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SOMEWHERE OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO,
12/30/00 - And so it begins. Well, actually, the trip to Miami began about
5:45 this morning with a blaring alarm clock in the frigid, snowy darkness of
Oklahoma City. Not much sleep was had before that - packing procrastination had
made for a late night and caused me to miss the Sooners' All-College opening
blowout of Oral Roberts. A quick swipe of the toothbrush, toss the bags in the
truck, and it was off to the airport.
Lots of Sooners at Will Rogers this
morning, most with the same destination as ours. The puddle-jumper to Dallas is
always fun. We sat behind OU gymnastics coach Steve Nunno and his band of kids.
Coach Nunno was headed out on a family vacation and couldn't use the Orange Bowl
tickets so kindly provided to him by the University. In fact, he couldn't even
sell them or give them away, because he had to pick them up in person in Miami
to get them in hand.
Anyway, we rolled into DFW and the
wonderful outdoor parking area for those prop planes. Out into the frigid cold,
onto the bus, and finally into the warm terminal. Of course, we were at Gate
A-0, and the flight to Fort Lauderdale left from Gate A-38. Fortunately, we had
over an hour, so no big deal. My traveling companion decided to walk, while I,
the lazy one, took the grand tour of DFW on the train before finally getting to
the station nearest the gate, then walking 10 gates to get there. We volunteered
to give up our seats (the next flight was only 2 hours later) due to
overbooking, but they didn't need them.
Lots of people are asking if we are
going to the game. Must be the Orange Bowl gear that gives us away. Everyone
says they are rooting for the Sooners. Of course, I didn't ask the guy in the
FSU sweatshirt at DFW what he thought. The first sighting of the enemy, still
1,500 miles from the stadium!
As you can probably tell by now, these
Orange Bowl reports are going to concentrate more on the experience than
breaking down the game or anything like that. There are already way too many
people delving into the matchups and all that stuff. I figure y'all will enjoy
just hearing about what's going on down here. I'll leave the analysis to the
so-called professionals. Of course, I will put out the customary post-game
recap, as always.
Anyway, back to other things. You may
have seen the American Airlines commercials where they talk about how they're
taking seats out of coach in order to give people more room. Well, this is the
first time I've flown with them since then, and they weren't lying. I have never
had this kind of leg room in a 727 before. Those of you who have met me know
that I'm not the smallest guy in the world, and it has been years since I have
been able to put a tray table all the way down. But the one I'm typing this on
now is all the way down. Very cool, especially for us big guys.
These new 727's have nice sound
systems, too. You can actually hear the captain's announcements, and they sound
like they're coming out of your stereo or something. For the record, according
to the captain, we are 150 miles out of Fort Lauderdale, and the Dolphins are
losing to Indianapolis 14-0 through some weird combination of field goals,
touchdowns, and two-point conversions.
We are now beginning our descent into
Fort Lauderdale. The captain pronounced it de-scent. That means he's a good
pilot you can trust. I'm always a little uneasy with those guys that pronounce
it correctly. And that's not even mentioning the captain on the puddle-jumper to
Dallas, who sounded like Apu, the Kwik-E-Mart clerk from the Simpsons.
Anyway, I'm going to have to finish
this up, as they are going to drop the hammer on those of us utilizing
"approved electronic devices." I would have finished sooner, but the
folks sitting next to me were quizzing me about my very cool gadgetry setup that
allows me to type this report up, then pack all the equipment I used to type it
into my back pockets.
So, I am soon to be on the ground in
South Florida, where my first order of business will be to hunt down Howard
Schnellenberger, get him liquored up, take him out into the Everglades, then
leave him to find his way back home. After that, I may head up to Palm Beach
County to find some hanging chads and put them out of their misery.
No pictures today, as I didn't want to
lug the camera on the plane. Besides, you guys don't care about pictures of
airports anyway. Time to roll the watch over to Eastern Standard Time. By the
time I hit the Central Time Zone again, the Sooners will have their seventh
national championship. Vaya con Dios until tomorrow.
MIAMI BEACH, FL, 12/31/00 -
Picking up where we left off, we rolled into Fort Lauderdale about 3:00
yesterday. FedEx Orange Bowl banners all over the arrival area of the airport. A
quick trip to baggage claim, then out to the rental car bus. Four young Russians
were sitting in the back of the bus. They were speaking Russian very quickly,
and seemed to be very concerned about something that was, or would be, going on
in New Jersey. At least, "New Jersey" was all I could understand of
what they were saying.
Alamo had a very nice setup at their
facility, and I was in and out into a Chevy Malibu in short order. First things
first, I had to tune in the Dolphins game, then in overtime, to hear the ending.
On the way out the gate, the guy checking the rental contracts was listening to
the game and was very into it. Out onto I-95 South as the Colts miss a field
goal and the homer announcers rejoice. Down past the exit for Barry University,
the Sooners’ practice site. All the way to I-195, then left and out to our
hotel, the Four Points Sheraton on Miami Beach, two doors down from the Sooners’
abode at the Fountainebleau Hilton. We were supposed to stay at a brand new
place in North Miami Beach, where we had sold the SoonerFans.com packages, but
the travel agent called everyone on Thursday to advise that the hotel, which was
supposed to open on December 22, wasn’t going to open until January 3. They
did fix us up at this place, though. Right on the beach, with a fabulous view of
. . . the side of the turquoise hotel next door. Oh, well.
We got settled in, then went down to
the beach for a bit. It was too cold to swim, but we did spot a few Sooner
types. Coaches Mangino, Wright, and Long were walking or jogging down the beach
and/or the boardwalk. We also saw Seth Littrell and a couple of other guys.
There are a lot of Jewish folks here. It’s the first place I’ve ever seen
Hanukkah decorations in strip mall parking lots. There were quite a few Hasidic
Jews walking the boardwalk in either yarmulkes or traditional long, black coats
and giant fur hats that look like monstrous hockey pucks on their heads. Not
something you see in Oklahoma every day, and not something you see on the beach
much at all, except apparently around here.
After a while on the beach, my folks
came by and picked us up, and we embarked on a quest to find someplace to eat
good seafood. We drove down Highway A1A into South Beach. That is an interesting
place, with lots of interesting people. Definitely a lot of alternative-type
folks. The oddest couple we saw were two guys walking down the street with their
arms around each other, one tall, black, and dreadlocked, and the other short,
white, and bald, with the widest head I have ever seen. They were wearing
matching Gap sweatshirts and seemed happy as clams.
Traffic in South Beach is a bear, and
we weren’t finding much in the way of seafood places that looked good, so we
bugged out back to the hotel to grab a couple of those tourist books from the
room to find a good place to eat. Joe’s Stone Crab had a two-hour wait, so we
picked a place called The Crab House across the water on Biscayne Bay. On the
way, we were nearly in a massive traffic accident when someone pulled out in
front of the car in front of us. They hit, but we managed to avoid the whole
thing, barely, thanks to some great driving from my Dad and the guy to our
right, who had to dodge us and around a curb into a service road. Afterward, we
both rolled down our windows and exchanged congratulations on the good driving.
We found the Crab House, which can best
be described as expensive and mediocre. I had crab cakes, which were
unimpressive. They had no umbrellas for the foo-foo tropical drinks. We drew a
Russian waitress, Tatiana, who didn’t seem too interested in taking care of
us. The oysters and the dessert were the highlight of this one. They put lots of
horseradish right in their cocktail sauce down here. My Dad picked up the tab,
which made it a little more palatable.
We made it back to the hotel without
further traffic incident, and called it a night. I have to tell you about a
hilarious incident in the room, though. My traveling companion wanted to run the
coffee maker to get some really hot water for use on a washcloth. She called me
into the bathroom and told me the thing wasn’t working. Sure enough, you
pushed the little sliding switch to turn it on, and it would just pop back up.
So, we called housekeeping to get another one. She put the old one outside so
they could pick it up. A few minutes later, some hotel security guy, who didn’t
speak English, showed up at the door and made us take the thing back inside so
nobody would make off with it.
Housekeeping showed up a few minutes
later with a new coffee maker. About two minutes later, I hear this insane
laughter coming from the bathroom. It seems that the reason the coffee maker
wouldn’t work was not due to any problem with the coffee maker, but with the
operator. She had poured the water where the coffee was supposed to go. Thus,
the switch wouldn’t work, because there was no water in the reservoir. Then,
she thought it wasn’t working because the water got hot, but didn’t go into
the coffee chamber. She had left the lid off that moves the water from one to
the other.
This morning, we were awakened by a
nice Cuban lady with oatmeal and omelets for breakfast. A check of the ‘Net
revealed that the Sooner hoopsters had pulled out another OT win Saturday night
against SMU, and a phone call home revealed that it was snowing like a big horse
in OKC. It was unseasonably cool here, about 60, but a far cry from back home.
We chilled out around the room for a while, then took off for the Keys about
12:30. We had planned to hit Key West – after all, it’s only 160 miles from
Miami. A 2.5-hour drive, right? Wrong. The road that goes down there is only two
lanes, and the drive to Key West takes about 4 hours. We made it about halfway,
down to Marathon Key and across the Seven-Mile Bridge over the open ocean. It
was very cool. We’ll have to get all the way down to Key West before we leave,
if possible. If you’re going down there from Miami, take the Florida Turnpike
all the way south rather than Highway 1 – much faster.
On the way down, we stopped at a
Walgreen’s, and a Miami fan struck up a conversation (he said it was a
conspiracy that kept the ‘Canes out of the Orange Bowl) and recommended a
place called the Fish House in Key Largo, at the top of the Keys. A guy with a
Florida Gators license plate yelled at us at a stop light that we needed to
watch our Sooner car magnets, because they wouldn’t last very long in Miami.
The Fish House turned out to be a great recommendation. We hit the place on the
way back to Miami, as they were talking on the radio about expected record lows
of 51 degrees in the Keys.
If you are ever in Key Largo, you must
eat at the Fish House. They had
tremendous oysters, and coconut shrimp appetizers with a strangely tasty
coffee-based dipping sauce. I had grouper Matecumbe-style, sauteed with
tomatoes, capers, and other stuff. It was fabulous. My Mom and my traveling
companion had this thing with lobster and shrimp in a Key Lime sauce over rice,
which was incredible, and my Dad had yellowtail snapper Lorenzo-style, which I
didn’t try but he liked a lot. It was so good we are going to try to get back
down there before we go.
We headed back to Miami after dark, and we could see the
fireworks over downtown Miami at the end of the Orange Bowl Parade. My little
brother and the rest of the cheerleaders were in the parade, but we didn’t
feel like we wanted to spend 30 bucks apiece to stand on the public streets and
watch the thing. We headed back to the hotel, and spotted Frank Romero and a
couple of other Sooners headed into the elevator. We currently sit in the room,
watching A&M and Mississippi State play the Independence Bowl in the middle
of a blizzard. It is hard to believe that just a year ago we were playing in
that less-than-desirable bowl game, in that less-than-desirable destination. It
sure is a long way from Shreveport to Miami tonight, and a long way we have come
in just a year.
We spotted one vehicle with an OU flag
this morning. We had two, until my traveling companion inadvertently rolled down
her window and sent one flag flying out onto I-195. We also spotted a cab full
of Sooners this evening. The major influx will come in the next two days, I
would imagine. There haven’t been too many Sooners (or Seminoles) down here
yet.
The New Year is coming up in about 2.5
hours. There are a lot of things going on around Miami Beach tonight, but we’ve
decided to have a private New Year’s celebration on the beach. Tomorrow will
be devoted to watching football, and nothing but. More to come on January 1.
Until then, vaya con Dios and ROLL THE ‘NOLES.
ORANGE
BOWL DAY TWO PHOTOS
MIAMI BEACH, FL, 1/1/01 - Happy
New Year from sunny Miami! We eschewed the crazed revelry of South Beach last
night to stand on the beach and watch the fireworks. Very nice. This morning, we
slept in for a while, then went over to the beach bar at the Fontainebleau and
had breakfast/lunch. $36.00 for burgers and fries for two. We did spot Coach
Stoops' wife Carol and daughter MacKenzie. It was clear that many Sooners had
arrived recently, because they had really taken over the Fontainebleau.
The beach bar had a TV that was showing
the Cotton Bowl, and I got a huge laugh out of that. The purple kitties were
freezing their tails off in snowy Dallas (great bowl trip) while I was wearing
shorts and flip-flops, sitting at a beach bar watching them suffer in the cold.
Oh, and KSU purple and Tennessee nuclear orange don't mix well, from what I saw
in the Cotton Bowl stands.
We then embarked on a search to find
the lost car flag from yesterday. My girlfriend, Leslie, who didn't like being
called my "traveling companion" in earlier installments, insisted,
since she was the one that lost the flag in the first place. We didn't find the
flag we lost, although we did manage to pick up another OU flag that someone
else lost. It only took three round-trips across Biscayne Bay. Later on, we
found out that my folks had spotted the lost flag on their way back to their
hotel last night, and they picked it up.
Leslie wasn't feeling well, so she
stayed in bed while I watched football. After she was feeling better, we headed
down to South Beach to have dinner with the Sooner spirit squads at a hopping
place on South Beach called Mango's. On the way down, we spotted a group of FSU
fans who had put this elaborate display on top of their truck with an OU player
the size of the roof of the truck getting speared. Of course, they lacked
credibility, because they had reversed the colors on the Sooner helmet and added
a stripe down the middle.
Anyway, we finally made it down to
Mango's, which is where The Sports Animal is doing their remotes from down here.
The reservation wasn't for another hour, so we got some drinks and sat outside
people-watching. Justin Greenfield, one of the weathermen from the OU Rivals
site came by and said hi. There were lots of Sooners and not so many Seminoles
around. I also spotted Kirk Herbstreit from ESPN walking down the sidewalk. This
was not surprising, since the ESPN GameDay set was only about 150 yards back up
the beach. There is a big park along the beach, and ESPN and ABC both had their
mobile studios set up to broadcast from there. The ABC setup was right across
the street from Mango's. As we sat sipping drinks, I could see John Saunders and
Terry Bowden sitting on the set watching the Rose Bowl. If you watched any of
that ABC bowl coverage on New Year’s Day, Mango’s and the main strip of
South Beach was right behind the commentators.
So, we finally made it into Mango's.
The place is a loud dance bar, with some, ummm, scantily-clad women dancing on a
tabletop downstairs. Fortunately, we had an upstairs room in which to eat, since
there were about 30 cheerleaders and pom girls there. I won't go into details,
but while we were there we were updated on the debauchery engaged in on New
Year's Eve by the Sooner cheerleaders, who apparently went out with the FSU
cheerleaders and had a hell of a time. My little brother had to be told what he
did on New Year's Eve - he didn't remember on his own. He did offer to serve as
a pole to be danced around, and several pom girls took him up on the offer.
The food at Mango's was surprisingly
good, for a place that is mainly a bar. I had black bean soup and a Cuban
sandwich that was very tasty. Dessert was an apple crisp pie sort of thing that
was also very good. Of course, Mango's is not the kind of place that I would
normally go, and if you are not a big party person I wouldn't recommend going
there in the evenings. We had to pay a $5.00 cover to go in and eat, and I was
told that the cover on New Year's Eve was $75.00, with no shortage of people
willing to pay it. Again, not really my kind of place. They had a great live
reggae band, though. I'd eat there again, but only during the day, when they
don't ban hats in the place.
After that, it was back to the hotel to
watch the last few minutes of Oregon State's very satisfying rout of Notre Dame.
It's always a good day when Notre Dame gets their asses kicked, even if it's
done by a team wearing orange and black and calling themselves OSU. This bodes
well for Wednesday night.
Tomorrow, we're hooking up with my
buddy Mark and his wife Lynn from California. You message board types probably
know Mark as Tru2OU. We are going on an Everglades tour, and plan to check out
the famous Joe’s Stone Crab Restaurant as well. More tomorrow. Until then,
vaya con Dios and ROLL THE NOLES!!
ORANGE
BOWL DAY THREE PHOTOS
MIAMI BEACH, FL, 1/2/01 – We
were up early today and had another nice room service breakfast delivered the
same very cheery Cuban lady. Mark and his wife Lynn came by and picked us up,
and we headed down to South Beach to see what there was to see in the daylight.
As we were going down Ocean Drive, along the main strip of South Beach, Lynn
spotted legendary Sooner linebacker Brian Bosworth walking down the sidewalk,
which thrilled her to no end. A few minutes later, as we were coming off a side
street looking for a place to park, Leslie spotted Boz coming down the sidewalk
right at the car. Lynn rolled down her window and said, "Hi, Brian,"
and Boz said, "Hi, babe." Needless to say, that made Lynn’s day. We
also spotted Bob Barry, Jr. doing his radio show from outside one of the three
OU stores set up in storefronts along Ocean Drive.
We parked along Ocean Drive and walked
around for a while, checking out one of the OU stores along the way. We also
took a short walk along the beach before it was time to meet my parents for
lunch at Joe’s.
If you couldn’t figure it out from
the name, Joe’s Stone Crab is
famous for stone crab claws. The claws are the only thing edible on that crab,
and they only harvest one claw, then toss the crab back into the ocean so it
will regrow. Joe’s bills itself as the first restaurant on Miami Beach, dating
back to 1913. It is a bit of a fancy place, although, at least for lunch, they
let the tourist types in wearing their hats and shorts, etc. The waiters are all
in black-tie attire.
Joe’s doesn’t take reservations,
and when they open for dinner at 6:00, the wait is already about two hours. For
lunch, we had to wait only about 20 minutes, though. After some deliberation, we
decided to go with the stone crabs for the table. They hammer them to crack the
shells for you and bring them out on a big platter with drawn butter and a
mustardy mayonnaise sauce that was quite good. I have to say that stone crab is
now one of my favorites. They have sweet meat that practically melts in your
mouth. We got sides of hashed brown potatoes, garlic asparagus, and spinach, all
of which were very tasty as well. It’s not the kind of place you could afford
to eat at every day, but it’s a must if you are in Miami Beach. You can also
order stone crabs to be shipped overnight anywhere in the country, a service of
which I intend to avail myself at some point.
While we were at Joe’s, we spotted
several celebrity-types. Roger Ebert, of movie review fame, was eating about
three tables over from us. We also spotted legendary Sooner Heisman Trophy
winner Billy Vessels, who came in with Debbie Copp from the Athletic Department.
We also saw a guy who looked like Steven Spielberg, but it wasn’t him.
After stone crab it was off to the
swamps west of Miami for a trip into the Everglades via airboat. On
the way, we lost another car flag due to brain cramp, but my folks were right
behind us and picked it up.
Coopertown
Airboats was the name of the place, and for $12.00 they took you blazing off
into the swamp to see gators, birds, and other critters. Personally, my favorite
part was just tooling through the swamp at a high rate of speed. Our driver
would stop at the places where certain gators live and feed them marshmallows to
keep them around so we could take pictures. It is a bit of an experience to have
a 10-foot long wild alligator nudging the boat with his nose right by your foot,
especially when the side of the boat is only about a foot and a half high.
We saw some Sooners out taking the
airboat ride, and while we were in South Beach in the morning, there were
nothing but Sooners around. We have definitely taken over Miami Beach, with few
Seminoles to be found. There weren’t very many Sooners here on Saturday and
Sunday, but since then that’s about all you see.
Back to Miami Beach, we changed clothes
and headed to the OU team hotel, the Fontainebleau Hilton to see what was going
on over there. They had some kind of reception going on, but there was nowhere
to watch the Sugar Bowl. I did say hi to Jamelle Holieway, and spotted Reggie
Barnes while there. We went out the back to go down the boardwalk to a sports
bar at the Eden Roc Hotel a couple of doors down from the Fontainebleau. Out by
the elaborate waterfall pool, Channel 9 was doing a live show back to Oklahoma
with Dean Blevins and others, so we had to go the long way around, behind the
waterfall, so as not to sully the backdrop.
We got over to the Eden Roc, and the
sports bar there turned out to be a Jimmy Johnson Three Rings Bar & Grill
like the one on Lincoln Boulevard in Oklahoma City. Now, I am loath to put any
money in that fool’s pocket, but it was the only place available, so we went
in. There were no more seats inside, so we sat out on the deck on Miami Beach to
watch the Sugar Bowl. The place quickly filled up with Sooners, and it was
apparent that the management wasn’t prepared for the rush. Practically
everyone in the place was cheering for Florida, save a couple of lost Miami
fans. One goober, an 18-year-old kid wearing a Florida State helmet with no face
mask and a Chris Weinke jersey (and who Mark suspected of being Weinke’s son)
came through and yelled "BOOMER" for some reason, as people stared and
ignored him.
Midway through the second quarter, it
got a little too chilly, so we all went our separate ways back to our hotels to
watch the rest of the game. Miami’s win means that all the Miami types at the
game tomorrow night will be rooting for the Seminoles. So much the better. Until
game day, vaya con Dios and ROLL THE NOLES!!
ORANGE
BOWL DAY FOUR PHOTOS
MIAMI BEACH, FL, 1/3/01 -
GameDay, and my stomach was jumping all day. I spent the whole morning working
on the travelogue and uploading pictures before heading over to the
Fontainebleau for the official pregame lunch/pep rally. We got there a little
early, so I went out by the pool and talked to my friend Rick from the Touchdown
Club, plus Brian Stolte and Terry McLemore from the OU Radio Network team. Rick
pulled a 2000 National Champions t-shirt out of his bag and showed it to me. He
wasn't wearing it to the game, though, because it would have been bad luck. He
was saving it for later.
The party was OK, but it was very weird
to be eating burgers and dogs, regular tailgate food, off a buffet line manned
by waiters in fancy short coats. They had a Pride of Oklahoma CD cycling through
the sound system, and it was quite humorous to see people rising for the
national anthem (which had already played a couple of times off the CD) in the
party. President Boren made some hokey comments, and Joe Castiglione made some
less hokey comments. The Pride showed up and blew through Boomer Sooner a few
times, then the party broke up and everyone headed out for Pro Player Stadium,
even though it was three and a half hours before game time.
As it turned out, that time would be
needed. The stadium is in North Miami, and we had to brave rush hour traffic to
get there. Our trip ended up taking about an hour and 45 minutes to go all of
about 15 miles or so. And that was with a bypass of interstate traffic by
driving up Miami Beach first. Of course, that traffic sucked as well. As we were
getting ready to pull out of the hotel, a Sooner fan stuck his head in the
window and offered us $10 to take him and his wife to the game. I told him to
keep his money and we would give him a ride. Eventually, he tossed the $10 at us
as they were getting out of the car and wouldn't take it back.
Parking was about full, so we ended up
way around the back of the stadium. We followed some other folks into the lots
via a, shall we say, clandestine entry point, and parked somewhere in the north
40. The hike into the stadium was uneventful, although we did see that weird FSU
truck with the OU dummy-thing on the top. There were quite a few FSU fans around
where we parked, but they were civil, although palpably arrogant about the game.
In the gate, up the very thoughtfully
designed escalator to the top level, and to our seats we went. We were three
rows from the top of the place on about the 10-yard line, but we could see
everything. Before the game, the Orange Bowl inducted some people into its Hall
of Honor or Ring of Fame of something like that (which includes tons of Sooners,
by the way). One of them was Al Davis of the Raiders, who apparently never had
anything to do with the Orange Bowl. Another was Jimmy Johnson, who had
apparently made it his personal mission to piss off every single person in the
stadium, taking shots at both OU and FSU, and declaring his support for Miami.
The game itself I will leave for the
game report. A few things that stood out: the Sooner fans were much louder than
the FSU fans. The only home field advantage in Pro Player Stadium was with the
Sooners. We made a bunch of noise when the Seminoles had the ball. We were
sitting three rows from the top of the stadium, but we stood the whole game.
Some guys sitting a couple of rows in front of us had been involved in
underwriting the insurance policy for the pre-game million dollar field goal
gimmick. They got kicked off the field when someone noticed that their passes
were only good for pre-game access, so they made their way up to the cheap
seats. During halftime, right before they quit selling beer at the concession
stands, these guys went and bought up about 20 beers and were passing them out
free to people in our section.
The Orange Bowl wouldn’t let the
Sooner Schooner or FSU’s mascot in the stadium because of an alleged lack of
space. Well, there were about 25 yards between the stands and the sidelines all
the way down the field. There was more than enough room to have four Sooner
Schooners down there. Typical corporate crap.
The halftime show that I dreaded for
its length turned out to be only about 15 minutes long. It sucked bigtime
anyway. We ended up smelling like gunpowder, though, because we were sitting
right under one of the light standards when they set off a bunch of fireworks
mounted on top of the lights.
After the game and the trophy ceremony
was over, I didn’t want to leave, but security started running people out of
the stadium. We saw some Sooners exchanging unkind words with some ushers who
were obviously disappointed Miami fans. We tracked down my folks in the parking
lot and had some victory champagne, then caught a ride across the parking lot to
our car and headed for the hotel. We took the Florida Turnpike, and ended up
going through the toll booth just ahead of a Sooner fan who had driven down from
Oklahoma. So, we paid his toll for him.
On the way, we realized we were
starving, and despite the late hour (1:00 a.m. or so) we started looking for
someplace still open where we could eat. Rolling into Miami Beach, we spotted a
combination Blimpie/Dunkin Donuts/Baskin-Robbins that was still open. A number
of others had discovered it as well, as the place was full of Sooner fans. There
were only two people working, both Russians, it appeared. After a minor wait, we
got our sandwiches. While the sandwiches were being made, the Sooner team busses
came rolling by with their police escort. Leslie and a couple of other people
went outside to yell as they went by. They were trailed by several Sooner cars
with horns blaring. There were at least a few in the place who were planning to
eat, pack, and head to the airport for early morning flights.
Heading back to the hotel, we engaged
in a little horn-honking as well. We got back and the valet service had cars
piled up in the street where you couldn’t drive into the hotel’s driveway.
We found a valet guy across the street and dropped off the car, as people
streamed by on the sidewalk on the way to the Fontainebleau for the victory
party that would last until sometime after the sun came up. We were just too
tired for any of that. We went in, where some Sooners were watching SportsCenter
on the big screen in the lobby. We sat down and watched while we ate, then went
up to bed. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t sound very exciting for a national
championship celebration, but that’s how it happened.
ORANGE
BOWL DAY FIVE PHOTOS
ORANGE
BOWL GAME PHOTOS
MIAMI BEACH, FL, 1/4/01 – We
got up fairly early, considering the late night the night before. I did some
work on the website while Leslie packed her stuff. I then got packed and we
checked out and headed for Mark and Lynn’s hotel. We picked them up at 11:15
and went down to Ocean Drive in South Beach to pick up some championship gear at
the Orange Bowl stores down there. We also saw Gianni Versace’s house, where
he was murdered on the front steps a couple of years ago. Leslie got a t-shirt,
while I picked up some pins for some people, a stein, a little Orange Bowl bear,
a championship hat, and a cool black Orange Bowl duffel bag. We left around noon
with the intention of heading down to Key Largo for another lunch at The Fish
House. On the way back to the car, I saw a lady drinking at one of the bistros
that I could swear was Ivana Trump.
I was driving us to Key Largo, and I
don’t usually have trouble with directions. I knew that we could get to the
Florida Turnpike by taking I-95 South from the Miami Beach Causeway (I-195),
then going west on Highway 836 until we hit the pike. For some reason, I
followed the signs onto I-95 North because they said the Turnpike was that way.
I thought it was just a little ways, but it was a lot further, and when we got
there, we couldn’t get on the Turnpike southbound, only northbound. So, we
took I-95 back south, and I took the first airport exit, which was one before
the one I should have taken. That resulted in our getting the grand tour of the
airport, to the great amusement of my passengers, before I finally got onto
Highway 836 headed toward the Turnpike.
On top of that, it was like 20 miles
further to Key Largo than I remembered from earlier in the trip. Mark and Lynn
had a 4:30 flight, and there was no way we could get down there, eat, and get
them back to their hotel in time for them to get to the airport, return their
rental car, and make their flight. So, I volunteered to return their car for
them, since they had brought their bags. After lunch, which was again very good,
we zipped back up to the airport only to get caught in hellish traffic. We
managed to get them to the departure area about 25 minutes before their flight
left, and they made it onto the plane.
Meanwhile, my folks had gotten bumped
from their flight and were not going to make it out of Miami until Friday. That
meant that we had to hook up so that I could get their car keys so we would have
a way to get home, since they were our ride and they weren’t going to be there
when we got back. We met in a hotel parking lot near the airport, and I got
their keys and a copy of the Miami Herald, which had been pretty scarce when we
tried to find it. It was about 4:30 by this time, and we still had to negotiate
rush hour traffic all the way up to Fort Lauderdale Airport. I concluded that
there was no way we could get Mark’s car returned for him and still make our
flight, so I turned it over to my folks, who took care of it later in the
evening, after traffic had died down.
That turned out to be a really good
decision, because we got caught in more hellish traffic trying to get to I-95. I
mean, like parking lot hellish. On top of that, we were almost out of gas, the
low fuel warning light having come on while we were at the airport. We finally
got tired of sitting around and moved over into the only lane that was moving,
which took us to I-95 South. We got off and started looking for a gas station,
but all we found was that we were in a neighborhood near downtown that had no
gas stations. It was also a neighborhood in which we quickly determined that we
should not be, especially if we were to run out of gas.
After a few hair-raising moments
sweating the gas gauge and seeing nothing remotely resembling a gas station, we
got back on I-95 and then onto the I-395 causeway back to Miami Beach. It didn’t
get us any closer to the airport, but I figured I’d rather run out of gas on
the interstate or on Miami Beach, plus I knew there were gas stations on Miami
Beach. We found a station just after we got off the causeway and pulled in, only
to find that the station itself was out of gas. This was ironic. The only thing
that would have been more ironic would have been if we had run out of gas in the
parking lot of the gas station that was also out of gas. However, that didn’t
happen. We found another station a few blocks away and got enough juice to get
us to the airport, then headed out.
We had about an hour and 45 minutes
before our flight, and we were about 20 miles south of the airport. However,
more of that hellish traffic had us creeping over into the HOV lane in an effort
to move along a little better. After we got past the main chokepoint, it was
smooth sailing, and we stopped to look for souvenir newspapers before cruising
into Alamo to return the car about 55 minutes before our flight was to leave. We
made it to the terminal with about 40 minutes to spare. Fortunately, there were
some skycaps, and we were able to check our bags and get our boarding passes
there at the curb. We made it onto the flight about five minutes before they
would have given our seats away.
The flight to Dallas was uneventful, at
least where we were sitting. During the long taxi to the gate at DFW, the flight
attendants made two or three announcements about people staying in their seats,
and as we got off, one was talking about having called security because of
someone on the plane. We saw the security guy coming on as we got off, and later
a couple of Dallas airport cops got on, too. We never did find out what was
going on, though.
Finally, we trudged down to the end of
the terminal, where the plane (no puddle jumper this time) waited to bring us
back home. The aircraft was full of Sooner fans returning from Miami. As the
wheels touched down on the runway in Oklahoma City, someone yelled
"TOUCHDOWN OKLAHOMA!" Indeed.
And so, a magical, historic trip to
Miami ended. And the greatest thing I can take away from it is the knowledge
that I was there when we made it all the way back. I told myself when we were in
the depths of the Blake years that I would be there when we made it all the way
back, and so I was. I really thought that I would cry when we finally did it,
but that didn’t happen. It probably really hasn’t sunk in yet what these
Sooners accomplished. I have a feeling it won’t sink in until I watch them
unveil the sign at Owen Field commemorating the 2000 National Champions. And you
can bet I won’t miss that one.
And so, until next season’s Rose Bowl
travelogue, vaya con Dios. |
