Cleveland

May 19th – 20th

Was able to sneak in a min-vacation!

Dave and I drove up to Cleveland on Tuesday evening.

We stayed at Cliff & Boo’s. Our friends, Matty, Jonny, Amanda & Josh came over to hang out, watch TV and have a few drinks with us. Fun was had by all!

On Wednesday morning, I woke up with a stiff neck (slept funky), a migraine and possibly a slight case of the Miller Lite flu.

All bad!
I could of dealt with the stiff neck and Miller Lite flu – but the migraine put me over the edge.

A few hours and several pain pills later, I was able to overcome the migraine. But I wasn’t so sure that would ever happen!

Dave, Cliff and I watched our friend Mike do his live stream on weather.com for a while. (He is currently on his Vortex2 project chasing tornadoes for 5 weeks) So we would send him text messages while he was on the air to see if we could get him to either mention something we were saying – or – to see if we could make him giggle.

Eventually, Dave and I left and went to Panera. After some nice warm soup in my belly, I was ready to conquer the day!

We went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Sorry, no photos inside.

It was a nice & relaxing day.

Around 5 we headed to Panini’s – a game day staple in Cleveland.


I had the turkey panini – very tasty!


Cliff & Josh met up with us shortly after for a few beers. Well – they had beers, Dave and I didn’t. We had a long night (and drive) ahead of us.

Around 7:30 Dave and I ventured over to Quicken Loans Arena for Game 1 of the NBA Finals 3rd Round – Orlando vs Cleveland.


Our first stop was to visit the QTV control room. Several of our friends work there. QTV is what you are watching on the Jumbo Tron during a Cavaliers game. Our friend, Jonny is the Director. His wife, Amanda (also our friend) is the Producer. Numerous other people on the crew are either friends of ours – or we know them from working with them over the years.

Anyway – QTV puts on one of the best shows in all of professional sports. It literally ROCKS!

A little after 8, Matty escorted us to our seats.


And we waited for the show – or I mean – game – to begin!

The show was awesome!

And then… it began…
The jackass behind me started screaming. He thought he was the coach. He was yelling so loud that my hair was literally blowing!

It was so bad, people several rows in front of me kept turning and looking up.

After he spit on me a few times, Dave wiped my head off with our white rally towels in attempts to get the point across.

Nope.

It made the game completely miserable.

A few minutes into the 1st quarter, Orlando’s Dwight Howard broke the shot clock on top of the basket while dunking a ball.


It delayed the game about 15 minutes or so while engineers swarmed the court in attempts to repair it and the “above the rim” camera which was dangling by a thread.


Eventually, they decided it was not fixable, so they rolled out back up shot clocks onto the floor


Cleveland’s Mo Williams hit a 3-pointer at the end of the first half, sending the crowd into a frenzy!


Eventually, the decibel level of the guy behind me dropped. But he was still extremely annoying. What amazes me it did he really think the players could here him?

The Cavs struggled a bit in the 3rd and ended up losing the game by 1 point.

Even so, it was an awesome night!

The drive home was BRUTAL ! But we had to go. I had a 7am flight the next morning.

Even though the trip was only about 30 hours – it was great! I was able to a game as a fan! And I got to hang out with my friends, which is even better!!

Thank you to everyone that made it happen. From a place to stay, media credentials to tickets to a ride back to Columbus!