What a Weekend! (Part 2)

Ok, so maybe I didn’t finish our story quite as quickly as I had planned. Better late than never, right?

So here is our portion of the weekend. As I mentioned before, we attended a tennis exhibition featuring Andy Roddick and Serena Williams.

Also playing were Sam Querrey and Ashley Harkleroad. This was the first time Roddick and Williams had played together and also the first time Andy had played in his native Omaha as a pro.

It was a fun evening once things got going. For some reason they were very late getting started so there was a lot of filler tom-foolery going on. Once they got their act together, the women were up first. They played each other and that was not very exciting. They were showing very little personality and less effort. However, when it was time for the men, it became very fun! Andy played to the crowd, interacting with cat-callers and bringing people from the stands down to play. In between the entertaining moments, the guys put on a good show of tennis. In contrast to the women, they seemed to be putting their all into their games and looked to be enjoying themselves a lot. The evening finished with Roddick and Williams playing doubles against Sam and Ashley. That was a very short match, but due to the late start the play still went rather late.

One funny thing that happened was that they had some Heisman Trophy-winning former Nebraska football players there along with a big deal former Nebraska football coach whose name escapes me at the moment. What can I say? Being from Iowa, we are not big fans of Nebraska. Anyway, during some of the breaks, they would come out and toss some small footballs and t-shirts into the stands. Everybody was standing up and screaming with their hands in the air, hoping to catch something. My husband and I aren’t really stand up and scream people, so we remained seated and joked to each other about just holding our hands out in front of us and waiting for something to land in our laps. Amazingly, that’s exactly what happened! A football was thrown to our section and after bouncing off of several upraised hands it landed right in my husband’s lap. It was so funny! Everyone around us was astounded. What was even more amazing is that when my husband asked the people in front of us who threw it (we couldn’t see since they were standing up and blocking our view), they said Eric Crouch. The amazing thing about this is that my husband was having lunch with Crouch’s brother-in-law the following Tuesday – they work together in Des Moines. I forgot to ask my husband what his co-worker said about our experience, I’ll have to do that. I just thought it was funny how that happened. Of course now we have a Nebraska football in our house, which clashes horribly with all the Hawkeye items. I think we need to find a safe (hidden from sight) place to store that.

After the exhibition was over and we were leaving the Qwest Center, it had started to snow. We had been to the Old Market area for dinner beforehand and seen some of the Christmas lights and ice skating they have going on down there during the holidays. It was so pretty walking in the snow – but freezing!!! We were going to go back to the Mall (a park, not a shopping mall) and take some pictures, but it was so cold outside we were thinking maybe that wasn’t a great idea after all. As we were walking back to our hotel from the Qwest Center (just a couple of blocks away), I slipped on some ice that was hidden under the new snow and fell flat on my back. I sort of caught myself with my left arm, but I still hit the back of my head on the cement. Things started going kind of fuzzy and I sat up a bit holding onto my husband saying, “I don’t want to pass out, I don’t want to pass out…”. After awhile my head stopped swimming and I was able to get up and walk. Everybody else walking in the area was on the other side of the street and as far as I know, nobody even saw what happened. My pride is grateful for this! Anyway, that sealed the deal on going out to take pictures – I wasn’t setting foot on snow or ice voluntarily again.

We got back to the hotel and called my mother-in-law to see if she had any suggestions about my situation. I was a little concerned that I might have a concussion and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. However, I was lucid and not trying to fall asleep or anything, so we decided I would probably survive the night. More than my head, my arm hurt. I had really hurt my wrist and the pain was shooting up to my elbow at times. Nothing seemed to be seriously hurt, it was probably just a sprain or something from my hand being bent back with force. 2 weeks later, I’m still having pain at times and it’s curtailed my weight training at the gym…but that’s better than a concussion!

We had a little bit more drama on our way home the next morning as the roads were snow and ice covered. We saw several cars in the ditches and one pickup truck slid across all the lanes on our side of the Interstate as it entered. It hit a guard rail where it stopped and the driver wasn’t hurt, but it did set our nerves on edge a bit. After about half an hour, we moved out of the snowy area and the rest of our trip home was on clear roads. We managed to get the dog picked up from where he was boarded with about half an hour to spare. And it was a good thing, too! He did NOT like being boarded and it would have been really bad if he would have had to spend another night there.

So, that’s pretty much it! We don’t do anything exciting very often, but when we do it’s usually a doozie.

Tags: tennis, travel, vacation