Lost in the Green (Part 2)

Friday - Monday

On Friday we headed up to Tallahasse from Vero Beach with an extra passneger, another fmaily friend called Amber. It's normally about a six hour drive. Unfortunately the weather was pretty ferocious and it took another 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour to get there. One of thre reasons we were heading up was to see the Florida State University (FSU) Seminoles, also known as "Noles", play the North Carolina State (NC State) Wolfpack (they're Grid Iron teams).

Along the way we passed heaps of cars, SUVs and Pick Up trucks emblazoned with FSU and seminoles symbols. College football is huge over here so everyone wants to show their support. The game was entirely sold out so we were all pretty lucky to get tickets. We arrived on Friday night and had dinner with Christine and Kathleen, Suzanne's daughters, Jessica and Karen, Christine and Kathleen's housemates, as well as a few other friends of theirs.

It was good to catch up with Christine and Kathleen again as I haven't seen them in a while. had a bit of a thought that their apartment at unilodge was a little like "the house", except instead of four guys there were four girls... and four bathrooms so there were no fights about cleaning it :p

Saturday was the day of the game and it was going to be a big day. Breakfast with everyone like dinner the night before but this time at a place called "Cracker Barrel" which is a reasonable sized franchise chain in the US. The food is home-cooked style so everything there is pretty decent, I'd suggest anyone going to the US could do worse than having Cracker Barrel for breakfast at least once while they're over here.

Next was a big shop for the pre-game tailgate party, which is where everyone rocks up in their pickup or SUV and eats and drinks before they head down, as well as some stuff for dinner. The trolley was full to overflowing. The tailgate party itself was pretty cool, I turned into the usual barbeque nazi that I am and did the grilling on the webber, was a nice and relaxing lunch.

The game was a massive surprise for me. This is what the FSU stadium looks like from the outside:

Not your average looking football stadium, I took these photos the day after so I wasn't able to get any inside the ground but it has a capacity of about 40,000. Nine out of ten people were wearing FSU or, for the few fans that were there, NC State merchandise, usually a shirt and a cap. Everyone was getting into the cheers, the chants and the chop and at almost every play either the crowd was screaming or the band was playing along with them.

This all went well until near the end of the third quarter when there was a lightning delay. The seating of the stadium isn't as fancy as the outside, two skyboxes for the exclusive areas and long metal benches for everyone else and this is where the majority of people sit. It also turns the stadium into a giant lightning rod (whoopee). So most of the group of us who had gone to the match packed up and went back to the girls place for post game drinks and dinner. FSU eventually won 27-10, Go Noles!

The heat at the game was terrible. I've sat through cricket day / nighters and test matches in the middle of the summer in Sydney and nothing, nothing, compares to the heat we endured in the stands sitting and watching this game. I'm lucky I didn't get heatstroke.

That was pretty much it for Tallahasse and we left about midday on Sunday. We went to St Augustine, which was a Spanish Colony since a little while after Columbus arrived then almost all the way through to the early 1800s, and had some tasty cuban food for dinner. I started to feel a bit sick when we got into town.

Then to Jacksonville, where we stayed the night and was seriously sick, fever, bad stomach, sore throat. Reading some more grisly bits towards then end of a Game of Thrones probably didn't helpI found out on Monday morning that I had a throat infection but managed to see a doctor and pick up some antibiotics fairly easily. I chilled out for the rest of the day then parted ways with my Mum and Suzanne and struck out by myself on the train up to Savannah.

So there ends lost in the green.