2003.12.25-29

So after a ten-year bowl absence, Cal makes it to the Insight Bowl in Phoenix. As devoted loyal Cal fans (so much so that we came back for grad school to witness a Big Game victory), James and I would naturally be there. In addition, I saw this as an opportunity to let off some steam and get away from it all after finally filing my MS thesis.

the tale of the tape

So eventually, it worked something like this: a few of us from the Bay Area would get ourselves down to the LA area, from where we'd pile into a van and go on a road trip to Arizona. The game would be the next day, and afterward, we would swing through Vegas on our way back to LA.

The people involved in this trip:

From left to right: Shankar, Theresa, Yolanda, and James

• Yolanda: the super-duper-organiser who provided the van, generated the infamous "travel-clipboard" that had all the directions and maps and information and the like, and of course, had the fancy digital camera to take a ton of pictures. (though whether anyone will ever see the pictures is another issue).
• James: the infamous James Yeh of "they're all old and fat!" and parking permit fame in previous Big Games against Stanfurd. James and Yolanda regularly attended Cal football games with Holming and me during the infamous 1-10 season at the end of the Dark Ages of the Tom Holmoe Era.
• Theresa: had only been to one Cal football game in her entire life before heading on this trip.
• Shankar: former HKN/EECS type who is such a devoted Cal fan that even as a UI student now, he snuck into the Cal section when Cal played at Illinois earlier this year.
• Ted: only joined us for the day of the game, and the day after that. But that was enough for some amusing laughs.
• and of course, me.

This is me with Ted amongst a ton of Cal fans

Here are some amusing 4-on-1 trends in the group dynamics of the non-Ted people on this trip (I'm not counting Ted because he was only with us for one night). I'll let you, the reader, figure out who fills which category:

• EECS Majors : Non-EECS Majors = 4:1
• Suckers who went to grad school : Those who didn't = 4:1
• Chinese : Non-Chinese = 4:1
• People who drove the van : People who didn't = 4:1
• Laptop owners : people without laptops = 4:1
• People who have applied to work for Rescomp : People who didn't = 4:1

stuffed lamb

Of course, there had to be a stuffed lamb along on the trip, otherwise all the inside jokes about the memory-hierarchy inside the van would have made way too much sense. (ask me about this off-line if you're really interested)

Here's a shot of the stuffed lamb mooning the camera while riding on top of the van on the way to Arizona.

scottsdale mall

To kill time after picking Ted up from the Phoenix airport (he chose to fly in directly to Phoenix on the day of the game, giving Shankar and me the opportunity to wait for him with a "T. Nakamura" sign), we did some day-after-christmas shopping first at an open-air mall with flaming horses at its entrances, and then at a Scottsdale, AZ mall. Needless to say, we managed to run into a number of Cal and Virginia Tech fans along the way, but nothing too bad came out of it.

After Theresa's run-in with some J. Lo perfume, we discovered a little Santa's Sleigh display on the third floor of the mall:

Shankar, Theresa, and me (in Cal garb!) sitting in Santa's sleigh, or what have you. Admittedly, after 10 minutes of mall, my feet were ready to give out, which is why I sat down in the first place.

the game

Cal wins, 52-49, on a last-second field goal. This game could've gone either way, but here are a few random things I noticed:

• when Cal went up by 2 touchdowns with 7 minutes left, and a number of fans behind me started the "This is Bear Territory" victory chant, I knew we were in trouble, and indeed, V. Tech came back to tie it.
• James could have made a pretty good Mic-Man for the Cal cheering section.
• V. Tech's male cheerleader who took a field goal kick at halftime could've been a better choice than their actual placekicker who missed all three of his field-goal attempts (which basically gave Cal the win)

Here's an article on the Insight Bowl, as reported in the San José Mercury News.

onward toward vegas

So the trip to Vegas was one of those things we did just for the hell of it. Well, that, and there's really nothing exciting in Phoenix. Besides, Ted's dad lives there, so we were to drop Ted off there so he could fly back to the Bay Area and go to work on the 29th. Here are a few interesting highlights of the drive from Phoenix to Vegas...

Outside a theatre in Scottsdale: Menopause, the Musical. WTF???

Once on the road, there really wasn't anything interesting on the side of the roads; lots of cacti, desert, and barrenness. But eventually, we found a roadside stop to fill up the van with gas, as well as take a break from all the driving. It was literally in the middle of nowhere, Arizona.

This roadside stop featured a fake jail for photo ops. It's hard to tell whether Shankar is looking to break Ted out of jail, or to chuck a rock at him.

While James was filling up the tank, Theresa noticed one of those coin-operated horse thingies outside the convenience store. Ted and I provided the quarters, and Shankar took this picture. Now the amusing thing is that at first, Theresa tried to ride this thing side-saddle, and promptly fell off before straddling the horse as shown. What you might not be able to tell is that Theresa's wearing a skirt here.

Shortly thereafter, we noticed that there was snow on the side of the road (after all, it was 30-something degrees outside in the middle of the desert), and eventually, came across a horrible traffic jam near the Hoover Dam that led to four of us running along the side of the freeway (93N) in 40-degree weather for a few hundred yards. Ask me for more details if you're really interested.

vegas!

The first order of business upon the delayed arrival in Vegas (see previous comment about traffic around the Hoover Dam) was to check in, and then eat! To that end, the Cheesecake Factory in Caesar's Palace proved adequate, and was a whole story in and of itself. James had five Frescas in one sitting, we all had yummy cheesecake, and before we knew it, the day was over.

Over the course of the next two days, we stuffed ourselves silly with buffets (ah, gluttony!), and I managed to wear out my feet to an extent that I had not felt since going to Magic Mountain (after three consecutive days of Disneyland) in the summer of 2001 road trip. One of the crazier things I did was to challenge Theresa to a Eiffel Tower Daiquiri drinking contest at the Paris hotel (after all, if I could finish a Jamba Juice in less than four minutes, this should be child's play, right?). Only I forgot two important things:

1. the plastic Eiffel Tower in which this smoothie-like drink was served is over two feet tall, and about seven inches on a side at its base. In short: there was more stuff in this thing than the average Jamba Juice.
2. we were all only two hours removed from stuffing ourselves silly at a Champagne Brunch Buffet.

Yolanda and James holding some of the Eiffel Tower Strawberry Daiquiris.

Now while we did draw a bunch of amused looks from people in the Paris casino, and even on the street as we walked back to our hotel room in the Monte Carlo, I noticed that the drink was way too sweet, and that I was getting really full again to epic proportions that I had not seen since one time when Ted, Tracy, and I made way too much pasta for dinner. In fact, we all had some sort of "food coma" come over us, as a combination of all the walking, the nadir in our daily alertness cycle, and stuffing ourselves with this gigantic drink...and none of us even finished it (Shankar came closest, with about 3/8 of an inch of stuff left in the bottom of his tower).

For the record, Theresa won our little bet, since she managed to empty her Eiffel Tower first -- by accidentally dropping it and spilling it on the floor of the casino. I gave up with about 3/4 of an inch of stuff left in my tower and crashed for a little bit.

This is a shot of Shankar passed out due to Daiquiri-induced food coma. He didn't even notice when I picked his pocket to borrow his hotel room key.

Shortly thereafter, while Yolanda, James, and Shankar were still passed out with food coma, Theresa and I took Shankar's room key and went to play some skeeball at New York New York. One minute of skeeball turned into enough tickets to buy tiny little plastic dinosaurs for everyone (yeah, pretty sad, ain't it?)

Here, Lamb E. Pie, Jr. plays with the plastic dinosaur toys.

So that was about it in terms of anything interesting in Vegas; other things were more run-of-the-mill, like seeing the sights on the strip (for pictures of those, see the pictures from my last trip to Vegas, because they still look the same), watching a show, avoiding the ads for hookers being passed out on the strip, and of course, James cracking a plastic divider on an air hockey table after striking a puck too hard. All in all, it was just a bitchin' road trip that provided a nice break from daily life. What a way to spend the holidays. =)

So one night, Shankar and I were both wearing AMD t-shirts. Here we look like a sitting billboard for the company.

standard disclaimers

The flash on my d-cam doesn't fire anymore. It's not a dead battery issue (I've checked that), but I have no way of checking whether the flash bulb is burned out or not. It has served me well for over five years and it's a shame that the dead flash meant that my picture-taking capacity was quite limited. Instead, the pictures you see here were taken from Theresa's camera (and a few from my own camera, without a flash).

Better pictures will show up on Yolanda's web page if/when she ever gets that uploaded. Bug her with an e-mail if you'd like to see pictures such as:

• Shots from the game (band, scoreboard, fireworks, crowd shots, etc.)
• Shots from the Team Hotel in the March to Victory
• The most creative sign I've seen yet: "Yes, Virgina, there is a Cal!"
• Head-banging to Bohemian Rhapsody in the van
• Sitting around in a hot tub
• More pictures from the ritzy hotel in Scottsdale where we stayed.