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This is the story of only the trip to the stadium. I will return later with details about the game, and details about the trip home.
The main characters - Chris (the Navigator) and DJ (the Driver)
The objective. To go to the annual Kansas City Chiefs - Oakland Raiders matchup in Kansas City, Missouri.
The story begins Saturday evening around 9:00 when I leave from Conway to go to Fayetteville where Chris is already with his fiance Shannon. The plan was to get some sleep that night and wake up the next morning and drive to Kansas City. When I got to her apartment around 11:00 that evening, we started up some NCAA basketball on the xbox, and tried to install some navigation and GPS software on his Palm. Basically, we did not get to sleep until around 2:30 in the morning. We woke around 9:30 and left around 10:15....we were off....ready to take on the road....as you can see by the map below, following the blue line...we took I-71 from fayettevile up through Rogers and Pineville to Joplin...and then got on I-44 where we were supposed to get back on I-71 North. At this point, we decided we wanted to watch some TV, so we turned on the laptop, and popped in King of the Hill, we watched two great episodes, and then started getting hungry. When I looked up again, we were close to Springfield, Missouri. So we decided to stop and get a bite to eat....we had a very large meal of Pizza from Pizza-Inn where they have a 5 dollar all you can eat buffet. we put a hurtin on the place, and got back on the road. Mind you, we still have not realized, that we are way off track...
We kept driving until I realized that we no longer were seeing signs that said the mileage to Kansas City. We were now seeing signs that said the mileage to Rolla. I knew we didn't want to go to Rolla, so we checked his navigational software on his Palm (a little too late at this point), only to realize, that we had no idea where we were....
When we got to Lebanon, we stopped and asked the fastest way to get to Kansas city, only to find out, at 1:00 PM (kickoff is 3:15) that we were now more than 3 hours away from kansas city and arrowhead stadium.
we got our directions and got back on the road. After paying over 200 dollars for these tickets, we were not about to miss this game. We proceeded to go down Highway 64 and Highway 65 at an average speed of roughly 80-85 miles an hour...speed limit...55mph. I was making passes on blind corners, passing on double yellows, it was insane. When we hit I-70 finally, we were still quite a ways away, about 70 miles to be exact. and it was 3:15....it would have taken about an hour had I gone the speed limit.
on I-70, I turned the interstate into a race track. I did 90-95 miles an hour clear down the interstate, making passes on the shoulder, cutting people off the whole way.
Total travel time from Conway, Arkansas to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri should be about 7 hours and 17 minutes, going the correct way. Going from Conway, Arkanas to Lebanon and then to Arrowhead Stadium would take about 10 hours. I made the trip (not counting sleep time in fayettevile) in just under 8 hours, or close to it.
The map below shows the path to take following the blue line starting in Jacksonville (Chris's home), all the way up to Kansas City. The red line shows the path that we actually took from the Joplin area, to Lebanon, and then up to Kansas City.
<a href="http://www.djandcristiwalker.com/HB/map.jpg" target="_fullview">http://www.djandcristiwalker.com/HB/map.jpg</a>
OK, i just noticed that none of the links work, if you really want to see a link, just let me know, HB is being stupid about the way it is parsing hbml tags...i'm going to admin to work this out.
<font color="#000099" size="1">[ November 25, 2003 07:03 PM: Message edited by: GravyTrain ]</font>
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That's funny, and pretty cool! lol...
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.. I could have sworn Lebanon was in Europe.
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Actually, the Middle East. Just north of Israel.
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Here are a few more details....
First, here's a horrible picture of the outside of Arrowhead Stadium.
<a href="http://www.djandcristiwalker.com/HB/Outside.jpg" target="_fullview">http://www.djandcristiwalker.com/HB/Outside.jpg</a>
It was dark, and the picture sucks, but get over it....
For those of you that don't know much about football, here is a bit of information about the game.
First, the greatest wide receiver of all time was at the game....Jerry Rice. The large guy in the bottom right of the picture is Lincoln Kennedy, i believe....I apologize for the horrible quality of hte picture, it's the best I could do. I wanted to get a picture of Tim Brown (another of the greatest wide outs of all time) as well, but i didn't get it. i think i'll live though.
Brown and Rice play for the Raiders, but there was a pretty big story on the Chiefs as well, Dante Hall. I forget the numbers right now, sorry, but i believe he has 4 or 5 kickoff/punt returns for touchdowns this season. What I do know is that one more and he will break the record, a very impressive record if you ask me. The picture of him is one of the last chances he had during the course of hte game to bring it back. Even though he didn't take one back all the way, he did have several good returns.
Finally, the actual game, and the way it ended. I got a picture of the Jerry scoreboard right before it ended, when the Raiders had their best chance. As you can see, it came down to the play right after i took this shot....at 4th and 14 on the 33 yard line with only 19 seconds to go, they had to convert for a first down, or the raiders would take over, and more than likely send the game into overtime. Normally, the coach would send the kicker onto the field, but the Chiefs kicker who is 43 years old (i think that's right) could not kick it that far anymore..
neeldess to say, they did convert the 1st down, and the chiefs won on basically a last second field goal. even though the raiders did lose, i was still very pleased with the quality of game that I was able to watch. Next year, I just really hope the raiders win.
<font color="#000099" size="1">[ November 25, 2003 06:51 PM: Message edited by: GravyTrain ]</font>
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Cool man! I saw Jerry Rice and Joe Montana play when SF played the Saints in '89. Then I saw Joe when he played for the Chiefs...I've actually gotten to see some good players over the years...Brett Farve, Dan Marino, Barry Sanders..
<font color="#000099" size="1">[ November 25, 2003 11:42 PM: Message edited by: The Cheat ]</font>
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That's a longass detour. From Joplin to the Middle East looks to be over 100 miles...I must ask...neither of you noticed even once that the Highway signs all read that you were traveling Eastbound?
King of the Hill....it's really a problem! For one hour a day it keeps me from getting any work done, and it has now been shown to distract attention while driving.
That boy aint right.
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i did noticed that we were heading East bound....but there are interstates across the country where east bound traffic is actually traveling north, or south...and west bound traffis is traveling north or south, and vice versa. although that is what finally set me off that we were in trouble. but we weren't really paying attention, because we had King of the Hill going until we hit Springfield. after that, we realized something was wrong, but tried to figure it out ourselves instead of stopping for directions.
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having to stop my scrolling to click links is very inconvenient for a lazy bastard such as myself
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Bahahahha.
You shoulda got photos of your faces when the person you asked for directions said you were 3 hours away.
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Europe, Middle East.. same hunk of land.
