Atlantic City: Way Harder To Get To Than Pun City

Before Pun City begins: Highly Recommended Reading: "Can I Keep My Jersey?" by Paul Shirley. This blog bought it last Thursday night and is almost done with it already. Double bonus points for a mention of Kaspars Kambala, a former Homestead High School and UNLV product that ends up on Shirley's Russian League team. This blog's connection to Kambala was watching the behemoth break the hometown backboard with a thunderous slam dunk back in 1998 or so.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled trip recap...

Trip Recap #7 - March 7th, 6th day of the trip. Longest day of the trip as far as dragging on. Started very early, getting back to Richmond from Raleigh around 1:30 AM. Caught some sleep, checked out and took off at about 7:00 AM. In theory, this would get Pun City to Atlantic City at right around noon for the start of the Dayton-Charlotte game. This is because Mapquest lists the Richmond-to-Atlantic City drive as 5 hours and 20 minutes, and this blog consistently takes less time than the Mapquest estimates.

Not this time. This blog got to enjoy one 16-mile stretch near Washington, DC for one hour and fifteen minutes! This was after stopping in a Burger King that refused to serve burgers for breakfast, a trend that this blog has repeatedly encountered lately, much to its chagrin. Also, Mapquest, in its infinite wisdom, decided that a 60-mile stretch to cap off the journey was best spent on a 2-lane road featuring a maximum speed limit of 45 mph. While this blog was all for listening to the Villanova radio network on the drive in, Pun City hadn't really expected to be doing so during the Dayton game that this blog had tickets to.

Also, the last 10 miles of the trip were exceedingly slow due to an ocean-effect snowstorm grinding traffic to a halt. However - this blog did manage to make it to the game before it ended. Barely. Two minutes remained in Dayton's runaway victory. This was not ideal, as this blog had worn a Dayton jersey for the occasion. Fortunately, at least they won so Pun City would be able to wear a winning jersey for the rest of the day, even if this site only saw the last 2 minutes of the game.

Oh, and by the way, did this blog mention that its seats were in the 2nd row at halfcourt? And that historic Boardwalk Hall is a really awesome venue? For all of the trouble that it took to get there, the Atlantic 10 Tournament was pretty awesome. Later in the day, Fordham took out Richmond in a bigtime heartbreaker for Pun City. Because of the prior day's visit to Richmond's campus and practice, this blog was rooting for them.

This blog had some time to kill and looked for a McDonald's or something on the Boardwalk. As far as this blog can tell, there's no fast food on the Boardwalk. This was a major bummer. This blog settled for a Johnny Rockets on the Boardwalk, which was a poor substitute mainly due to price. This blog did get mistaken for a Dayton player though, by a Fordham player's parents no less. Figuring that going along with the idea would probably lead to less conversation, or at least more interesting conversation, this blog just let them believe that Pun City was a Dayton player.

The conversation basically amounted to "You guys had a nice game," at which point the father shook Pun City's hand. This blog replied with "Thanks, you guys too."

So this blog supposes that was pretty cool actually. Other Dayton fans discovered that the guy's son (this blog believes it was Bryant Dunston) wasn't recruited by Dayton or really too many other D-1 schools.

In the evening games, Saint Louis beat Duquesne and Temple beat Duquesne. Extremely hot cheerleader with Saint Louis, this girl is probably 6'3". Very good subplot to the tournament.

Once the games ended, this blog got to check out its roach hotel in an Atlantic City suburb. This blog knew it was going to suck, mainly because any hotel worth its salt in the Atlantic City area charges higher rates over the weekend, and this particular one did not. This blog was not aware that it would be in for some really low-class service and accomodations though, and the next trip recap will detail these.