Joel: Enjoyed your account of the weekend.
We need to get together for lunch here in the Rocket City so you can tell more. Thanks again. -----Original Message----- From: Joel Perry [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 10:08 AM To: Roll Tide Fan-The University of Alabama Athletics Discussion List Subject: [RollTideFan] Got a minute? Does it get any better than this???? What a butt-whoopin' the Tide did give allbarn!!! I'm still horse and I think a little bit tipsy. For your amusement or deletion, what follows is a snip-it of our 4 days in allbarn. (back ground info: eight of us, three Bama fans and 5 allbarn fans, rented a motor home last year to take to T-Town for the game. Besides the weather and the score, we all had so much fun that we agreed to rent another one for this year. ) 1. Arrived Wednesday night to a ghostly quiet campus - at least the part we were in. Already a HuGe number of motor homes had arrived. AS we found out later, many of the motor homes had arrived Sunday. Most were vacant as the people who owned them just dropped them off and were to return later in the week. We parked our little rented motor shanty on the grass next to the allbarn scholly parking lot. This was about 10:00pm. By 2:00am Thursday morning we had most of our canopy in place and most of the decorations. Our canopy consists of a 20' x 10' gray tarp, 1" pvc, several rolls of duct tape and a couple 2 by 4s. You really have to see it to appreciate the engineering marvel that it is. Jed Clampett would be proud. Nothing like climbing on top of a motor home at night, after many breers, trying to tape a tarp to the dang thing. Look at pictures 169 and 170 at this link: http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=1716890&a=13668587&f=0&sp=149 Feel free to browse the other pics while you're there. These were taken by a friend, so my lovely face isn't on many of them. Neither is my wife. I need to talk to him about that..... 2. Thursday morning we came to, I mean we woke up and continued our decorating and stuff. A set of 30 game cups that make up the lighting, a HuGe American flag, all types of allbarn and Bama flags blew perfectly in the stiff breeze that had started late last night. Half of the shotgun shack was Bama, the other allbarn. Nothing to do now except partake in the vast amount of beer that was ice cold and sit in the shade of the tarp while watching the co-eds walk past. (BTW, the first 7 out of 8 that we saw were keepers.) 3. After a while, these motor COACHES started pulling up next to us and the scholly parking lot. Not motor homes, but Prevost coaches and such. (and here were are, in the grassy area next to the parking lot) Well, Mr. allbarn scholly himself climbs out of his coach and makes a beeline towards us. First words out of his mouth: "Y'all can't park here, this is scholarship motor home parking only." We said we understand that the parking lot is schooly, but the grass area in fair game. He didn't see it that way. We said when the man with the badge sez move then we'll move. So he waddles off, mad and determined that we will not be there come nightfall. We stayed there the entire week. Take THAT Mr. Prevost Man. A rented motor home with a tarp for a canopy has done dropped anchor in the pasture. 4. Funny thing about the scholly parking area - and this may be the same at BAMA - I don't know. Here these beautiful motor coaches are, filled with old farts who give major money to the university and they can't get into the lot until Friday at 4:00pm - to the minute mind you. And there we were, been there since Wednesday, acting like Eddie on Christmas Vacation, having a blast. Seems to me that if you are a scholly provider, you should be able to park your MC just about anytime you feel like it. But allbarn spent $$ on a rent-a-cop to patrol the lot and kick out any early arrivals. We made friends with him, cooked him a steak, provided access to the cold beer. Hey, ya never know when he could be helpful. 5. Then the news crews started walking by. At last count, we had 12 different news crews stop by and interview us. They said the alabama\auburn split was the draw. I personally think it was the mere sight of our set-up. We made it on WAFF here in Huntsville and at least one station from Montgomery (WAKA) and one from Birmingham (WFSA may be the letters, I'm not sure.) A guy from the Mobile Register interviewed us. It's on al.com, 7-day archives. I can find the link if anyone is bored. Being a bunch of rednecks, we enjoyed the chance to be on TV. (Producer of Temptation Island on line 4, something about me being a spoiler???) 6. Thursday night we closed down a club called the Blue Room. It was rockin. The band "Cover Girls" were playing. I recommend them to y'all. We got several comments from the other party goers about our Crimson and White attire. But all were very friendly and hospitable. 7. Friday brought more beer, hamburgers, Dreamland ribs and a chance to watch 30-40 motor coaches storm the parking lot after Mr. "I have to be first" (same as above) blew his air horn. We just smiled and opened another beer. Funny that he parked on the other side of the lot. 8. Have to tell y'all this: Sometime Thursday night, I placed a call to my wife in Huntsville. "Honey", I said in my most slurred speech, "when you come down tomorrow, bring the stereo system in the bedroom. We needs a bigger boom box." Now this system is one of those old, big clunky systems with the tall speakers and single CD player. I think I've had it for 15 years now. She agreed, only so I would get off the phone and let her get back to sleep. She lugged this thing down the steps, to the BAMABARGE and did in fact haul its heavy butt to allbarn. I think a HuGe Christmas present is in store for her. 9. Here's the only bad part of the weekend and it describes the class that allbarn fans have. Sometime wee into the night, I heard a noise outside the shack. I get up to investigate. Walking around outside I find all is in place - except for the 30 foot tall flag pole that had two expensive Alabama flags flying from it. We had attached the pole to the motor home, opposite of the allbarn rags. Oh, we were pi$$ed. We walked around for a little while knowing that the flags had met a disgraceful death under the tires of a Massey-Ferguson. So we went back to bed. About an hour later, I peeked out of the window and saw three men standing about 50 feet from the motor home. Just talking and looking our way occasionally. I just sat there, viewing through the blinds. They started walking our way and then ran to our motor home. I jumped up, threw open the door and ran outside. By this time, they had picked up our beer cooler and our cooler with the lobster tail and crab claws. When I ran outside, they dropped the coolers and ran off. At the same time, a pick-up truck (how appropriate) that was parked out of my view squealed tires and drove off. Out of the back of the truck slid another cooler exactly like mine. Come to find out, they had stolen that cooler from another motor home just two rows over. Anyway, we called the campus police. Twice. We're still waiting on them to respond. One of the other RV owners said later that it has really gotten bad the last couple of years and they have to lock everything up at night. 10. Saturday morning brought gameday. What a beautiful day - really all week had been great. Leftover DreamLand ribs, hotdogs, hamburgers (thanks Ron) and a visit from the Queen, her escort and Doug (bringing gifts of more tequila) made the morning an event worth remembering. The party mix p-funk playing on the stereo, hundreds of allbarn and alabama fans walking around, everybody getting their game face on, the girl in the extremely short skirt standing on top of the motor home next to us, time ticking down to kick-off, tension running high on both sides of the rivalry, tequila shots starting to work their magic, SonJa making the allbarn faithful nervous.... 11. The Game. Lost all my buzz cause I was so nervous. The pre-game pep rally thing was good. There was a male cheerleader out at the 50 yard line leading cheers and chants. Really got the crowd worked up. (Unlike our Big Bama spell-out). For some reason their JumboTron (TigerVision as they call it) appears much more crisp and clearer than ours. And the music, well, in a word, loud. And you know my feelings about ours. I missed the buzzard flying down from the upper deck. I was busy getting my gameday spit cup. The graphics package that allbarn uses to get the crowd into the game was great. And unlike us who only use the elephant roar after we score, allbarn uses the tiger growl when a big play is needed (and that was a lot, especially on defense). Give credit to allbarn, their stadium is very nice, lots of grass around the playing field really contrasts the stands. At halftime both bands performed while honoring the different branches of the armed forces. Brought a big lump in my throat. Our band actually was very loud this time, may have been because I was sitting directly across from it though. Allbarn fans leave the stadium quicker than Bama fans do I think. The place was empty of allbarn fans right after we scored to make it 28-7. How sweet it is!!! After the final whistle, we walked down to the Bama section in the endzone. Many of the players ran back out and shook hands with the fans as Lee County's finest stood guard over the goal posts. The chant "We don't want your goalposts....we OWN your goalposts" soon was heard. Small bits and big branches of the hedges were carried off by many a fan. Last year I did that, this year I didn't. Something about 'acting like you've been there before' came to mind. But there was a very proud feeling standing there among the Bama fans, watching the players who had lost so many close games this year run back and forth in front of the fans as the allbarn scoreboard glowed in the distance with the final numbers. 31 - 7. We may be the team who loses next year, but for this moment in time, the Pride was once again restored to the Tide. 12. I heard no nasty comments from the allbarn fans I walked by. In fact, most were I guess humbled enough to offer congratulations or at least sad enough to keep their thoughts silenced. I did hear several comments from Bama fans that were not exactly classy. Many comments included remarks about 'Cadillac'. One Bama fan tried to get me to join in with their ribbing but I said the best thing we could do as Bama fans is just smile at them and walk by as if this was something that was expected. 13. Back at the MotherShip as we've deemed our RV, the party mix was cranked up again, the coolers we opened once again, the lobster tail, crab claws and steak were cooked to perfection. Some allbarn motor homes that had waited in line for the spaces in the lot were started and slowly making their way home. Ron hobbled back up with SonJa in tow. She was her own happy self while he was still in Misery State mode. We ate, drank and re-lived the game until we were sure we had covered everything again. And then one more time, just to be sure. As the night lingered on, the eight of us sat by the fire and enjoyed the friendship that has endured two years of Iron Bowl RV-ing and has actually been made stronger by the closeness of the cramped accommodations. 14. Sunday morning we took down all the decorations and packed the motor home up for the trip back to Huntsville. On the way back the talk was about, what else, the plans for next year's RV trip to the Iron Bowl. One can never start to plan too early. I hope you have enjoyed my long, rambling review of the weekend that was. I know I've left out a few things like the drunk allbarn girl who kept yelling the chant "Weagle, weagle, war damn eagle, Poke'em in the butt Big Blue." Thanks for reading. ROLL TIDE 31-7 To unsubscribe from this list just send an e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a BLANK subject line and the single word "UNSUBSCRIBE" (without the quotes) in the body or visit http://www.RollTideFan.net To unsubscribe from this list just send an e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a BLANK subject line and the single word "UNSUBSCRIBE" (without the quotes) in the body or visit http://www.RollTideFan.net
