A Weekend In North Carolina

This past weekend I headed down to North Carolina for my oldest sisters graduation from UNC and her commissioning into the Navy. But not before I stopped to get some of the best [if not the best] BBQ this country has to offer!!

First stop was Raleigh, NC where I was able to meet up with a friend from college for dinner at The Pit, located in downtown raleigh. You may be saying to yourself "Wait a sec, The Pit? This sounds familiar, explain yourself." Well, if you were in fact saying something along those lines in your head, then you're a better follower of my blog than I thought. A little over a year ago, I headed south on my famous BBQ Tour of North Carolina, and our 3rd and final BBQ stop was at The Pit. Well, the memories were so good that I wanted to head back there again, and yes, it was just as good as I remember. I split a platter of carolina style ribs and a platter of pulled and chopped pork with my brother, and added some mac & cheese, and fried okra on the side. [The okra was AMAZING!] Here's a poorly lit picture of the feast I enjoyed my first night down there.

Day #2 consisted of my sister's commissioning in the morning, and graduation from the nursing school in the evening. Here's a video of my dad administering her oath and she swears in and officially became an Ensign in the Navy, and a picture of myself and siblings after the ceremony. [I look like a total goober in this picture though, bad posture or something!]

Erika Swearing In

That evening after a nice walk around the UNC campus, we headed to the Dean Dome for the nursing school graduation. 

The graduate and proud parents.

Day #3 and Sunday morning consisted of early rain showers that thankfully let up just in time for the main commencement ceremony at Kenan Stadium. Here's a before and after pic of all the graudates filing into the stadium. I have some video from this as well, that I just haven't uploaded yet, maybe I'll get to that tonight, maybe not....we'll see. Anyways, the ceremony was real nice and not too terribly long either. If you want some more pictures, head over here. Congratulations Erika!

North Carolina BBQ Tour

This past weekend I felt the urge to do something a little out of the ordinary. I came to the conclusion that I wanted to be adventurous and get some good food while in the process. So i decided to plan out a small road trip down to and through North Carolina in search of some great BBQ. The weather was looking pretty good, so I put a full tank of gas in the Challenger and made a playlist full of rocking tunes for the road. My friend Matt accompanied me on the trip as well, so that was cool.

We started by heading down to Goldsboro on the Eastern side of the state for 1st lunch, and from there headed west about 2.5 hours to Lexington for 2nd lunch. Then we headed back east again to Chapel Hill and UNC where we stopped at my sister's house for a few. Erika jumped in the car and came with us into Raleigh where we went to dinner at The Pit. It was a 90 minute wait, but we didn't let that deter us. We headed up the street to a bar for an hour or so to kill the time. Oh, and when we tried to park on the street for The Pit, a parking guy told us we couldn't park in that spot cause it was a bus lane. He said normally to park in his lot it is $5, but that we had an awesome car so he'd let us park for free! I love my car more and more!

From start to finish we drove 880 miles, in a day and a half. I was pretty exhausted, but it was well worth it. Oh, and there most definitely will be a round 2 at some point! On with the pictures!

UNC: National Champs

As we all know by now. The UNC Tarheels are the 2009 Mens NCAA Basketball Champions. My sister happens to go to UNC [and thus why I've become such a fan] and she also happens to be crazier than I had previously thought. She was part of this madness last night!! Go Erika.


Franklin Street: The Celebration from The Daily Tar Heel on Vimeo.

On another note, I'm still so incredibly bitter over losing the bracket run by my brother on a tiebreaker in the national championship game by 1 lousy point!! How many bball games have we watched over the past 3 weeks and I lose by 1 point?! Lesson of this story: when filling out your brackets, do not take lightly the importance of the tiebreaker score prediction.

NCAA Championships

LET'S GO HEELS!!!!

Also, for your bracket updates [that are coming down to the wire] head here.


[10:00pm] 38-18 UNC. So far I like what I'm seeing. My only concern is the big guys getting into foul trouble. If Michigan state makes a run, they won't be able to play as aggressive.

[End of 1st] The crowd is definitely trying to give the spartans a lift here. It looked like a run might happen, but UNC is holding their ground. Excellent work. Now let's just work on keeping this combined score of the game under 160. Also, congrats to the Heels on a new NCAA record for most points scored in the first half of a championship game.

[14:59 left in 2nd] Ty Lawson breaks record for number of steals in a title game. Congrats Ty.

[14:38 left in 2nd] Is it me or does this game not look nearly as bad as I thought it would for being played on a football field??

[14:06 left in 2nd] Ben is falling asleep on my couch. He says he's giving Michigan State 5 minutes to make it interesting or he's going home.

[11:02pm] New e*trade baby commercial.

[11:08pm] Ben is asleep.

[7:33 left in 2nd] 72-55 UNC. At this point, I just want the final combined score to stay under 160. Cause then I'll have gone 4/4 in my brackets this year!!

[4:57 left in 2nd] Small run from Michigan State. I'm sure my sisters hands are getting quite sweaty!

[3:51 left in 2nd] 80-65 UNC. I'm not so sure it's gonna stay under 160 :(

[3 seconds left] SON OF A BITCH! YOU COULDN'T JUST HOLD THE BALL?!?! NOW I LOSE THIS BRACKET!!! 1 FREAKING POINT!!!! AHHHHHHHHH.

[End of Regulation] Congrats UNC!!! My sister is going crazy along with the rest of Chapel Hill. Have fun running the streets Erika!

UNC Basketball: Part Deux

My alarm went off at 7:30 saturday morning, which is actually sleeping in an extra two hours for me (if you believe that!) and I got up and got ready to head down to UNC for the day. The weather was absolutely amazing. About half way through the drive once the sun started to warm stuff up, I rolled down all the windows and cranked the music. One of the highways has a nice 'high' speed limit of 70mph too, so I just set the cruise to 80mph and was down in Chapel Hill in no time!

I met up with my sister and we headed over to the student store to get me a new carolina blue shirt (the only one I had was grey) for the game later that afternoon. After a quick lunch we headed over to the Dean Dome, and waited in line to get in. We had phase 1 tickets, which means of all the student tickets, we get to go in sooner, which in turn means better seats. We were probably 15 rows back from the court just behind the visitors bench, GREAT seats. We were in by probably 1:45.......the game started at 4:00. So we had some time to kill. I mostly just took in the atmosphere, very energetic. No wonder NBA games suck so bad!

The game was awesome. So much energy in that place, especially right before tip-off when the house speakers were blasting 'Jump Around' and the place was going nuts. Very very cool to be there for that. I took a short video clip too which you can see at the end of the post after the pictures. UNC beat up on UVA, just as my previous post would indicate. The (almost) 8 hours of driving in one day were totally worth it. Plus on my way home I stopped at Bojangles and picked up 3 half gallons of their sweet tea! Here are some more pictures, and the video. Enjoy.

UNC Basketball

Tomorrow I'm driving down to UNC Chapel Hill to go visit my sister and to go to my first tar heel basketball game. Even though they're playing UVA, I'm still hoping for a crazy atmosphere. I'm sure I'll take plenty of pictures from the trip, so look for an update in the following days. Happy Friday everyone, CAROLINA RULES!!