Signs Of Fall

TCU was playing Southern Methodist University on Saturday, and Dan bought tickets for us about a week ago so we could go. SMU is the big TCU rival, but it's never really a rivalry because SMU sucks at football--a lot, usually, and it's rare that the game is anything but an ass-stomping.

SMU also happens to be two miles from where Dan lives in Dallas. It's a pretty campus, all red brick faux-Ivy League looking, with big huge trees and every single student dressed to the nines. I have never seen so many dresses and heels at a football game, and I went to freaking TCU--where the girls wear their pearls and sorority T-shirts to games.

Since the stadium was so close and we knew we'd end up parking a half-mile away if we drove, Dan and I went to his parents' house and borrowed their clunker mountain bikes for the weekend. We dressed up in our purple shirts and then biked to the stadium, chaining them up across the street from the stadium. It was the best idea ever--the place was swarming with red and purple, and parking was a nightmare.

It was the first time I'd ever been to the SMU stadium (Dan had been with his best friend, Loren, before) and the first time Dan had ever gone to a TCU game that he wasn't covering from the press box. It was also the first football game we'd ever attended together. I love football games. I can yell at people and clap and be noisy, and it's all very cathartic. It didn't hurt that TCU won 48-7 and are now ranked No. 23 by USA Today and 24 by the Associated Press.

SMU, the Mustangs, also had a teeny tiny black mini horse that they had out on the field with them. They'd run this little black horse across the field when the team entered the field before the game and when they scored (we only saw him in action twice). It was one of the most hilarious things I'd ever seen--the little horse had a handler on either side, and he was wearing a red blanket and little red polo wraps, and they'd kinda walk him around the field and he pricked his ears around and looked really well-behaved. Every time they ran him, though, it was away from us (we were sitting in the end zone) and so all you saw were these furiously-working little hindquarters. Aah, SMU.

Dan made the good point that in terms of smack talking, there isn't a lot you can do with SMU. We were discussing what to yell at the team and its fans, and basically the only thing that sucks about SMU is its football team. It's a rich school, but it's also an academically prestigious one. That means we couldn't yell out "SMU is stupid" or anything like that. Bummer.

The bike ride back to Dan's apartment after the game was awesome--the neighborhoods around the school are very wide and smooth, and it was dark and cool (very few steet lights). It felt like flying. We also got home without any incidents, which is good. The last time I rode in the dark was my first day owning my road bike, and I ran my front wheel into a chain strung around a parking lot and crashed, spraining my elbow and gashing my arm up. Not so cool.

Today we went to see the afternoon Rangers game, where they got beat by the Angels (no surprise there). This time I planned ahead and took lots of bottled drinks and sunscreen. I still can't believe we're going into the end of baseball season and we're in football season. Where the hell did the summer go?