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R.TERRY (207.230.128.240)
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 06, 2003 - 4:39 am: | |
That’s right, a veritable sea of buses descended upon Phoenix last Friday for the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Florida State Hurricanes held at A.S.U.’s Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, AZ. It was unlike anything I had seen since my one and only visit to Washington, D.C., a fascinating place that must surely hold the title of Bus Capitol of the World.
At the time, well before becoming bus bananas in my own right, I couldn’t decide which was more interesting, the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum or the Kingdom of Buses upon which everything else in D. C. must surely take a second seat. Being a pilot, I decided in favor of the Air and Space Museum, but never for a moment was I not impressed by the sight of an endless parade of tour buses.
Was every bus in America at the Fiesta Bowl? According to me they were! Every manufacturer was represented by every model they make. For Van Hools, it was more like an Airstream Convention. Some buses were so new their only mileage was probably to the Fiesta Bowl; and some, mostly the older MCIs, looked like they hadn’t seen service in the last nine months. But there they were, lines of coaches, often extending nearly a mile. Every parking lot around the university was packed with buses, much like so many giant sardines. In one section of the big parking lot behind the stadium, I counted more than ten rows of buses, fifteen buses deep! That wasn’t even a drop in the bucket. Every place you could jam a bus, there was a bus and five more behind it.
Of course, some folks had to show off their trillion dollar Prevost conversions, and there were plenty of them. Why go to the game when you can claimjump a section of sidewalk, fire up your commercial char-broiler in one baggage bay and whip out three TVs from another? And then there were the beer buses, like Budweiser’s “The B Lounge”. It’s hard to say which would be more fun: driving the Clydesdales, or driving The B Lounge. I have seen them both and the Clydesdales command a staggering amount of attention. I saw The B Lounge leave 20 minutes after game-start; I may have been the only one watching.
But for good reason: It turned out to be one of the most exciting, heart-pounding, standing-on-your-toes games to hit the Phoenix area since the 2001 World Series. Could it have been any better? Not on your life! More people had more fun last Friday night than they could probably have ever imagined.
For most of those people, it could not have happened without all those buses!
R. TERRY |
Scott Whitney (66.82.9.16)
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 06, 2003 - 12:49 pm: | |
Brings tears to my eyes. . .
: ^ )
Scott |
Dave Wheat (24.197.181.175)
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 06, 2003 - 1:21 pm: | |
Terry:
Did you take pictures?? Would be great to see some if you did.
Dave |
Henry R. Bergman, Jr. (Henryofcj) (65.194.145.50)
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 06, 2003 - 5:36 pm: | |
My Crown Super Coach is in Oregon, and my nephew is on the Miami team. The game was very special to him, but he is already looking toward next year.
Hopefully next year we will attend the next national championship in the Super Dome,(?)traveling in the then completed 'Banana Boat'. Thanks. |
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