Bragging Rights and Strep Throat Fights

A little piece of home in rural Iowa. Ich bin begeistert, Holstein :-)

In case you haven't already guessed it by now, I was battling a strep throat last week.

That being bad enough, it also happened to be my birthday. I had plans of going out with friends whom I hadn't seen in years. Instead, I spent my "big day" partly in bed, partly at the doctor.

Good thing I am not much of a birthday person.

Anyways, I also had a lot of good things going on during the last couple of weeks.

The Iowa Hawkeyes had their season opener in legendary Kinnick Stadium against UNI two weeks ago.

Luckily, I have a good friend here in Le Mars who is just as crazy about the Hawks as I am.

So we hit the road right after work on Friday and made it to Iowa City in a little over five hours.

And boy were we excited to be back!

It certainly did not feel like a year had passed when I entered my friends' apartment on East Burlington, the place which I called home for four weeks last summer.

Obviously my friends and I had a lot to catch up on but we somehow managed to force ourselves to go to bed around one o'clock.

Saturday, September 5, 6:30 a.m. - Game Day! Football season is finally here! Tailgate time!

So we shook off our tiredness and wandered up to the infamous hill.

The smell of brats and burgers, tons of people and black and gold as far as the eye can see. Doesn't get any better than that.

Being in Kinnick Stadium is magical. The noise of the crowd, Herky, ACDC's "Back In Black," I-O-W-A... College Football at its best.

The game itself, well, I'm sure you all know the score (17-16 win with two blocked fieldgoal attempts in the final seven seconds). Nothing to be bragging about. It was an intense game and the way the game ended will definitely go down in history.

UNI put on one hell of a fight, that's for sure (unlike some other college football team from Iowa, but I'll come to that later). I hope that the Panthers win all of their remaining games.

My buddy and I headed back for Le Mars on Sunday. On our way back, we stopped in Holstein, where I was surprised and amazed to see that their welcome sign sports some German pride by saying "Willkommen Freunde," which means "welcome friends." How could I not love Iowa...

Back in town, it didn't take long until the strep throat hit me and put me out for five days.

But I recovered just in time for the ultimate intrastate rivalry between Iowa and ISU.

I think that "hate" is a very strong word so I'm just gonna say that I "very much dislike" the Cyclones (unlike some other folks, however, I tend to not totally lose my cool when I see a person wearing the wrong team colors on game day).

So I was pumped and a little worried after the Hawkeyes' shaky performance against UNI.

I am not going to brag in detail about how Iowa totally dominated ISU. The score of 35 - 3 speaks volumes. It was amazing.

I know there will probably come a day when the Cyclowns get lucky again like they did a few times in the past and beat Iowa.

But please, ISU fans, always remember: Iowa always was and always will be the HAWKEYE state!