September 3, 2017

Suddenly A Minnesota Golden Gopher


Suddenly A Minnesota Golden Gopher
Todd Swank's Diary Entry for September 3, 2017


So Luke has been at college for almost three weeks now.  I've had to start using a Snapchat account to communicate with him else I'd have no idea what is he was up to.  Plus I'm not sure how I'd survive without getting pictures like this one on a regular basis.


He seems to be really enjoying himself at Minnesota State Mankato hanging out with old friends and making new friends as well.  I'm hoping he's doing some schoolwork also.


On Tuesday, Avery was all set to move to college.  He spent a lot more time saying good-bye to the dog then he spent saying good-bye to me, but I'm trying to not take it personally.


Before we knew it, we were all packed up and ready to take him to school and to begin the new chapter of our lives as Empty Nesters.


Avery is going to the University of Minnesota to study Computer Science and Mathematics.  The U is nestled near the middle of downtown Minneapolis and carries with it a view of the home of the Vikings, US Bank Stadium.  Which makes it all right in my book.


It didn't take long for Avery to unpack his stuff and have his mom set up his bed.  She's good about that kind of stuff.


Avery's new roommate is from Beijing, China and has only been in the United States for a couple of weeks.  I'm sure they will hit it off great and hopefully this will be an awesome cultural experience for the both of them.


We took Avery shopping out more time and out to lunch and then set him free to experience life on his own.  We hope it works out great for him!


In an attempt to stay relevant in our son's life, we purchased Minnesota Golden Gophers season tickets and went to our first Gophers game at TCF stadium on Thursday night.


The team has a new coach named P.J. Fleck who is young and full of energy.  His theme for the year is "Row The Boat" and we saw this sign in the bookstore explaining how this came to be.  We had no idea the coach had gone through this with his son and it hit pretty close to home. We figured it was a good motto to get behind.


The band did their rendition of "Row The Boat" at halftime which was pretty amazing choreography.  The boys have some friends who play in the band so it was neat to see them perform such a cool halftime show.


The game was a bunch of fun.  The Gophers played the Buffalo Bulls and although the score was closer than a lot of people would have liked, the home team did win 17-7.  We really enjoyed the atmosphere.


Our neighbor's daughter, Jill Fischer, and her husband, Joe, invited us to join their tailgating group before the games which we're really looking forward to starting.  They're huge Gophers fans and really fun to be around, so we're excited to have them available to mentor us as we climb aboard and row the boat.


We tried to call Avery before the game to come see us, but he said a friend was able to get Gold seats in the student section so he couldn't leave or he'd lose his seat.  He also said we couldn't come see him because we didn't have a pass to get into the student section.  I started to get suspicious that maybe he was avoiding us.


Lucky for me, my camera has a really good zoom lens so I was able to find him and his friend in the crowd.  Turns out he did have pretty incredible seats near the field.  I probably wouldn't have left to come see me either.


All in all, attending a college football game was a bunch of fun and brought back a lot of memories of my own youth.  I'm glad we stepped in there and bought season tickets.


It's going to be a good year.  Go Gophers!

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