Carolina Trip

Here is the recap of the Carolina Trip. Tree picked me up Thursday evening from the airport. Not much was planned for that evening. We picked up some pizzas and watched the Bears - Saints game. Tree and I both had fantasy football players going in that game. Here is a picture I took of Tree's daughter, Kaitlyn, Thursday night. I can't believe I didn't take more pictures of Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn is one cute kid. And I don't recall ever being around a kid with more energy than Kaitlyn. She was running around the entire time I was around.On Friday, Tree and I went to Lowes Motor Speedway. I am not much of a Nascar fan, but I will say that I was impressed with the facility. Dare I say that I would even go to a race there. Here is one of the cars racing around. You can pay $500 and go to a drive school, then drive an actual Nascar on the track. Tree and I didn't pony up the money.But we did pay for the $5 van tour in which they drive you on the track for one lap. Here you are on the front stretch going into turn one.This is the back stretch.Here Tree and I posing with a car in the winners circle.Friday night Tree and I went uptown to scalp tickets to Neil Diamond. We went to a bar before hand. Upon leaving we talked to a couple girls and asked if they had any extra seats. They said sure and just gave us 3 upper deck tickets for free. I wasn't too excited about sitting in the upper deck. When we got to the arena we started talking to some scalpers. They were pretty confident that they were going to get us for $60 a ticket. We didn't budge until they were down to $20 a ticket. They were good seats, but all the way on the opposite side of the arena from the stage. I didn't think that we were being too loud, but Tree got hushed twice by the lady in front of him. I had the setlist that I printed out before the Milwaukee show. So as one song ended and before the next one began, I would say to the girl, Rachel, next to me, "I hope he plays (insert song title here)." And then Neil would break into that song. Rachel thought I was psychic. Before "Brooklyn Roads", I yelled out "Neil!!!!! Tell me a story!!!" The next words out of Neil's mouth were, "I'd like to tell you a story about a boy who grew up living with his brother, mother, father and grandmother in a second story apartment over a butcher shop in Brooklyn, New York." Here is Neil singing "Brother Love" as his final encore song.After the concert Tree and I went back to the same bar that we were at before the concert. We had talked a little bit with the owner before hand. I saw him again and he asked how the show was. I talked to him for a little bit, and he asked what else we were doing while I was in town. When I mentioned that we were going to the Panther game Sunday, he pulled out two tailgate party passes. That was pretty cool of him. So now we have our tailgating all taken care of.Saturday morning we took a drive out to the US Olympic Whitewater training facility. It is were they do training for Olympic Whitewater events. They also have a bunch of mountain bike trials. This was the only disappointing part of the trip. It had rained the day I got into town and the trails were still too wet to ride. So we were unable to do that. Here are some pictures of the training facility. Normally while training the water level is much higher.Still it was pretty cool to see.Saturday night was a company Christmas party for a company that Tree used to work for. Tree and Heather.The party was in uptown Charlotte at the Wachovia Building in the atrium. It was pretty cool. It reminded me of building that Michael Douglas fell into at the end of the movie "The Game". The food was really good. They had hushpuppies stuffed with shrimp and crawtails. I think I only ate about 10 of those.Tree and Heather again. We got there around 7:30 and after I ate all that I could, left around 9:00.Sunday morning Tree and I headed back to uptown to the stadium. We took a walk down along the main drag through town. Charlotte is a very nice and clean city. A lot of new sculptures and corporate art monuments. They also had a number of new skyscrapers going up.I was standing here when I learned that this is where Jefferson Davis was standing when he was informed of Lincoln's Death.This was one guy's tailgate set up. Four TVs in the back of his Avalanche. Pretty cool. He must have had $15,000 in electronics to his set up. He even had a smoke machine.We finally made it to our tailgate party. It was pretty weird. Free food and beverages. It started at noon, we got there at 12:30 and were the 7th and 8th people to show up. If this was in Green Bay, it would have been packed at 12:01. Plus this party was located about as close to the stadium as possible. The party never really even got too busy. We talked to one of the girls that was working the tailgate party. Tree asked "How many beers do you think we can sneak into the stadium?" She said, "They check you really closely, you won't get any in." She was wrong, we smuggled in 4 cans a piece. Too easy. Here is Tree stocking up for the game.Here was our view of the game. It is great stadium. The game could have been a little better.
It was a great weekend, thanks again Tree for showing me such a good time.