Wednesday September 29, 2010 - The View From Section EE

The weather decided to be as bad as they predicted. Friday was a great day with very good temperatures. Sunday, the same thing, but we get stuck with a crappy Saturday. It has to be the last time I try to put together an event at a football game.

To start things off, we left Harlan around 8:00 AM. A couple miles outside of town, our new windshield wipers became disconnected and almost fell off. We stopped and tried to reattach them, but something broke. The drive between Harlan and DeSoto was awful. I could see the wiper moving and looked like it will fall off at any moment. As I exited to DeSoto the wiper fell off, but it got stuck and I did not lose it. Thank God for duct tape at the local Kum & Go.

The second reason for the stop in DeSoto was we left our beer in Harlan. That would have been devastating, considering the rainy and cold conditions in Ames.

Once we all got to Baxter, we began to load up the RV. This is when the rain began to rain really hard. It decided not to stop until maybe 3:30 PM. No one kept accurate minutes of the tailgate, so that time could go either way a good hour or two. Needless to say, the rain and cold made for a rough day. Thankfully, a couple tents, an RV, and an awning on the RV help protect us from the crappy conditions.

Due to the unfavorable conditions, below is what the game looked like from Section EE. Kind of blurry, but that was my point. Ask Kristy about the walk out of the stadium at halftime as we sought out more beers. A few trees and a few hundred looks we received tells an amazing story.

From what I recall about the game, the ISU and UNI offense looked like teams that could win three or four games all year. Hopefully this weekend, we get a better look at the game and hopefully see some improvement on the offensive side of the ball. In order to beat Texas Tech, a lot of points will need to be scored. This is one of the games ISU needs to win, especially at home. There is a part of me that thinks they will be able to pull out the win, but after seeing the offense look pretty poor against UNI, its hard to tell.

My prediction:





42



24

Thursday September 23, 2010 - The View From Section EE

As painful as it was, we made a trip to Cedar Falls last weekend. It was quite a coincidence that UNI had a home game. This is where part one of the painful trip began. Part two was Sunday morning. We had a wedding for an old college friend to attend, so as people were out freezing in the cold and rain tailgating, we stayed inside to go to the wedding. On a side note, if we did not have a wedding, we would have most likely planned a group outing to go to the game at UNI. The last 4 years I have planned a trip to UNI for a game. The first two years were in November. It was ridiculously cold, so last year we planned on the first weekend in October. Once again, cold and rainy. So the last four trips to UNI have been eventful, but awful weather.

Back to the trip, we were thankful that Kristy's aunt and uncle now live in Cedar Falls. They let us drop the kids off to play with their four boys and Shawn and Alyssa watched the girls for us. Bri had a great time. Sounds like she played all day and even the next morning very well with her cousins. Below is a picture of her and her new friend Gabe. All Sunday morning he was trying to talk me into going to another wedding that night. Then when we were outside getting ready to leave, he was crying and was sad. It was pretty cute. We will have to get up there more often just so they can play for hours and out of our hair.

So last Saturday did not turn out anyway that I predicted. The Iowa State offense if looking pretty sick, therefore making it tough to pick them to win may games. This weeks game brings a dilema for us. We grew up Iowa State fans, but am still in debt to UNI, and probably will be for years! So, I am sure I will have on some colors for both teams this Saturday.

My gut feeling after the ISU loss to Kansas State was that UNI will win this game, somewhere around 24-21. Then UNI goes out and loses at home and turned the ball over close to the end zone a couple of times. That has changed my prediction. I think it will be close early, but I think ISU's offense will show some life, hopefully with the second string in at quarteback, and they will pull away late in the game.

My prediction:





31



13

Thursday Spetmeber 16, 2010 - The View From Section EE

The only thing I took from last Saturday's game against Iowa was I predicted Iowa's points! Wow, that was ugly and pathetic. The only saving grace is there is 10 more games to go.

As for the past week, the four year old is back to her monster self and the baby does not want to sleep more than two hours at a time for me since Kristy has gone back to work. Its been a little rough lately.

Here is a picture of what Ian has been dealing with:

Our sleeping routine has been awesome. Get home at 11:30 PM. She wakes up around 1:00 AM. Eats, sleeps until 3:00 PM. Eats, then sleeps until 5:00 AM. East, then sleeps to 8:00 AM or so. Except for the morning she woke up at 5:30 AM and stayed up until 7:30 AM. Good times, good times. This has to end soon.

And here is a little picture of the older monster climbing a rock wall. I was not there, and I don't believe she made it.

And one last picture, one of Emily in her UNI shirt. Kind of a bugged eyed smile, but we will take it. At least she wasn't mad at me for a while!

And since there is a football game Saturday, I will try to throw out another prediction. This is a must win game for ISU down in Kansas City against Kansas State. Last years game resulted in a loss because of a missed extra point. This year, I do not see the game coming down to an extra point. Both team have good running games, but I think Iowa State pulls it out.

My prediction is:

41
31

Tuesday 09/07/2010 - The View From Section EE

Last weeks anniversary went well. I made it to Ames a good four hours before kick off and right across the street front he stadium. We were able to break in the new RV nicely with a cold bottle of champagne and a good Cyclone win. I was pretty close on my prediction last week, 27-17 ISU. ISU beat Northern Illinois 27-10, but it happened a lot different that I anticipated. I thought the game would be close early, but ISU would pull it off late. Almost the exact opposite happened. ISU started out really well, but made a few bad mistakes. At least all of us in the South End Zone thought they should have scored close to 35 points.

I did not bring our camera to the game, so I did not get very good pictures of the game. The one of the score and the picture below were the only ones that looked decent. I will try to get some pictures from Kristy's uncle that look a lot better. I believe this is one of the final plays of the game, right before we needed to make the much needed run back to the RV.

This weeks game may be ugly. After watching the ISU play a good first half, that gave a little bit of hope for the game in Iowa City. I have this feeling that they could stun the country and pull off the win on the road. Its a similar feeling to the NCAA Basketball Tournament when UNI beat Kansas. I thought they could win, but there was no way I could either bet on it or predict it. This goes with the game Saturday. If does not turn the ball over, but forces Iowa to a couple turnovers, then they have a shot. If they win, it could be in the score of 17-14 type of ball game. But that is the cardinal and gold colored classes, so my true prediction is:

35

17

Lets hope my first, non-official, prediction comes true. Go Cyclones!!!