We flew in Wednesday evening, just in time to meet Dick's family for dinner at Squids.
I've come to North Carolina several times now, but it occurs to me that I've never come during the month of March. March Madness, Baby.
I thought that I've done a pretty good job over the past few years of getting more hip to College Basketball. I'm familiar with the teams now, I'm hip to the lingo, I can follow a game pretty well.
None of this prepared me for being in North Carolina during the month of March. Yesterday, as we were driving around town, Dick flipped on the radio station, and the only thing that anyone was talking about was the NCAA Tournament.
As one of the radio DJs said, "It's like Christmas, for Basketball Fans". This is true, of course, but I had no idea how all consuming it is for anyone who lives here! Anywhere we went to had TVs tuned into the first day of the NCAA tournament. We went to "Four Corners" on Franklin Street - a popular sports bar located across the street from UNC. There were easily a couple of dozen TVs tuned into 3 different games. The place was packed at 2:00pm. That's when I learned that most people actually take days off from work during the tournaments, and at the least, most people will watch it from TVs (or computers) at work (or school!)
I'm telling you, it's a whole different world over here. Having grown up in Northern California, I never even knew what "March Madness" was until I met Dick 8 years ago. He has told me how weird it was for him to move to the Bay Area from North Carolina in 1986: no one knew or cared anything about College Basketball, and it was nearly impossible to watch any of the games on TV.
Now that I'm here, I finally fully understand just how huge this whole March Madness thing really is. In order to get into the spirit of things, I bought a North Carolina t-shirt yesterday from a store on Franklin Street. Now, I'm ready!
We watched basketball all afternoon. We took a break in the evening to go to a Carolina Hurricanes Hockey Game! (it's a big sports week for me!) The hockey game experience was exceptional. We went to see the game with my friend, Kristi, and her two little girls. Kristi's husband is on the team. We watched the game from their private box, which was the coolest way to watch a game. Unfortunately, the Hurricanes lost, 2-3, but we had a lot of fun, anyway. Our box had a couple of televisions in it, so we were able to keep up with the basketball games, even while we were watching the hockey game.
The Cohen family with Dick and Trina at the Carolina Hurricanes game
We came back to Dick's sister's house around 11:00, and continued to watch Basketball. The UNC game ended around midnight, then Dick watched a recorded game that he had missed earlier in the evening.
Right now, I'm sitting here in Dick's sister's living room with Dick, his two sisters, and his Dad. It's raining outside, and we plan to spend the day inside watching basketball all day. I'm pretty sure we'll be doing this all weekend long!
Go Heels!
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