doodledee

Last weekend some buddies and I went down to Madison to watch the Gopher hockey team lay a beat down on the clown show better known as Wisconsin's Pride on Ice. It was a quick down and back of a trip. Seriously quick. I left on Saturday morning and I walked back thru my front door less than 28 hours later. I was greasy, achy, and exhausted. I think that means it was a great time.

Triptik and observations:

• Highway notes: traffic moved nicely, kwik trip serves a burger with unlimited fries, and that new jellystone park on the interstate looks insane. Ok, on to the Madison part.
• We rocked the State Street scene before the game. We got there around 4 and expected total chaos, but quickly determined that Madison more or less shuts down for the month of January because they don't have J-term. Translation: the bars were full but not packed - a perfect situation for us old guys looking to find a place to sit down. Genius timing on the road trip, Gopher Hockey schedule makers.
• Our dinner and pregame pitchers were at State Street Brats. Nutshell: Outstanding. I had a red with spicy fries. I should have ordered 4 more. I was loving it. Pitchers were pricey, service was brutal, but they'll be first on my list when we go back. Yay SSB.
• We also checked out some place called Wando's that came in via some Madison rube references. Their claim to fame is that they serve giant drinks in fishbowls, which sounds cool, until you realize that you and your buddies are going to have to take turns sipping fruity blue fishbowl liquid thru little plastic straws. Uhh, maybe next time. Also this: the whole place smelled like fishsticks. Odd.
• Game time. The Kohl center, for all it's convenience to the campus, doesn't really do it for me. Sure it's nice, and it's loaded with amenities, but a college arena should be about intimacy and bad lighting and bench seats and banners and all that crap. You walk in to the well-lit lobby of the Kohl and stare up at all the Chihuly glass sculptures and down at the squeaky clean floors and you start to forget you're on a campus. Then you go into the arena, which holds 17,000, and it's got a ribbon scoreboard and fancy lighting and it, too, is clean and sterile, and it all just seems so... wrong. But hey, that's just me. Badger rubes can't seem to get enough of it. Tools.
• Legendary Wisconsin band and student section update: Like the hockey team, failed to show up for the Saturday night game. (Full disclosure: I heard the Friday game was a little rowdier. Uh huh.)
• Game over. Gophers win. Doy.
• After the game the crowd of 20 or so of us who had met up at the arena walked around for a while. We ended up at Brother's. It was loud and lame. It was good to see Carl and Co, though, so we hung around for a while before bailing for greener pastures.
• A few more beers (I think?), then we ended up grabbing some chow at a 'famous chili' place back on State Street. Nutshell review: very good, though I got under-portioned compared to the other guys. I'm not sure what happened, I winked and everything. Interesting note about chili place: like every other place in Madison - including parking garages and nursing homes - beer was available for purchase, and the walls were covered with to flat screen televisions blasting ESPN. It's like Madison only gets one channel or something.
• We drove back to Borly's after downing our chili. We were talking about stopping at the casino to throw dice and turn cards, but - and I am not making this up - half the car wanted to go home and go to bed. It was like midnight. I know!

Kudos to Borly for the couch space and to Carl for handling the ticket logistics. Maybe next year I'll live blog the whole trip.