Big Ten

Long-time fans of the Big Ten may still need to take a couple minutes to visualize the Big Ten conference. Sometimes seeing things in person helps the reality sink in. This trip took us by two Big Ten campuses at the far eastern side of the conference: University of Maryland (above) and Rutgers University (below). 

When we visit Big Ten campuses, 

our main focus is finding 

the football stadium and basketball arena. 

If that isn't enough to comprehend, it appears 2024 will bring two West coast schools into the conference: UCLA and USC. That will make 16 schools in the Big Ten conference. These are educational institutions. They do know that 16 is more than 10, right?

Adding Maryland and Rutgers to our “completed” list, we have now visited 10 campuses of the current 14 conference schools. When will we see the remaining four? Hum?

Plus, we have already toured the UCLA campus back in 2002. Looks like we might need to add USC to the list.

Did you hear about Tropical Storm Ophelia? We are desert rats. Tropical storms and potential hurricanes are foreign to us. The storm was the “talk of the town” in DC. Our Uber drivers to/from dinner said that even a tropical storm would be dangerous to drive in. We had a very specific place we wanted to be on Sunday (yes, these posts are made a couple days after things happen). After our wonderful dinner in DC Friday night, we left the Phoenix Park Hotel and drove to New Jersey for the next two nights. I haven’t driven after midnight in years! The University of Maryland stop was obviously at night as we headed north. 

The storm ended up being nothing more than lots of rain and wind, a typical Midwest storm in our opinion. At least that’s true where we were. Now, that’s still not fun as you will learn in future posts. Even though the storm wasn’t awful, I am glad we went further north and missed some of it.