(Rob:) There's a glorious place Susan likes to call "Rob's World." It's not so much an actual geographical location as a state of mind. MY mind, to be specific. A magical, mythical place where the days are filled with Rocky Mountain climbing and the nights are spent sipping Millstream beer by the fire while strumming Tom Petty songs on a Taylor acoustic guitar. The Hawkeyes and Broncos win every weekend and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (with special guests from beyond, Sam Cooke and Eva Cassidy) provide the constant live soundtrack to the non-stop bliss.
This weekend, thanks to my beautiful, intelligent, and infinitely understanding wife, Susan, I was able to take an extended visit to Rob's World- (one that will require a monumental blog entry to do proper justice.)
Welcome to my world!
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Friday after work I drove to Des Moines, where I was able to reunite with two dear friends from high school whom I hadn't seen for over 17 years:

Here I am with Anna and Betsy (Anna is on the left) at a downtown brewpub. Betsy's mom Arleen was also with us and played photographer for this shot. Back in 1981, Arleen and her husband Bob welcomed Anna from her home in Sweden to Carlisle, IA as a foreign exchange student for the year. I was one of the first kids she met after arriving and we became good friends. We did a pretty good job of keeping in touch for a while after she returned home in 1982, but lost track of each other for many years before reconnecting recently via email.

It was wonderful to see Anna and Betsy again and we had a very nice visit and tried to quickly catch up on the interim years. It's comforting to know that, as middle age inexorably creeps in, there are old friends out there that you can reconnect with as if no time had passed at all. As we sat in the bar talking and laughing I felt like we could just as well have been at the lunch table back at the Carlisle High commons 23 years ago.
Anna showed me many pictures of her beautiful family and brought some thoughtful gifts all the way from Sweden for Susan and the kids. It was hard to say goodbye at the end of the night, but I'm going to meet up with them again next weekend in Colorado when I journey to Rob's World West to visit my sister Zanny and the Denver Broncos after Thanksgiving.
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On Saturday, my dad, our friend Guffey and my brother Cody and I travelled to Iowa City to see the Iowa Hawkeyes play the Wisconsin Badgers. We've been going to Kinnick Stadium for the past 28 years to watch the Hawkeyes, but this game ended up being one of the best ever!
Here's Dad and Cody getting ready to leave for the game, with the tailgate full of food and beer:

"Tailgating" is an important part of the gameday ritual. It has recently evolved from just drinking a lot of beer to grilling out and eating food (along with the beer.) We arrived at the stadium 6 hours before game time and Cody got right to work flipping pancakes and sausage:

Delicious! It was pretty cold and windy Saturday and I hadn't dressed warmly enough, so Dad and I went to the Hawk Shop and did some shopping. I got a new stocking cap and we both got some cool fleece mittens:

For reasons unknown, Dad was wearing some camouflage boots. This made for a very disconcerting sight whenever he stood with a foot in the grass:
Freaky!

The Smith Boys
The Hawkeye Express bringing game fans all the way in from Coralville (5 miles away)
Guffey, Cody, me and Dad killng more time at the Melrose Market, which was an actual grocery store when I went to school in Iowa City but now is an open air marketplace for cool Hawkeye items (more on that later...)
Another game of "Where's Grampa's foot?" for the grandkids back home:

When it was finally game time, we walked into Kinnick and found our seats. The "walk in" is an important part of the whole Hawkeye experience for me. You walk through the gates outside the 75 year-old brick stadium and enter the building. You walk into a short tunnel that ramps up to where the seats are. The tunnel is pretty crowded so it's a slow walk, a little dark and the sounds are muffled and you are filled with anticipation of what is to come. Will they win? Will it be as exciting as back in 1981 when they beat Michigan State to go to the Rose Bowl, and actual roses rained down from the press box overhead at the end of the game?
You reach the top of the ramp, and now you can see the flags of the eleven teams in the Big Ten conference flying atop the other side of the stadium, and behind them right across the street, the hospital where you were born (again, this is Rob's World.)
Then, as you reach the top of the steps, you can now see the field, and the marching band is just about ready to come on. The scoreboard reads "Are You Ready For The BOOM?" and then with a single bass drum beat the band marches in from the north end zone, led by a high-kicking drum major and a baton-twirling Golden Girl:

And Herky is there, too:


I understand the whole experience might seem sort of silly to the outsider, but for me, it's one of those rare times in life when I know without a doubt there's nowhere I'd rather be.
Before the game began we learned that, because Michigan lost to Ohio State, Iowa and Wisconsin would be playing for a share of the Big Ten conference title. The crowd was whipped into a frenzy before the boys in Black and Gold finally appeared from the locker room. Most teams enter the stadium running really fast in a single-file line, but the Hawks do it in a big "swarm" like this:
Click HERE to see "The Swarm"
The Hawkeyes fought a close game and overcame a couple of early mistakes to lead by one touchdown at the half, but in the second half our stifling defense and high-flying offense was just too much for the boys from Wisconsin, who seemed befuddled by our brilliance:

Click HERE for an inspirational presentation of the Iowa flags!

At the end of the game, we had won 30 to 7!
The place went nuts and the fans stormed the field!
Click HERE to see the fans storm the field!
The stadium is slated for renovations this year and the south end zone scoreboard will be torn down, so this is the last score it will display, along with a picture of the Big Ten Championship trophy, seen here being presented to Coach Ferentz:
Click HERE to see the Big 10 Champs trophy presentation!

After the game, we lingered to watch the bedlam and soak in the moment, and I have to admit a couple of tears were shed. It ranks in the top 2 or 3 games I've even seen, and it occurs to me that this would be a good time to thank Susan again for allowing me to go on this incredible trip (Thanks Dearly!)
We made our way back to the car and grilled some steaks and onions while the traffic cleared out. Hee's a cool shot of Kinnick Stadium at night:

Awesome!
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Back home, Susan put the kids to work on a gingerbread cookie assembly line:

Very tasty, and the kitchen smells like Christmas already!
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(Warning: Deep philosophical blog entry ending ahead!)
As I sit at my desk, warmed by the glow from my new neon Hawkeye (straight from the Melrose Market), I've been thinking about something Dad said on the way home. We were listening to sports talk radio and Dad was providing me many helpful driving tips. We all agreed that we had been fortunate to be able to attend such an awesome game, and Dad added that it was that much more special because he got to experience it with his three best friends in the world.
Just when you think you've got the old guy figured out as a slightly grizzled, traffic-intolerant dude who sucks at music trivia, he comes up with a profoundly sincere and heartfelt truth that puts a lump in your throat and a new clarity in your head about life's meaning itself.
I thought back to two weeks ago when I was touring Belgium by myself, isolated by language, and how even though I saw some great architecture and had a good experience overall, in the end it was an empty one because I didn't have anyone there to share it with.
There are so many unavoidable hardships thrown our way in life. War, disease and other circumstances beyond our control take us away from the people we love too often. The human connections we are able to make amidst the chaos, whether with your closest family or with long-lost friends from 4500 miles away, are what feed our souls and make life real.
In Rob's World or anywhere else, too!
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