Stanford Trip

This past weekend I was able to travel on the University of Oregon Football teams plane trip to Stanford for the game. This is the second time I have done this but the first time the Ducks won the game. With out going into details the flight down felt like a business trip . It was a charter flight. A trip like this is a big production and it is amazing the planning that goes into it. We stayed at the team hotel but the team was in meetings or in their rooms so we got to see very little of them except on the way in and out of the hotel. It was fun to see and talk to Jerry Allen and Mike Jorgensen who do the radio broadcast of the games . Trying to figure out who everyone was on the plane was fun and trying to figure out the reason for the seat assignments, for me, is as interesting at the team depth chart. For example , why some people got to sit in First class etc. Since I am not a big donor I was thankful for being invited. I felt like a teenage groupie at a rock concert with a back stage pass. Once we got to the Stanford campus most of my traveling companions who were just fans headed to the Oregon Alumni Tailgater. However my friend Bob and I headed for a walking self tour of the Stanford campus. Bob had a map and we headed for the campus book store in the middle of the campus. It was quite a walk but well worth it. Stanford has a large and beautiful campus much larger than you would expect for a student body of 16,000. It truly is a research University. We walked by the Hoover Institute (Conservative think tank established by President Hoover before he was President in 1919) The campus bookstore was the best campus bookstore I have ever been seen. Lots of books.... I could have spent hours there. After our tour we headed back to the stadium for the game. The Stanford football stadium is a rickety stadium held up by a wooden frame surrounded by a cement facade to make it look more impressive than it really is. They will tear it down at the end of the season to build a smaller but newer stadium. Only 27,000 people showed up for the game and about 1/3 of them were Duck fans. In any case regardless of their football stadium or team Stanford would be a great place to go to school. I liked it a lot.