Day 37

Today was full of emotions. It was our last day of the trip, we expected it to be an emotional roller coaster. The first was probably anger…on our last day, we had to be in the car driving by 4am. So following our short nap, we said bye to Joe and were on our way. He was thrilled to be up that early to send us off.

The final car ride was similar to all the others. Sometimes people were sleeping, sometimes people were teasing, and a lot of the time, we were laughing. We reminisced over “old” memories from the trip and joked about what future adventures we would have. We talked about some of our favorite memories, counted up the number of hours of baseball we watched, and went through Tim’s book for one epic box score.  The details from that box score can be found below. We made our last of many Dunkin Doughnuts stops, filled up the tank one last time, and it was finally, officially, the home stretch. We were less than 100 miles from Milwaukee, and that’s when the relief probably hit in. The trip was practically over. No more uncomfortable rides in the back seat, no more arguing over who gets which bed wherever we are staying. No more waiting for what seemed like forever to get into the bathroom at the hotels. No more 3am awakenings. No more brushing our teeth in gas station bathrooms. Only 1 more game to go.

At this point, the disbelief probably started to begin as well. Only 1 more game to go. Tomorrow, we would all wake up in different places, some of us in different states. We would go on with our lives, and this would be a pleasant, but distant, memory.

The next emotion was probably frustration. We had a huge tailgate planned, and while we love everyone that would be there, we got a lot of questions we couldn’t answer. What time are we leaving? Where is everyone else? When will you be here? What’s the plan? It’s hard to plan something you can’t really be at. Thank goodness for Amanda for taking point on this, because everyone got to Miller Park safe and sound.

On our way through Milwaukee, we took a bit of a detour. We drove through the Marquette neighborhood, saw all of our old houses and apartments, drove past Megan’s Whale Wall, now known as the Dolphin Wall, and made our way to Miller Park. We were home.

We got out of the car, had our first group hug of the day, and the party was underway! Miller Park knows how to tailgate. Some other teams try to have fun before the game, but no one can beat Brewers fans. We all had family and friends in for the celebration, and we all went our separate ways to mingle and catch up. We were all asked what our favorite parks and memories were, and we were all glad we had prepped for these kinds of questions. The parents did a great job on the food and beverage selection, and we had a great time! This is where the happy set in.

Nestor and Jenn joined us for the tailgate and they brought Jack Harbaugh along. For those of you who might not know, Jack was a great football coach, and is the father of two NFL coaches, John who coaches for the Ravens, and Jim who coached for the 49’ers and now is the head coach for Michigan. It was fun to see our 30 in 30 buddies again, and we helped spread the word about signing up for the bone marrow registry.

We effectively passed out all of the tickets and everyone made it into the game. The four of us had planned on sitting next to each other, like we always do, but with so many other friends and family there, we got pretty separated.

The game was pretty good I think… Tim still kept score, but generally, we weren’t paying too much attention. There were too many distractions! We all had a great time though. It would have been nice to see a Brewers win at home, but what can you do? Each of us got to see our team win somewhere, and we all had fun. We sang Take Me Out to the Ballgame for the 30th time and then the game was over. We went to the team store for our final souvenirs and the trip was officially officially done.

Sadness set in pretty hard here. We all have some great plans for the rest of the summer or, for some of us, our lives. We said our “I love you’s,” “I’ll miss you’s,” and our “I can’t wait to see you’s.” And slowly, but eventually, made our way to our respective cars. We have reunions planned in the near and distant future. We will be taking a group IKEA trip in August and having a fondue party with all of our least favorite foods around World Series time. We know we will all be friends for life and see each other as often as we can, but the last 37 days, were some of our favorite.

Now we have some feelings of gratitude. This trip has been, and will be done by plenty of other people, in probably a shorter amount of time. We get that. We aren’t super unique, nor are we trend setters. However, we got to go on one of the best trips ever. It wasn’t the games that made it special, nor was it the parks. It was all of the memories that we made and all of the people that we got to see: aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, siblings, friends, Marquette Alum, and strangers. We can all tell hundreds of stories about this trip, and that’s what’s important.

A lot of people take some great trips after they graduate. We got to see the country, well actually, the continent, and make some incredible memories. Megan starts work on Tuesday and classes again in the fall, Tim and Andrew are spending some time at home before work begins later in July and Rebecca is still waiting to hear back on some of her plans. We all have new adventures to worry about, but this trip is one that we will keep for a lifetime.

We thank all of you for reading this blog and being able to be a part of this trip with us. We thank each other for providing the encouragement we each needed to make it through each of the days, even when it got hard. And, we thank Marquette for bringing us all together. How many people can say they went on the trip of a life time with three of their best friends? I’m thankful that I can say I have.

Road Trip Box Score: everything from time in the car to pitches thrown.