Days 2-4

So, it's Thursday morning of our vacation that began on Sunday, and I'm just now getting around to posting my Day 2 update. It's been one of those trips. But hopefully I can get everyone caught up pretty quickly.

My work conference didn't begin until noon, so Elizabeth and I were able to lounge around the hotel some on Monday morning to relax and recuperate after our long trip up to Nashville on Sunday. I'm not going to go into too many boring details about the conference -- if you're really interested, get on Twitter and search the hashtag #ganire to see what was discussed -- which lasted from noon until about 6:30 p.m.

I skipped out on the supper after the first day of the workshop because I had made plans to catch up with an old friend from my hometown, Seth Jones. Seth is a couple of years younger than me and lives in Nashville, where he works in the music business doing a number of different things, but primarily writing music.

We caught up to eat at Jackson's Bar & Bistro, which is just between the campuses of Vanderbilt and Belmont universities. It's always good to catch up with old friends, particularly ones you haven't seen in several years and have been communicating with via Facebook and Twitter. Our visit with Seth certainly has been one of the highlights of the trip.

Unlike Monday, which started slowly, the third day of vacation and second day of the workshop began early. After breakfast, I had to be at the First Amendment Center on Vandy's campus at 8:30 a.m. We had about five hours worth of classroom sessions -- while Elizabeth drove around unsuccessfully in search of a park in Nashville and eventually settled for hanging out at the First Amendment Center until the workshop was finished -- before we hit the road for Omaha.

That's where things got interesting. Naively, I decided we didn't need to make hotel reservations for this night. I said, let's just drive as far as we can before we get tired and then find a place to sleep. Omaha, from Nashville, was about a 14-hour drive. We left Nashville around 2 p.m. and just started driving. Honestly, these are some of the best moments of our trips. We love driving and looking at scenery. So far, this trip has covered nine states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska) and more than 1,200 miles.

Along the way, we stopped in Metropolis, Ill., to visit Superman. Seriously, the town square has a giant Superman statue right in front of the county courthouse. How cool is that! While there, we ate at a Dippin' Dots that had been renovated from an old skating rink. It had a nice little coffee shop vibe. Think the Frothy Monkey, but with Dippin' Dots and not coffee. We stopped in St. Charles, Mo. -- just outside of St. Louis, where Elizabeth and I spent our third anniversary to see a Collective Soul concert -- and ate supper at Buffalo Wild Wings.

At that point, it was around 11 p.m., and both of us were getting tired and a little road weary. However, I really wanted to get to the other side of Kansas City, which would put us only about two or so hours away from Omaha (and Lincoln, where we're actually staying). Bad decision. After wrestling the keys away from Elizabeth (literally, she drove the whole way from Alexandria to Nashville, and then had driven every minute from Nashville into Missouri), I plowed on through Kansas City as Elizabeth fought with trying to sleep in the Sportage.

I keyed in on St. Joseph, Mo., about 45 minutes north of Kansas City as the place we would stop and get a hotel. It was around 2 a.m. The only problem? I didn't have a reservation, and EVERY room in EVERY hotel was booked because of some military function in town. SERIOUSLY! The one time Elizabeth and I show any spontaneity backfires! So back on the road we go, much to Elizabeth's chagrin, not knowing if there would be any opportunity to stop at a hotel between St. Joseph and Lincoln, where we didn't have a room either because our hotel was booked and couldn't get us in a night early. Luckily, we were able to find a bed -- the LAST room -- at a Super 8 a little north of St. Joseph.

We checked in about 4 a.m., exhausted. After all, we'd been on the road for 14 hours, give or take some time for the stops in Metropolis and for supper. I wanted to get to Omaha as soon as possible, but we needed sleep. So we crashed for a couple of hours, and then added a detour by watching the U.S. soccer team defeat Algeria to win its group in the World Cup (priorities, people!).

After a couple of hours on the road, we finally arrived in Lincoln around 1 p.m., when we grabbed some lunch at Ruby Tuesday and were able to check into our room around 2:30. Finally, after about 28 hours of driving and a two-day detour for a work conference, we'd arrived from Alexandria to Omaha/Lincoln for our vacation!

So it was time to get started on what we came here for -- the College World Series. Or so I thought. Again, call me naive, but I had no clue what I was getting myself into. We drove down to what I'll lovingly call the Trainwork on 13th Street. Wow. Some people love the party scene. Some people love being a part of huge crowds. They think it's fun. I don't. I just want to watch the game. I'd much rather be one of 20,000 people in a 40,000-seat stadium, instead of being one of 100,000 crammed into a stadium designed to seat 80,000. Give me space. Give me room. Let me just enjoy the game.

I can't even accurately describe the scene at Rosenblatt Stadium. It was crazy. The line to get in the stadium using our general admission tickets was insane, and partly because I was cranky after the long drive and little sleep, I just didn't want to deal with it. So we checked out the fan zone a little bit, did some shopping (and have some more to do) and called it a night. We're going to try to upgrade our general admission tickets to reserved tickets today and Friday so that we don't have to fight the crowds and will be guaranteed a seat. It's a little more money, but a lot more peace of mind.