2016 A Roundtrip that was (#6) … and one that wasn’t (#7)

As those that follow my travels, you know it is our goal to hit an 'away' Marquette basketball game at every school in the Big East. While that quest was supposed to be during the undergraduate work that my son, Erik was planning to complete in FOUR years, we'll do it whenever we can. This year we had hopes to make it to two more venues:

The Roundtrip that wasn't – St. John's

We tried! Our goal was to make it to New York City to see our Marquette Golden Eagles take on St. John's University at Madison Square Garden. Our logistics were a bit more complex as we tried to make it a family get away and Kyle would have needed to join us by flying out of Minneapolis and meet up with us in New York City. We had game tickets (actually four awesome seats) at the Garden, we had plane tickets (3 of us flying from O'Hare to LaGuardia and Kyle flying from Minneapolis to LaGuardia), and we seemed to have found a hidden gem of a hotel only a two-block walk from Madison Square Garden. What we didn't plan on was the monster snow storm that dropped between 12 and 18 inches of snow on New York city (and 20+ on Washington DC). The morning of our flight my first text message was for a flight cancellation and came in at 5:30am (our flight was 7:15pm). Roxanne worked for nearly 7 hours trying to get us all re-routed into New York but by 1:00pm, we realized that this trip was not going to happen.

We did get refunds for all the flights and the hotel graciously cancelled our reservation despite the fact that we didn't give the 24-hour cancellation. The Saturday game was not actually cancelled but simply postponed to Sunday on campus at St. Johns so the only cost we ate was 4 tickets.

Oh well…. we'll need to try again in the near future.

The Roundtrip that was – Xavier University

The second goal this year was to make the Marquette vs Xavier game in Cincinnati on Saturday, February 6, 2016. Cincinnati was a relatively easy commute from MU with only about a 6 ½ hour drive. Erik and Tim left Milwaukee about 4pm on Friday and drove straight to the XU campus so we'd be clear on where the game was to be held at noon on Saturday. We eventually stayed in Newport, Kentucky which provided us a beautiful view of downtown Cincinnati that night as well as the following morning. We did take the opportunity to check out downtown Cincinnati, Vine Street, The Great American Ball Park where the Cincinnati Reds play baseball and even got Erik to taste Skyline Chili!

We usually try to walk around the university campus to get a sense of the university and I will tell you that I was impressed. For a small college, the campus is spacious, the buildings almost all seem new or very well cared for and the on-campus Cintas Center where the game was to be played was very nice.

Our game seats were fantastic. We got to Cintas Center early and checked out our seats. The third photo (right side, above) are from our tickets. My friend, Mike took care of us. Even better yet, we met some great people at the game. Ted, the guy from the seats immediately in front of us graciously took us on a tour of the facility which included the Xavier Athletics Hall of Fame as well as attending the Xavier Ticket Holder pre-game festivities where we were SERIOUSLY the only two people not wearing Xavier gear! Me, in my bright yellow Marquette gear, and Erik in his Marquette jersey stood out like sore thumbs! IT WAS A LOT OF FUN!

As always, the trip was a great time for both dad and son. So here is the current tally: