Stephanie and I thought we'd sleep a little later this morning and just grab breakfast at 9:00 instead of our usual 8:30. That didn't work out so well seeing as how they closed the breakfast bar at the hotel at 9. Not having anything to eat in the room we decided to walk down to the nearby Denny's for some food. The "Elite Expereience" didn't start until 4:30 and there wasn't too much else to do so we just took it easy for a while, got some lunch at the hotel and then headed for downtown.
Somehow we got the lone crazy driver on the downtown shuttle. We should have known to wait for the next shuttle when this guy came flying through out of order on his route and wanting to stop at the gas station for a bite to eat. We ignored our instincts however and went along for the ride. The guy starts out by going to the hotel that he skipped and then he decides he'll get his sandwich later. So he goes BACK to our hotel only to drive through the parking lot without stopping. He gets to the third hotel on the route and sees that he's caught up to the shuttle ahead of him. So, instead of stopping and waiting for anyone else that the other guy couldn't carry, he drives on ahead of him. No worries here, we wanted to get downtown anyway. But then he decides he's going to go the opposite direction of the route because he doesn't want to go on the "scenic" route despite the fact that the way he's about to go is about 3 minutes longer than the other way if you catch all the green lights on the other route. There's no way to tell for sure, but we didn't see that other shuttle that we saw at the hotel when we finally got downtown so I think our way was MUCH slower. Oh well, we made it.
So Stephanie and I went and checked out the Monument Circle that was the site of the Butler pep rallys for the past couple of days. Looked like a pretty cool monument in the middle of downtown surrounded by a traffic circle. Evidently you could walk up to the top and there was an observation station up there, but after doing all the steps at the stadium the other day, we had no interest in doing more so we headed off to the "Elite Experience."
Once again the "Elite Experience" did not disappoint. This time they had a pasta station, a soup station, a meat station, a bruschetta station, a dessert station and an open bar. Stephanie and I knew to take it easy this time so we did. It turns out that John Salley was the host of the evening's event and he turned out to be really funny. We got our picture taken with him and it was funny because Stephanie barely comes up to his armpit, I only came up to his shoulders. After the picture, he told me I had "sweet-a** sideburns." Nice.
On to the game. As most of you have heard, the game ended up being a very close one. Duke was supposedly favored 3 to 1, but Butler played an exciting and close game. We, of course, had the obnoxious Duke fan two rows behind us that knew nothing about basketball. How do I know that? Well, I know nothing about basketball and think just about everything is a foul. So did this guy. So, I deduced that he knew about as much as me which is nothing. He was real quiet when Butler was keeping it within a few. When Duke did manage to stretch it 7 points or so, he got pretty vocal. In the end, it would have been nice to tell this kid where he could stick his beloved Duke but alas, it was not so. Butler had at least two chances to win it but just couldn't pull it off. The last second shot from half-court was so close to going in, but it didn't. I was disappointed to see Butler lose, but they played a much better game than was expected and so I was glad for that.
A pretty crazy and exciting day all around, but we were glad to get back to the hotel for some good sleep. Tomorrow will be full of flying but at least we'll get to see Eden. Noah will come back from Pennsylvania on Wednesday so Eden (or Wendy as she likes to be called recently) will have a little bit of time with just us.