Hello Frisco, My Love!

Back in 2012 I got on a plane at 32 weeks pregnant for the FBS Football Championship game which was being played in Frisco, TX, which is a suburb of Dallas.  NDSU was making history since they had recently moved to Division I and no one really gave us the time of day.  The hype was insane, tickets and flights were impossible to get and everyone was going crazy making travel plans.  I managed to get a flight and Justin arranged to drive with his friends and thousands of NDSU fans gathered in this town called Frisco and it turned out to be a blast!  We blew the bars and restaurants and hotels away as we (well, they, since I was pregnant) drank every drop of beer and liquor we could get our hands on and generally took over the place for the weekend.  We won the game and chaos ensued that night. 

Everyone thought we would probably return to the championship game the following year, and we did indeed, but I don't think anyone thought it would happen five years in a row.  Well, guess where we were last weekend?  Frisco!  Over the years I have grown to love that nondescript suburban area with it's pedestrian friendly urban planning and penchant for bars with sexual innuendos as names.  They have come to enjoy us too.  I wouldn't be surprised if the restaurant and bar staff earn enough money to pay a month's worth of bills over the FBS weekend. 

This year was kind of different because most of our usual group of drinking/travel friends took the year off from travelling to Frisco this year. My parents and aunt and uncle were there, however, and of course friends were everywhere to be found.  I assumed I would not be able to make the trip because of the kids but Justin's mom decided to skip this year so she kept them and to my surprise I found myself on a plane on Thursday!  We flew into Oklahoma City where Justin often travels for work so he was able to schedule a meeting and then we drove the rest of the way to Dallas in a rental car. 

Oklahoma is, apparently, not only the land of huge mega churches but also casino country and we saw a few massive casinos with the following being the biggest. 

 

We stopped for a brief visit because Justin has seen it several times while driving and always was curious about it.  I love a quick slot machine fix so I was agreeable to that idea.  I ended up winning $3 on my favorite slot machine!  Near the entrance we saw a bison themed game so we put some cash in. 

We were not successful but that's OK.  It was worth a try!

On Friday morning Justin had a work meeting in Dallas so I walked to the mall near our hotel to kill some time before we headed to Frisco to check in to our next hotel and commence with festivities.  In the mall I noticed a corner storefront with glass doors instead of the usual rolling chain door and I was delighted to see a few cats in there!  There was a woman and her son sitting on a bench and they noticed my shirt and the woman had grown up in North Dakota.  They told me the store was a "cat café" where a person could pay $5.00 for 30 minutes of play time with shelter cats.  Well hot dog!  It was $5 well spent!

 

I really liked this guy because he looks like one of my beloved childhood farm cats. 

 

This room was for al the fancy cats! 

 

After having lunch with people from the company Justin was meeting with we looked on the GPS to find the Gas Monkey Garage, which is featured in a show Justin regularly watches called "Fast--Loud".  It is a show about a guy who buys, sells, and restores classic cars.  As you can see from the barbed wire on the fence, the neighborhood was questionable.  They did have a retail store with souvenirs and we were not the only tourists there. 

Then we went and checked into the hotel!

 

Good to see you again Frisco!  It was so fun to be back to the familiar bars and the cute downtown area with trees wrapped with Christmas lights.  The weather was warm on Friday and it was a very fun night.  Saturday, unfortunately, was freezing cold and windy and hardly better than North Dakota.  It was a total change from day to day which is also no better than North Dakota!  We were at the tailgating lot by 8:00 a.m. and it felt like we were the last ones there.  Since no one from our group drove we didn't have a tent or grill or any of our usual tailgating necessities so we had to just use the trunks of our rental vehicles and get by with food that my mom bought from a grocery store but it was still fun.  I think it would be so moving to be a player and see all those people there for the team.

 

Most of the people who read this are familiar with what happened with the game...we won.  It was NDSU's 5th championship in a row!  The other team didn't know what was hitting them and it was, to my surprise, kind of a blowout. 

 

Here comes the confetti!

 

If you interchanged this photo with the pictures of us from the past years you would not know which was which. 

 

That night everyone was out celebrating and we were able to watch NDSU play basketball where we lost a game by three points in the last seconds of the game.  If we had won that game I think the windows in the bar would have blown out.  Then we watched the Steelers/Bengals game which ended with drama and penalties and one of the dirtiest hits I have ever seen. Then the Powerball numbers were announced for the jackpot of approximately $900 million dollars. 

 

 

It didn't work out for me, although I had #32 which was the first ball that was drawn so I was irrationally excited for a fraction of a second when I read the numbers.  But, no one else won either and now the jackpot is over 1 billion dollars so I have to go spend more dollar bills on this nonsense.

 

Now we are all back home and back to our mundane lives.  Going to Frisco, although it's not the least bit relaxing, is such a fun vacation.  I don't even want to get my hopes up about next year yet.  Because how could a team make it 6 times?  But I think that every year so...The bars of Frisco are strewn with NDSU freebies, spilled drinks and desecrated Powerball tickets as it tries to restock it's alcohol supply.  I hope we all meet again!