Into the Land of Black and Gold

This weekend I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Iowa City, Iowa. I don't mean to indicate that simply being in Iowa City was incredible, because that would be very far from the truth. This does a fantastic job at illustrating my time there: 

The city and its people were cold, bitter, and inhospitable. 

A slight caveat: I know that good things come from Iowa. I just didn't encounter any of those things this weekend. 

Anyway. On Thursday I drove to Des Moines, where I picked my mom up from the airport. Together we drove to Iowa City.

Here's the hotel restaurant where we ate our first night when we finally found it. (Wouldn't you think an in-house restaurant would be easy to find? Yeah. You would think...)

The next day, my mom and I spent some time shopping downtown before visiting with Matt.

Mom and I got to Carver Hawkeye Arena a little before 6pm. Eventually we found the entrance for people getting tickets from wrestlers and made our way inside. 

The arena was very impressive.

As was the sight of more than 15,000 wrestling fans filling it.

I've never really been a fan of cheerleaders at wrestling meets (although I loved cheering at them), but these squads provided some entertainment during the frequent commercial breaks taken for the Big Ten Network broadcast.

 

Penn State lost the meet, which was sad, but I was so happy to be there to experience the weekend with my mom and to see Matt wrestle in person, something that doesn't happen nearly often enough.