Houston, we have a problem.

We left Friday for our trip to Houston within minutes of Josh's arrival home from Lexington. We did not plan to go the whole distance on Friday. We stayed at the Hampton Inn in Arkadelphia Arkansas.

I got an incredible deal there. I am a Hilton Honors member. The rooms were only 7500 points apiece (generally a Hampton runs 20k to 30k points). I was able to get a room for Jonathan and Josh and one for Donna and I for 15k points each. The hotel was just as nice as any other Hampton I've ever stayed in.

We left that morning. We got off I-30 after reaching Texas. It was very interesting to drive on Texas roads. Highways similar to New Highway 60 here have a speed limit of 70. You slow down to 55 to 60 upon entering towns. We stopped at a Whattaburger. I've always wanted to try one of these after seeing them on "King of the Hill". I was not disappointed, the burgers were excellent.

We made great time. We got to our hotel outside of Houston about 3:00pm. Again, I got a deal. I got two studio suites at the Towneplace Suites for 70.00 each. We rested for a bit and headed out to the game (leaving Donna there). It was about a 30 minute drive to Reliant Stadium. I had bought a parking pass already and there was plenty of parking so we had no trouble. We even had time to walk to Jack in the Box to eat. We got into the stadium in plenty of time for the Butler VCU game.

Our seats were on the 2nd level. It was a very bizarre looking setup. I'd never seen a basketball court in a football stadium. It wasn't even in the center of the stadium. We were further away on our end than people on the other end. But all in all, our seats were fine. The people in the lower arena in the end zones had it worse. The seats were not tiered so the people had to stand up the whole time.

The first game started. It was close the whole way. Butler finally pulled away at the end to win. There were quite a few VCU and Butler fans. UConn had the fewest. Of course, UK had the most. I would guess over half the stadium was UK fans. The guy next to me actually lived in Houston and was there simply to "see good basketball"

The UK UConn game finally started. It was a bad omen when UK won the tip. They had lost the tip in the other games they'd won in the tourney. They forced numerous turnovers but had trouble scoring. They had a slight lead but finally UK got down by 10 at the half. They rallied to take a lead by two on some decent three point shooting. They missed numerous opportunities to pad their lead and UConn took the lead. Even with all that, UK never wilted. They stole the ball with 16 seconds left down two. Alas, they couldn't get off a decent shot. UConn hit two foul shots and UK a three at the buzzer to lose by 1. It was very sad. They reverted to old form where the three freshman scored most of the points and the three upper classmen did little.

We had already decided to go home if UK lost. Fortunately, the guy next to me wanted to bring his fiancee to the championship game. He bought my ticket. I sent Josh and Jonathan to the car to get it. I threw in my Monday parking pass. He was a very nice guy and enjoyable to talk to. When I got to the car, Josh informed my that he had manged to sell our other two tickets! I had however made a deal with Josh that he'd get 50% of any tickets he sold, so that worked out for him at least.

Leaving the stadium was tough. The roads around it aren't built to handle the sudden out flux of 75,000 people (a new NCAA record). It took us almost 45 minutes to go 1 mile to the bypass. We got back about midnight. I cancelled our hotel reservations for the next two nights and went to bed.

We got up the next morning and I made the decision to not drive the whole way the next day. The boys weren't really thrilled at first, but finally agreed. We went to 249 church of Christ in Houston. The brethren there were very nice and hospitable. We left and ate lunch on the way. We got to Prescott Arkansas and went to church at the Prescott congregation. The people there were very hospitable as well. We had a hard time getting out of there in fact. They were mostly Arkansas fans and told us they had rooted for UK last night and were sorry to see them lose. We drove on to Arkadelphia and stayed at the Hampton again.

We got up the next morning and headed out. As we hit I-55 in West Memphis, it started to rain and rained on us the whole rest of the way home. We were fortunate as it turned out. There were tornadoes in Ballard County. Several buildings were damaged and a person hurt pretty bad. When we got home, Josh hopped in his car and headed home. We tracked him on Google Latitude to make sure he made it.

The trip didn't turn out as well as I hoped (no final for UK). We had a good time together though. I've already applied for tickets for next year...