The castle refers to Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium, the UT Longhorns football field, which is really its own thing. It was big when I went to school there, seating I think something like 80,000 people in the early 90's, but now it has been expanded and bloated up to allow over 100,000 people to attend. This is a massive space for a maximum of six UT games a year.
We arrived probably by 4:45pm, I drove us, and my friend suggested we park in the baseball field parking lot. Parking was a hefty $40, but what can you do, everything was going to be extra for this event. Walking was a lot more than I expected, he talked of shuttle buses, but I did not see any. Instead, we walked, and boy, did we. We had to cross I-35. Before we could do that, we had sideways where the freeway goes up and we could walk underneath. It felt like we walked more than a mile, but who knows. I do know that I am out of shape cow, and I paid for it.
Once at the stadium, it is a totally different world. Everyone is dressed in their best orange wear; nobody is showing poor. This is the type of event that you only come to if you got some nickels to rub together, the idea of homeless walking around ruining the afternoon didn't even enter my mind. We had to stand outside for a few minutes, but everywhere, it was like a carnival going on. Getting inside is what made me think of a castle. As big as the stadium and seating are, it is just as big on the inside. It is a hollow cavity almost all the way around. There are museums dedicated to the old teams, stores to sell tons of Longhorns merch and a different concession stand every 10 yards. There are steps up and down everywhere. It doesn't look like it, but there are at least 10 floors to the building, I know because the Cougars were working one of the concession stands, up on the 10th floor and we foolishly walked up to it, thinking it was only one floor up from our 6th floor.
I thought the whole day was worth it, when Mijo saw the field and his eyes lit up. After walking around the inside for about 10-15 minutes, we randomly popped ourselves in to see where we were in relation to the field. We were a good distance away from our section, but by seeing, we were able to get our bearings and continue walking.
Once we got to our section, we had a private club to go in and eat for free. This sounds much fancier than it was. There were way too many people, and fancy or not, too many humans is going to make a space hot and uncomfortable. Still, we ate from the buffet, burgers, hotdogs, and corndogs. There were a lot of other options, but I was not going to go and get in another line for prime rib or whatever the fancy meat was. I was also scared of eating and then having to use the bathroom, so I just ate a little bit.
The seats were great though, we had a straight view of the jumbo screen, and we did have a great time watching the game. Mijo was excited the whole time. We might have to do this again soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment