(Written by kencraw)

Today we headed out from Springfield, MA at 5:15 AM. It is a 12 hour drive to Columbus, OH. But yet again, why just do the drive when you can add a bunch of other things to the trip? We had the following stops in mind:

• The Tri-State marker (New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania)
• Penn State in College Station, PA
• Flight 93 memorial
• Cal U. (more on this later)
• Monroeville Mall (site of the “Dawn of the Dead” movie)

We left at 5:15 AM and we had a limitation on what we could do: We HAD to make it to Columbus, OH by 8:00 PM so that we could get our free T-Shirts at the Cal event at Golden Biersch. We fully expected we wouldn’t be able to go everywhere on the list. Monroeville was the most off the direct path between the two end points, so we fully expected that would be the one we dropped and perhaps one other one.

The Tri-State marker was fun, but very quick. Just snapped a couple pictures after finding it at the end of a cemetery on a peninsula between two rivers. As such we were ahead of schedule early.

Penn State was interesting (boy do they have a BIG stadium and LOTS of athletic facilities in addition to a nice campus in a quaint town). But we didn’t get out of the car. We just took pictures from the car and got a flavor for the town. Thus we were even further ahead of schedule.

The Flight 93 memorial was very nice and it’s going to get better over time as the trees grow in. Very well done and the right combination of mournful, respectful and hopeful. The names of the 40 who died were on white granite slabs at the end of a triangle shaped charcoal concrete patio. I’m not sure if this was intended, but the patio looked like a wing to the white granite body of the plane. We also made sure to make note of the former Cal rugby player who died (Mark Bingham) in the crash.

We had budgeted an hour and a half for that one, and it took a little less than an hour, so we were over an hour ahead of schedule when we left there. All of a sudden, my brother’s desire to make it to Monroeville Mall looked possible.

But first we had to go to California University.

I’ll put on my Cliff Clavin voice: “It’s a little known fact that there’s a town in Pennsylvania called California. And what’s more, there’s a college there named ‘California University of Pennsylvania’.”

Yes, it’s true.

We just HAD to go see it. And we were aghast to see that their colors were RED, yes RED, and black. How could that be possible!?!

In any case, we didn’t stay much longer than to take some pictures in our Cal gear in front of their entrance sign. Thus the trip to Monroeville was on.

From Cal-U, Monroeville is 30 miles to the north as the crow flies in a suburb of Pittsburg to the east of downtown. Cal-U is only 2 hours and 30 minutes from Columbus, Ohio. We had nearly 3:45 of time left, so we thought that was plenty of time.

Boy were we wrong.

That 30 mile trip took over an hour, winding our way through multiple small towns with lots of lights and a surprising amount of traffic. After 15 minutes in the mall at their little museum shop (which my brother realized was a waste when we got there), we got back on the road and realized that we had two problems: One, we now had to drive through downtown Pittsburg at rush hour. Two, even without any traffic, it was a nearly 3-hour drive.

All of a sudden we were AT LEAST a half-hour behind schedule. Long story short, we drove like mad-men to make up the time that we lost in traffic. Yet, we just couldn’t do any better than to get to the Golden Beirsch in Columbus by 8:25 PM. By the time we’d parked and got to the door it was 8:35 and they. were. out. of. shirts…

Ugh!

Well, we can’t win them all, and we did have one heck of an adventure.

The GB was JAM PACKED with Bear fans, which is a good thing unless you haven’t had any dinner and don’t really know anyone there. We ended up heading down the road to the next pub and ate there before heading back to the hotel.

The game tomorrow is at noon, and we hope to head out of here by 10:00 AM to head over there. Let’s hope the game is a good one!