’s ticket, but the prices had already dropped by the time he began trying to sell it, so he had to settle for $400.
After a while, we decided that we were all ready for lunch. We contemplated paying $25 each to get into the ESPN tailgate. They were serving food inside, but it wasn’t included in the $25. There were also going to be a couple of bands playing including the Goo Goo Dolls. We finally decided against that though after finding out that there weren’t even seats inside to sit on, and our legs were hurting! We wandered around the stadium onto the golf course and ran into a tailgate tent that was selling hamburgers, BBQ sandwiches, and fries. The overpriced food looked and smelled great, and we hadn’t seen any other food for sale since we’d been there, so we jumped on it! Travis ran into a friend from high school, Alex, in that same line. We all took our food over to a nice, shady area under a tree on the side of the golf course. It felt great to sit down for a little while, and the food tasted amazing because we were so hungry. While we were eating, Jason’s parents and uncle found us and sat down to visit with us for a while. Jason had stayed with them in San Diego the night before and had ridden with them to the game. Jason’s uncle, a journalist who covers Alabama football, had just created his own website, www.crimsonreplay.com. He asked us if he could videotape us for his site. We agreed, and I volunteered to go first.
“My name is Erin Grant, University of Alabama class of 2009, and you’re watching crimsonreplay.com!”
It took me a couple of tries to get it right. I don’t know how good it sounded, so who knows if it’ll show up on the site! Travis, Alan, Mollie, Laura, Seth, and Ashley also gave it their best shot, and we got a lot of laughs watching each other perform for the camera.
We relaxed in the grass for a good long while, and then Kris Hester, Hunter Hall, and their friend, Josh Butler, walked up. To make a long story short, Josh ended up with an extra ticket to the game, and, before the trip, Mollie had arranged to buy it from him since she didn’t know whether or not we’d be able to pick up the ticket on Carrie’s Action Card. So, she gave him $325 for it (since that’s what they’d agreed on several weeks ago) and took the ticket and tried to resell it. Alan and I went with her, and by the time we started asking around, some people were offering us a measly $100 for it! That’s how much prices had dropped in an hour! We kept looking though and finally sold it for $275 to some scalper. So, she lost $50 on it, but that means she really only paid $250 total for her ticket—still less than face value ($275).
By the time we got back to where the group was sitting, everyone was ready to get up and start walking around again. So, we headed around the stadium, exploring what we hadn’t yet seen. We passed the Alabama Alumni tailgate which was located at the bottom of a hill. The tent was decorated with a big balloon arch “A”, and there was music blasting and people everywhere. As we kept walking, we started running into a lot more Texas fans because we were getting close to their tailgate. The further we walked, the more and more crowded it got. There were definitely a lot of people there that day! We kept making a circle around the stadium until we found a frozen lemonade stand. Jason bought one, and then the rest of us decided that it looked so good that we wanted one too! It was the perfect treat on a warm afternoon.
After we all bought our lemonades, we walked a little bit further until someone spotted “Elmo” and “Elvis” posing for pictures. Of course, all of the girls wanted to get our picture taken with them, so we ran over there and made the boys snap the photos. Elmo and Elvis were asking for tips, and Elvis made Laura tuck her dollar in the v-neck of his shirt! It was hilarious, and I wish we’d captured it on camera for Clayton to see! Oh well! After our photo session, we kept walking until we got back around to the Rose Bowl sign. Everyone was lining up to see the players walk into the stadium, but we decided not to wait around. We were already tired and ready to sit down again, so we headed back to our shade spot under the trees and sat down for a little while. The gates to the stadium opened at 2:30 PM, and it was already almost 2 PM by this point, so we just relaxed and waited until we could go inside. We weren’t used to having so much time to kill before the game started! Jason was starting to get anxious, as usual. He commented, “I’m just ready for it to start already!”
After about thirty minutes, we started walking toward the nearest entrance. The stadium was set up a little bit differently than any other I’d seen. Once we got past security and had our tickets scanned, we entered an area between the gates to the outside and the tunnels to the stadium. This area contained all of the vendors and bathrooms, and it surrounded the entire stadium. We made a pit stop by the bathrooms before going to find our seats, and while we were waiting on everyone to meet back up, we met Damion Square’s grandfather. He was wearing a button pinned to his shirt with Damion’s number on it. The guys got really excited and were asking him lots of questions about Damion and the rest of the team. Laura even exclaimed, “It’s an honor to meet you, sir! A real honor!”
After a few minutes, we decided to go find our seats. We wandered around until we found the correct tunnel and walked in. Since most people probably didn’t want to sit inside the stadium for 2 ½ hours before the game started, we were some of the first people to go in, and we had the tunnel to ourselves! It felt like we were about to run out and take the field as part of the team! It turns out that even though our tickets said Row 8, we weren’t really 8 rows from the field. There were 7 numbered rows in front of us, and then probably 10-15 more rows in front of those! This meant that we weren’t as low to the ground as we thought we might be, which made for a better view of the field! Our seats were in the Alabama end zone, and looking from the field, we were sitting to the left of the left goalpost. We quickly found Row 8 and put our stuff down, and then we scampered all across the stadium to take pictures. Mollie and I ran down to the very bottom row in our section and touched our feet on the immaculate grass at the edge of the field. Mollie even pulled up a blade to keep! Later, I also convinced Travis to go with me to take pictures of our feet on the field. The stadium was shaped like a big sphere, and it had only one level (no separate upper and lower decks). Before it got too crowded, Travis and Alan walked around to midfield and snapped some pictures from that vantage point.
We sat around socializing for a long time, waiting for the real action of the game to begin. Videos from past Rose Bowls were playing on the big screen behind us which kept us entertained for a while. The ESPN College Football Live crew was setting up in the corner of the stadium to our right, so we got to see Lou Holtz, Mark May, and Rece Davis up close. Later the Game Day crew set up in that same area, so we got to see Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso, Chris Fowler, and Desmond Howard. Pete Carroll, the USC head football coach, was making a guest appearance that day, so we saw him as well. It was amazing to think that those guys were here for the biggest game of the season, and so were we! All season we had joked about making the trip to Pasadena if Alabama was still undefeated, and now that day was finally here! I tried to soak it all in before the game began.
The stadium started to slowly fill up as it got closer to game time. I couldn’t tell if there were more Alabama or Texas fans there that day, but everyone was definitely excited! The sun started to set behind the mountains in the distance as the teams took the field to warm up. The field looked pristine, just as I had imagined it would be. We had heard that the Rose Bowl officials had spent $150,000 laying down new grass just for this game! Alabama warmed up in our end zone, so we were able to get a lot of awesome pictures of the players up close.
Then, it was finally time for the pre-game festivities to begin. Audra McDonald sang America the Beautiful on stage as Air Force parachute jumpers hovered high above the field and dropped in one at a time at the end of her performance. Each parachutist carried a different flag representing either Alabama, Texas, or the U.S. It was really neat to watch them soar so high above us and then slowly descend for a smooth landing at midfield. After that, the teams took the field! Big Al and the cheerleaders led the way as the coaches and players came barreling out of the tunnel in the corner of the end zone across from us. The Million Dollar Band played our fight song, and we sang as loud as we could with all of the other members of the Crimson Tide nation. After the teams got settled, Josh Groban sang the National Anthem, accompanied by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on guitar. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are one of Travis’s favorite groups, so he was excited to see Flea play! At the end of the song, fireworks shot up high in the sky at midfield and four F-18 Super Hornets performed a flyover! It was deafeningly loud, and the crowd went crazy!
Finally, it was time—time for the biggest Alabama football game that we had ever seen to begin. What an awesome pre-game it had been! It was a fitting tribute to the caliber of the two teams on the sidelines. We all had sweaty palms in anticipation as the teams took the field for the kickoff. Alabama had won the coin toss a few minutes earlier and had chosen to take the ball first. The “ROLL TIDE ROLL” echoed throughout the stadium as the kickoff took place. On our first drive, we were all disappointed because we went three and out. It would have been so awesome to drive down the field and score on our first possession! Instead, PJ Fitzgerald, the punter, took the field as we prepared for Texas to take the ball. It was a fake punt, however, and when PJ got the ball, he tried to throw it to Dre Kirkpatrick, but it was intercepted by a Texas player on our side of the field. That was definitely not the way we wanted the game to start!
Colt McCoy and the rest of the Longhorns’ offense ran out in excitement, and we started yelling as loud as we could along with the rest of the Alabama fans in the stadium. On the fifth play of their drive, McCoy got hurt as he was tackled by Marcell Dareus, and he had to leave the game. The Longhorns ended up settling for a field goal to take the lead 3-0. On the kickoff, the Longhorns kicker surprised everyone and did a pooch kick; one of the Texas players recovered the ball, setting up another Longhorns’ drive. At this point, I was starting to get really nervous. This was starting out exactly like the Auburn game did! We didn’t know yet that Colt McCoy would be out for the entire game with a pinched nerve in his throwing arm. Texas only gained 5 yards on their second drive under their freshman quarterback, Garrett Gilbert, and they ended up settling for another field goal to extend their lead to 6-0. I breathed a sigh of relief because we could have been losing by two touchdowns at this point, but thanks to our defense, we only needed one touchdown to take the lead. The first quarter ended, and the score was still 6-0 Texas.
The second quarter was all Alabama—just the way we hoped it would be! Mark Ingram and Trent Richardson both scored touchdowns, and Leigh Tiffin made a 26 yard field goal to make it 17-6! We were all going crazy in the stands, jumping up and down, screaming, hugging, and high fiving after every positive play for Alabama. Then, just before the end of the half, Marcell Dareus made another huge play by intercepting a Texas shovel pass and rumbling 28 yards for the touchdown. Alabama went into halftime with all the momentum and the scoreboard showing 24-6!
During halftime, Travis and I ate a hotdog and some nachos for dinner and watched Texas’ and Alabama’s bands perform. We were all so thrilled to have such a big lead going into the second half. There was a buzz of electricity rippling through the Alabama sections, and it was obvious that the Texas fans were disappointed and wondering if the game was already effectively over.
Before too long, the teams took the field again, and it was time for the second half to begin. Alabama didn’t score at all during the third quarter, making it apparent that we were taking a conservative approach to close out the game since we had such a big lead. Texas scored the only points of the third quarter on a long pass to their star receiver, Jordan Shipley, making it 24-13. Truth be told, the biggest entertainment of the third quarter didn’t involve football; instead, it came by way of a middle-aged male “streaker” wearing a gold mask and spandex top and black boots and underwear. He leaped onto the field from the other corner of our end zone, so we watched him prance around, turning cartwheels and doing somersaults from our end zone all the way to the other! Travis was hoping that Nick Saban would send one of the backups out there to tackle him, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. It was amazing that he made it all the way across the field before the security guards tackled him and dragged him away in handcuffs.
The 4th quarter began, and we still felt pretty good about our chances at winning, even though we hadn’t scored since the first half of the game. Gilbert, the Texas back-up quarterback, had greatly improved over the course of the game though, and he took their team on a ten-play drive ending in another pass to Shipley for a touchdown. They got the 2 point conversion, and all of a sudden, our lead had been cut to 3 points! What in the world was going on here? Were we trying to give this game away? Our offense was having problems getting in sync in the second half, so it was going to be up to our defense to pull us through for the win. Texas took the ball deep in their end of the field with about three minutes to go. We were all watching nervously, hoping that we wouldn’t end up losing after having such a big lead! All of a sudden, our defense came to the rescue! Eryk Anders tackled Gilbert from his blind side, forcing a fumble that was recovered by Courtney Upshaw at the Texas 3 yard line!
Our offense took the field, and after three tries, Mark Ingram finally powered his way into the end zone to give us a 10 point lead—31-21. We were bursting with emotion—relief and elation all rolled into one. As she herself had earlier predicted, Laura had tears streaming down her cheeks as she soaked it all in. With only about 2 minutes to go in the game, we were pretty sure that it was in the bag at this point. The celebration began, and the scoring wasn’t even over yet! Texas desperately tried to get a quick score, but Javier Arenas made sure that wouldn’t happen, intercepting a Gilbert pass on the second play of their ill-fated drive and then taking a knee. Trent Richardson took the ball 27 yards in three plays to score one last touchdown, sweetening the final score. Tiffin missed the extra point, but at this point we didn’t really care—the score, now 37-21, would end up being the final score in only a few seconds. Gilbert was intercepted one final time by Tyrone King, allowing Greg McElroy to take a knee to end the game in victory. Alabama had finally won their first national championship since 1992!
The celebration after the game was one that we’ll never forget. The Alabama fans began the party in the stadium as crimson and white colored confetti fell and the players swarmed the field. Rammer Jammer was as loud and spirited as ever, sending most of the Texas fans for the exits in a hurry. We tried to savor every minute of the time we had while we waited for the trophy presentation. All of the Alabama players and coaches crowded onto the stage, kissing the crystal ball as it was passed around from eager hand to eager hand. We watched interviews with Nick Saban and a few of the Alabama players, as well as Mack Brown and Jordan Shipley on the JumboTron. Travis captured some of the festivities on videotape, and we were all snapping pictures right and left along with all of the other fans in the stadium.
After a half hour or so, we reluctantly decided that we should probably go ahead and leave. I was slightly worried that we might not be able to get all the way back to Long Beach before the Metro shut down for the night. I tried not to get too worried though…after all, we could always catch a taxi (or two) if we had to! We started walking around the inside of the stadium first before trying to exit out of one of the tunnels. There were still a lot of people inside, especially in the Alabama sections. So we headed toward the Texas side, hoping that it would be easier to get out. We collected several souvenir cups along the way as we were walking. At some point, however, we lost Jason, and he started calling us as we were heading to the bathrooms outside of the tunnel. He wanted us to wait for him so he could get his ticket back from Mollie (she’d been holding all of our tickets that day in her purse). Once he finally found us, Mollie gave him back his ticket, and he left to go meet up with his parents.
We then headed out of the gates and toward the line for the shuttle buses that were running back to the Parsons building. Everyone else must have had the same idea too because the line to ride those buses was probably 1 ½ miles long—no exaggeration! We had no idea how long we’d have to wait in that line, so we decided to take our chances and walk back to the Metro station. There were other people that were walking too, so we figured we couldn’t get too lost! It was an uphill walk for the first part, and we were pretty much speed walking the whole time. We passed several tents selling t-shirts along the way, but none of the shirts had the score of the game printed on them so we decided not to buy any. We kept walking and walking and walking and walking, using adrenaline from the big win to keep us going.
We had to ask for directions a few times to make sure we were heading the right way. At one point, we walked right up in the middle of a police investigation and asked the officers which way to go. They were nice about it and told us the way, but they also pointed out that we were interrupting and asked us to walk around them, not right through the middle! I was one of the ones who had walked right through the middle, but I must have been oblivious and not known what they were doing! We walked and walked some more. I thought we were never going to get there! We probably walked for 45 to 50 minutes! By the time we got to the Gold Line stop, my legs and feet were killing me. It definitely didn’t help that we’d already done so much walking and standing that day. We didn’t have to wait too long before the subway came to pick us up along with a lot of other Alabama fans and a few Texas fans. It was so nice to be able to sit down and relax for a few minutes!
The Gold Line took us back to Los Angeles, where we boarded the Purple Line to get us back to the Blue Line. We were all so exhausted that we didn’t say too much on the way. We did meet some Texas fans on the Gold Line who were quizzing us on why we had an elephant as our mascot, yet we were called the Crimson Tide. They claimed that our old nickname used to be the “Thin Red Line”. I’d never heard that before, but they were giving us a hard time because “they knew more about our team than we did”! I think they were just sore losers! :)
When we got off the Purple Line to catch the Blue Line, we knew we needed to hurry. We had to walk for a couple of minutes to get to the Blue Line, and when we got there, it was stopped for loading. We all ran and hopped on the closest cars that looked empty. Alan, Mollie, Laura, Travis and I all ended up on one car, and Jeremy, Ashley, and Seth ended up on another. The five of us pretty much kept to ourselves the whole time. Our car kept filling up at each stop on the way back to Long Beach. At one point, the Metro came to a stop in Artesia (one stop outside of Compton) because of mechanical problems. The conductor asked us to wait patiently while they opened the doors and turned off the lights for a couple of minutes. I’m not going to lie—that made me really nervous! Eventually, we all had to get off that train and board a different one to take us the rest of the way.
Ashley, Seth, and Jeremy had quite an interesting experience on their car. By this point in the trip, Ashley had already earned the reputation of being someone who would make friends with anyone. And when I say anyone, I mean anyone. This includes people like the guy she met on the Blue Line that night. This guy was sipping on an energy beer (think energy drink + beer?) that he would occasionally pull out of his front pocket. He told Ashley when the Metro had to stop in Artesia that he had “plenty of room” on the handlebars of his bicycle to give her a ride back to Long Beach if she wanted one. I guess he would’ve let Jeremy and Seth walk home! He also apparently told Seth that he “better watch out because he might just steal Ashley away from him!” However, the best part of the conversation went something like this:
Energy beer drinker man, as the subway is still stopped: “If the cops show up, I’m gonna have to make a run for it!”
Inquisitive Ashley: “Why would you have to do that?”
Energy beer drinker man: “Well, they’ve got 3 warrants out for my arrest…”
Ashley: “Well, that’s not good!”
Supposedly during their whole conversation, Jeremy was trying to play it cool by pretending to play with his cell phone, but really he had eyes like an iguana ready to make a move if needed. Luckily for Seth, Ashley made it back in one piece, and her new friend didn’t steal her away from us. Once we heard the story about what happened, we joked that she must not have been paying attention in kindergarten when they gave the lecture about not talking to strangers!
When we finally got back to our hotel in Long Beach, it was 1 AM! We were beyond exhausted, and we all crawled into our beds, ready to soon be dreaming of victory and crimson glory.
Friday, January 8th
Friday morning, we decided to sleep in since we had gotten back to the hotel so late the night before! We all slept until about 9 or 10 AM, which felt late considering how early we’d gotten up every other day on the trip. The boys got woken up a little bit earlier than they planned to when Travis’s phone started ringing. Travis saw that it was “Jason Dunnavant” calling and greeted him, “Good morning, sunshine!” Jason’s dad replied, “Well, good morning to you too.” Mr. Dunnavant was calling to inform the group that Jason had gotten sick last night after the game. He threw up all night and had to be taken to an urgent care clinic. His dad was calling to see if any of us had gotten sick during the night since we’d all eaten at the same tailgate tent for lunch yesterday. Since none of us were sick, they decided that he probably got sick from the Up and Up burger he ate for dinner after the game. Poor Jason! At least he didn’t get sick during the game though—that would have been a disaster!
Since we were checking out of the hotel that morning, we all got up and took showers, and then we packed up our bags and got ready to leave. We had to check out by noon, but our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 6 PM that evening. We looked up our itineraries on Travis’s laptop before we left because we wanted to go ahead and print out our boarding passes if we could. We could pull up the itinerary for the boys, and Mollie could pull up hers, but we couldn’t get anything to come up for Laura, Ashley, or me. I thought that was pretty weird, but I tried not to make too much out of it. We decided that we would all just print out our boarding passes when we got to the airport. So, we took our bags downstairs and checked out; the hotel workers let us put our bags in a locked room by the lobby so that we wouldn’t have to drag them around town with us while we were exploring. We were very grateful they let us do that!
We decided that we first wanted to eat lunch at a nice restaurant before we did anything else. So far on our trip we’d eaten mostly fast food, and we were ready to eat something delicious like steak or seafood! We started walking with Travis and the GPS leading the way. We found a nice steak restaurant, but it was a little bit too pricey, so we kept looking. We headed in the opposite direction from where we’d walked on Wednesday, and we finally found a restaurant called King’s Fish House. It looked nice from the outside, and the menu looked like it had a variety of foods for non-seafood lovers, so we decided to eat there. We went inside and ended up getting a table outside under a covered awning. It was another gorgeous day—just perfect for an outside lunch. Our waiter was really nice and helpful in answering all of our questions. Alan ordered sushi as an appetizer, and he passed it around the table so we could all try some of it. Travis is a huge fan of sushi, and he probably ate most of it himself! I ordered tilapia with macaroni and cheese and steamed vegetables on the side; all of it was so delicious. Travis was adventurous and ordered shark for the first time. I tried a bite of it, and we both decided that it tasted like chicken! It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was good. Everyone else said their food was great too. We left feeling full and satisfied.
While we were eating, Travis got a phone call from our favorite airline company, Delta. The rep let us know that our flight from Salt Lake City to Atlanta later that night was overbooked. She offered us $300 “Delta Dollars” each and two hotel rooms for the night if we would give up our seats on the flight. Strangely, I didn’t get a phone call offering the girls the same option. (I had booked the flights for Ashley, Laura and me; Travis had booked for the four guys; and Mollie had booked just for herself). Travis talked it over with all of us at the table, and we decided as a group that we needed to go ahead and get back to Alabama as we’d planned. Alan and Jeremy were starting their last semester of nursing school on Monday, and they didn’t need to risk the chance of getting delayed and missing class. Also, Laura was starting orientation at Huntsville Hospital Monday, so she needed to get back too. So, the decision was made, and Travis told the rep that we didn’t want to give up our seats.
After we left the restaurant, we decided to walk around for a little while before we went to back to the hotel to grab our bags and catch the bus to the airport. We had about an hour and a half to kill, so we started walking towards the Pike, an outdoor shopping mall and restaurant area on the water. It didn’t take too long to get there, and we passed a lot of trendy shops and restaurants on the way. We also passed a wall that was painted with a really colorful mural of silhouettes of people doing different activities, and we had fun posing for pictures in front of it. Once we found the Pike, we went in a clothing shop hoping that it would have souvenir t-shirts, but it didn’t have any that we liked. We passed a carousel and Ferris wheel that weren’t open at the time; I wish they had been because they would have been fun to ride! We then crossed the street and walked down by the water. We could see the Queen Mary floating out in the distance, and we decided that next time we came to Long Beach, we would definitely have to tour it; we had been talking about going on Wednesday, but we didn’t have time after we got delayed with our flights getting messed up. We could also see a lot of other ships out in the water docked near the shore. We took lots of pictures, cognizant of the fact that our time in Long Beach was quickly coming to an end. Before we left the Pike, we stopped by Smoothie King and Cold Stone for ice cream and smoothies. I got some sorbet at Cold Stone with gummy bears mixed in. Ashley, Seth, Mollie, and Jeremy also went to Cold Stone, and Alan, Travis, and Laura got smoothies at Smoothie King. They were the perfect refreshments for a warm afternoon!
After leaving the Pike, we swung by the hotel to pick up our bags. It took several minutes to get back, but luckily the hotel wasn’t too far from the bus stop. We quickly grabbed our bags and backpacks and hurried to catch the bus. We probably looked funny dragging our suitcases down the sidewalk, but we didn’t care! We were going to get to the airport for $1.10 each! We definitely saved a ton of money over the course of the trip using public transportation instead of renting our own car. We didn’t have to wait too long before a big white bus pulled up and stopped in front of us. We let several people get off the bus before we boarded. The bus driver waited patiently while we inserted our money into the change counter and found seats big enough for us and our stuff. Luckily, the bus wasn’t too crowded when we first got on. Once we had all found a seat, we began our slow journey to the airport. We only had about 6 miles to go, but it took about 45 minutes to get there because the bus made stops every minute or two. We got to see a different part of Long Beach than we’d seen walking around the past couple of days. We passed Woodrow Wilson High School right about the time that the students were getting out of school for the day. It looked like a really nice school from the outside. Most of the kids were walking or riding bikes home; two of the girls got on our bus. The school was like a microcosm of the city—very diverse and totally different from Alabama!
Finally, the bus pulled up at the airport, and we grabbed our bags and hopped off onto the sidewalk. It took us a minute or two to figure out which way to go since the bus didn’t drop us off right in front of the entrance, but we eventually followed some other travelers and found where we were supposed to go. I don’t know how we could have missed it—this was definitely the smallest airport I’d ever seen! We walked inside and easily found the Delta counter. The first thing we did was go up to the kiosk to print out our boarding passes. Travis printed out the guys’ passes, but none of the girls could get ours to print! Frustrated, we got in line to talk to the Delta representative behind the counter. We explained our situation to her once we got up to the front. It took a while for her to understand what had happened with our canceled and redirected flights, but she got on the phone and got another girl to come help us. The new girl called somebody and talked to them about what had happened. We waited patiently for her to get off the phone—hopefully with a solution. Meanwhile, my blood was beginning to boil, and tears were forming in my eyes. We had already been through SO much trouble with our flights, and now this?
After a few minutes, she was able to get Mollie’s boarding pass to print, so it was just Ashley, Laura, and me who were in trouble. At first, the rep acted like the three of us would have to get on different flights than the others because somehow our seats had been lost since we never got on our original flights on Tuesday. She said that someone must have messed up the documentation in the computer in our case! I was about to get really ugly with her at this point because this flight we were supposed to catch was the last one leaving from Long Beach to Salt Lake for the whole night, and the three of us girls didn’t want to fly alone anyway!! We probably stood up at the counter for close to an hour before everything got straightened out. She finally got us on all of the same flights as the others and printed out our boarding passes for us. Whew! The only bad part was that we lost our original seats which would have been right next to each other, but at that point, all we cared about was getting on those planes!
After all of the trouble at the counter, we didn’t have to wait very long to board the plane once we made it through security. I think the part of the building we were waiting in was actually a trailer—that’s what it looked and felt like anyway! We talked to some Alabama fans who were going to be on all of our flights on the way back to Huntsville. In fact, there were a lot of Alabama fans in the seats around us; there must have been more fans staying in Long Beach than we thought!
When they started letting people board the plane, we got up and got in line with our stuff. Strangely, there was no boarding bridge from the “trailer” to the plane. We actually had to walk outside, wind around through a parking lot, and walk up a ramp to get on the plane! Weird! I ended up sitting beside a really nice man from Hawaii who was currently living in Utah. He asked me how our trip had been, and I told him all about our adventure. He told me that he had lost his job about 8 months ago, but that he was thinking about taking a job back in Hawaii and flying to Utah on the weekends to see his wife and kids! Between making small talk with him, I listened to my iPod and tried to rest for a while, and after about an hour and a half, we touched down in Salt Lake City.
My bag had been too big for the overhead bins on that plane, so they had kept it in a compartment under the plane with a lot of the other bigger carry-on bags. The flight attendant told us to wait in the boarding bridge for our bags once we got off the plane. I was sitting pretty close to the front of the plane, so I got off the plane pretty quickly. It was like stepping into a freezer when I stepped into that boarding bridge! It must have been at least a 50 or 60 degree difference in temperature from Long Beach to Salt Lake City! As luck would have it, my bag was the very last one to be unloaded, so I had to stand there and freeze in my thin t-shirt for probably 10 minutes!
After I grabbed my bag, I hurried to meet up with the rest of the group in the warmth of the airport. We were all starving by this point. It was about 9 PM Mountain Time, so we went searching for something to eat. We had plenty of time because our next flight didn’t leave until 1 AM. We headed in the general direction of our terminal, passing several places to eat along the way that were already closed. The more places we saw that were closed, the more I became convinced that we would probably end up eating our dinner out of a vending machine. Finally, we found a Burger King that was still open, although they were in the process of closing down for the night. We got in line to order, and then I realized that Travis was missing. I didn’t know whether to order something for him or not, but I called him and found out that he and Mollie had run down to California Pizza Kitchen and were going to get something there. I asked him to get me a pizza, and he and Mollie brought their food back down to Burger King where we all ate together. While we were eating, we retold stories from the trip and laughed so hard that we cried. We had definitely had a great time so far!
After we ate, we made our way to the gate we were supposed to depart from for Atlanta in a few hours. The seats in the area were filled with people sleeping, reading, and relaxing. We found a few seats in the corner and prepared to wait; we still had about 3 hours before our flight left. I made myself comfortable on the floor, stretching out under my blanket and using my backpack as a pillow. Jeremy pulled out a book and started reading; Seth and Travis got on their laptops; and the rest of us entertained ourselves talking and laughing about all sorts of things. We put all of the pictures from our cameras onto Travis’s and Seth’s laptops, and we had fun looking through them. We watched the short videos that Travis had taken with my camera at the end of the game; it gave me chills just listening to the fight song and watching everyone celebrate at the end of the game one more time. The time seemed to pass pretty quickly; I don’t remember what all we talked about, but I think we must have been pretty delirious because everything we said seemed absolutely hilarious. I guess that’s what happens when you’re completely and utterly exhausted!
About halfway through the layover, the Delta reps (gotta love ‘em!) announced that our flight was still overbooked, and they offered $400 Delta dollars and a free night in a hotel to anyone who would give up their seat on the plane. Ah, so they were upping the ante! We talked it over amongst the group and decided to send the guys up to the counter to talk to the reps. If they would give us $400 dollars straight (instead of Delta dollars), we would definitely take them up on it! But, since we had no desire to ever fly on another Delta flight again in our lifetimes, we would have no use for their measly “Delta dollars”. The reps wouldn’t agree to that, and so we decided to just keep our seats.
Saturday, January 9th
It was finally time to board the plane, and we gathered up our things. It was 1 AM Mountain Time, 12 AM Pacific Time (back in Long Beach), 3 AM Eastern Time (in Atlanta, where we were heading), and 2 AM Central Time back in Huntsville, our final destination. Think our bodies were a little confused? I think so!
This plane was a Boeing 767, the biggest one we’d been on yet. It had two aisles with two seats per row in the outer sections and three seats per row in the middle section. My seat, unfortunately, was in a middle seat in the middle section! To my left was an older man who kept to himself. Correction: He kept everything to himself but his right arm! He would not keep that arm in his seat; it kept crowding my space over the arm rest. I fidgeted around to keep from touching him. I already have a hard time falling asleep in cars and airplanes anyway, but falling asleep while my personal space is being invaded is next to impossible. To my right sat a skinny brunette, a young professional who looked to be on a business trip. She pulled out a book to read and turned on her overhead light. The light, which came down from the ceiling, was angled inward, just enough so that it shone right in my eyes! I had the urge to say something to her—I mean, who reads a book at 1 AM? People are trying to sleep, after all! But I kept my mouth shut and tried to get comfortable, closing my eyes and using my blanket as pillow around my neck. After a little while, the woman got up to use the bathroom, and I saw my opportunity. I opened my eyes, peered over my shoulder behind me, and leaned over into her seat to turn off the light. I then quickly repositioned myself as I had been, trying to act like I was asleep. She came back after a few minutes and, pulling her book back out, turned the light on again! Foiled! She only read for a few minutes though and finally turned the light off for good. I guess I fell asleep after that and slept for maybe an hour or two because the next thing I knew, the pilot came over the speaker and announced that we were getting ready to descend in Atlanta.
After we landed, I sat in my seat for a while to let the crowd clear out. When I finally got up, I noticed that Laura was still sitting in her seat a few rows back. She didn’t look like she was feeling too good. She told me that she had started feeling sick to her stomach near the end of the flight. I walked with her off the plane, and we found the rest of the group. Luckily, she didn’t ever throw up, and she began to feel better after we sat down for a few minutes at our gate. It was now about 6:30 AM Eastern Time, and our next and final flight didn’t depart until 9:30 AM. It was another long layover! We weren’t the only crazy Alabama fans who had flown “red eye” though—there were plenty of others who were catching the same flight as us back to Huntsville! I tried to sleep but gave up after a little while of no success. We were all ready to get in our beds for a good night’s sleep at this point. None of us were able to fall asleep—especially not with the airport workers walking through the emergency exit door behind us and letting the resulting alarm blare for literally 10 or 15 minutes before figuring out how to shut it off! The three hour wait passed by in a blur overall. We all got something to eat for breakfast before leaving. Some of us bought breakfast there; others, like me, were sick of fast food and ate stuff we had leftover from our Wal-Mart run (a.k.a. Pop-tarts).
Finally, it was time to board the last airplane of the trip. I finally got a window seat this time and spent the flight looking out the window, listening to Little Big Town on my iPod. Laura slept in the seat behind me, as did most everyone else in our group. The flight was so quick that by the time we got very high up in the air, it was practically time to descend. When we got close to Huntsville, the fluffy white clouds finally cleared, and I was able to see snow covering a good bit of the ground. It was quite the contrast to the weather in sunny California! We landed in Huntsville at 9:40 Central Time. Mustering up all the strength and energy we could, we dragged our stuff off the plane and regrouped inside the airport. I couldn’t believe the trip was over. It had been so much fun, despite some of the difficulties we’d had along the way. Reminiscing, we made our way downstairs to meet our friends and family who were waiting to pick us up. Clayton gave Laura a big hug when we found him, and he took one final picture of us to seal the end of our journey. We all hugged goodbye, feeling tired, happy, and sad all at the same time. It was a trip that we’ll never, ever forget.
