Dallas
This was another two sport double header. My family decided to visit the house that Jerry built. We came, we saw, we crushed it. Huge shout out to my cousin Anthony, who makes all these trips possible. He is a die-hard Bears fan that does an insane tailgate each week and every year plans for us Bears fans to invade another city and watch them (hopefully) bear down on the competition. These trips started when we were 22, which thankfully, was well before social media was thing and therefore, I have no documentation of the debauchery that happened that Monday night in Minnesota for our innagural trip. However, it’s well documented that our group of 6 college kids turned into 22 professional adults that travel hundreds of miles to a stadium that’s less superior than Soldier Field so that we can watch the Bears throw down the T-formation on some unsuspecting players (or so we hope).
Anyways- Dallas. We made the decision to stay in Austin for the two days leading up to the game and then transfer all of our people, luggage, and hangovers to Dallas (a quick 3 hour trip on the map, not so much when you have 2 dozen adults drinking like it’s their last day on earth). We rented a party bus to take 20 adults, a few handles of booze and luggage to Dallas. Let’s just say it was my first mobile tailgate. We had a few friends who had locked down a location for a tailgate so we got to experience a little bit of landlocked chow and drinks before heading in. The stadium is HUGE. Tailgates HUGE. Mid field screen HUGE. Everything really is bigger in Texas. Dak & Zeke put on a show that could not compare to the Bears D, and our Austin to Dallas pre-game buzz wore off very quickly. Despite the highest seats of our away game tenure, we didn’t miss a play because of that jumbo-jumbo-tron that showed every blade of grass that shifted during each play.
Fast forward to my family gathering their bearings, luggage and dignity- and you are left with me and Kev. Of course we extended our trip to include baseball. We stayed an extra day to hit up a good ole southern baseball game. Non descript stadium, but let me tell you, the Helchos were one for the books. (“Helchos” for those who aren’t knowledgable to the baseball kingdom terms- are nachos served in a souvenir helmet). What am I going to do with a fake, not-big-enough-to-fit-on-your-head-helmet? Well, I guess I’ll tell you when I dig it out of my closet in 3 years when I’m doing a Spring cleaning. But in the moment, at that specific moment of hangover-meets baseball game- meets exhaustion of being with my family, I wanted Nachos. And I wanted nachos that looked cool.
