There are a lot of cows in Florida. We pulled up behind these cows at a toll booth. The first picture taken of the trip. Couldn't really ask for a better first pic.
Sunday
Sunday was an early rising day. I think we were up at 10. We had to get up early for Sunday breakfast with the family. The plans for the day were to head to Gainsville to see Florida play Florida State. On the was to Gainesville we ran into a monsoon. About 1.5 inches of rain fell in I'd say 20 minutes. The following pictures bring you up to the arrival in Gainesville.
There are a lot of cows in Florida. We pulled up behind these cows at a toll
booth. The first picture taken of the trip. Couldn't really ask for a better
first pic.
We drove up behind this little car on the way.
Here you can see its littleness as compared to a normal sized pickup. If you
squint, you might be able to see that the steering wheel is on the right side.
Here is the view of the monsoon from the car. You can see much better in this
picture that we could in the car. Rain was falling so hard you could barely
see the lights of the car in front of us. But we pressed on.
When we got there the field was pretty soaked and they were working hard to get it cleaned up so that a game could take place at some point. The start of the game was delayed until 3. While we waited we went over to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, better known as The Swamp. It is open during the day so we got to go in and take some pictures. Evan is in charge of running the scoreboard during UF baseball games so he sits up in the press box. I was going to sit somewhere in the stands since I wasn't going to be allowed to sit in the press box with him. I stayed until the game finally got underway. When the game started no body kicked me out. Evan checked with some guy in charge and he said I could stay. So I sat between Evan and the PA announcer. I got to just sit there and watch the game from the best seat in the house with no responsibility. It was really sweet. I was scared to talk to Evan so he didn't miss any balls or strikes. Florida jumped out to an 8-0 lead but Evan kept telling me that the bullpen was suspected. FSU came back but Florida held on 9-8.
Ben Hill Griffin holds 85,432. Nothing special. I think if the loaded more people
in it would sink.
A Spring Break first, I'm in a picture. Last year Evan and I did not appear
in any of the pictures.
Alfred A. McKethan Stadium - From the pressbox.
Center field Gator.
The scoreboard Evan runs.
Teams finally take the field.
Pitcher Justin Hoyman, he struck out the first 6 batters he faced.
Best seat in the house.
Baseball Al
Out front of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
While driving I noticed quite a few Steak 'n Shake signs. Evan was shocked that I had never heard of it. We stopped there for dinner to have a steakburger and shake. It was very good. We went through the drive-thru but it took a long time since they cook up your order on the spot. Northerns wouldn't stand for this sort of wait time, thats why I figured they haven't brought them home.
First Steakburger from Steak 'n Shake.
First Shake from Steak 'n Shake.
We stopped at Evan's dorm to pick up his video camera. He said that US News ranked UF dorms the 5th worst in the country. They were very old and just didn't seem very nice. He also showed me his apartment for next year. Its a big of a drive but nice. I didn't bring in the camera to take a pictured of the kegerator. Basically its a fridge with a keg inside and a tap sticking outside of the door. College ingenuity at its finest. While driving I noticed quite a few Steak 'n Shake signs. Evan was shocked that I had never heard of it. We stopped there for dinner to have a steakburger and shake. It was very good. We went through the drive-thru but it took a long time since they cook up your order on the spot. Northerns wouldn't stand for this sort of wait time, thats why I figured they haven't brought them home. On the way home on the Florida Turnpike we were waved through and were told that the toll had been suspended. Very strange but just one of the many toll booth events. The end of this car ride marked the end of day one of license plate bingo, now referred to as LPB. A new wrinkle was added this year to spice things up, vanity plates were counted and had the same value as a new state. Since I was down for 7 days it would be a full 7 game series. Evan easily won Game 1. Also when we returned home Mrs. Crawford told us that if we had been back earlier we could have had Magic tickets. Very disappointed but there was no way we could have gotten home in time. It was Sunday and a Crawford family event is to watch American Dreams. Last year when I was down I had my first Gilmore Girls experience so I know they have a good taste in television so I tried it out. It was a good show but won't make it into the regular rotation. During the show I also worked on fixing Evan's laptop which spazzed out a few weeks before so I told Evan I would take care of the problem when I came down. Problem solved. After that, we watched some videos of Evan's trip to Italy over the Summer. There was one problem. He did not have the cords to connect it to the TV. We managed to get video but to get the audio we had to steal the speakers from the computer. This was no easy task getting all the wires out since it was a whole setup with a sub. We finally got it working. The video was very good and pretty funny. It had a Real World type feeling to it.