Good morning from Madison.

It's ten 'til 1 here, and I just woke up. To tell you the truth, I'm pretty surprised by the score of the Minnesota/Illinois game.

Juice and the Illini are getting stomped, 14-3 by the Gophers at home. I sense a Juice Williams comeback however.

Last night was a blast. Wible, Langenbacher and I headed out to State Street, which is basically the equivalent of College Ave.

There are a lot more homeless people here than in State College however. Every couple of feet we were confronted with a guy jingling a cup, asking for change. We talked to one guy for a while as we waited to get into State Street Brats. He didn't have a whole lot to say, though.

We hit a handful of bars last night. State Street Brats, Irish Pub and Paul's.

State Street Brats was nuts. No cover, but they saw Wible coming. It costs nine dollars for a pitcher of PBR. I guess it did win a blue ribbon.

We shot the bull with a bunch of Penn State fans, Wible danced with a girl, we drank our beers and headed out. We stopped at a placed called Irish Pub and stayed there for a long time. Again, no cover, but 11 bucks for a Miller Lite pitcher.

It was probably 1:15 a.m. when we walked into Paul's. Really cool place. They had couches and comfy chairs on the other side of the bar. Let's just say I wish I would've visited Madison in my college search.

WIble wanted to buy a case of beer before we headed back to the hotel, but you can't buy beer in Wisconsin after 9:00 p.m. Dumb. So we got a cab back to the hotel, stumbled in and got some sleep.

We've got a few hours before we have to be at Camp Randall, so we're going to go our separate ways, then I'll check back in.

My goal today? Eat a brat.

--TJ

***

Hey everyone, this is Travis, posting my first of what I hope will be a couple entries before tomorrow's game.

And I say "hope" because it's been difficult to get internet access.

As far as I'm concerned the internet should be free. Everywhere. I'm not the most computer-savvy cat ever to roam the planet, but I know that the internet is basically like air nowadays. You can't charge people for air!

I missed my Friday classes - again - to go to Wible's house in York last night so we wouldn't have to wake up at the crack of dawn to catch our flights out of BWI in Baltimore. I forgot my O's hat. But I remembered:

(Keep in mind this is the order I packed...)

One pair Levis blue jeans (527 bootcut)

One pair khaki dress pants

One white dress shirt

One white "date" shirt

One white t-shirt

One pair black dress socks

One pair white socks

One brown belt

Pawpaw's Zippo lighter sans fluid (good luck charm)

One pair brown dress shoes

One gold tie

One dress jacket

One pair flip flops

One pair swimming trunks (there was a killer pool in our hotel last week - not missing out this time)

One bottle Tylenol

One toothbrush

One stick Old Spice "Aqua Reef" scent

Two pair Haynes boxer briefs

One laptop + power cord

Four ink pens

One large pad of paper

One "holdout" journalist's notebook (for sideline work)

One recorder

One pair headphones

One Wisconsin football media guide

Plus the clothes I'm wearing now...

I forgot toothpaste, but every frickin' time I go through airport security, some guy jacks my Colgate Sparkle Mint. That's the best tasting toothpaste and I'm owed about 3 tubes of it dating back to last spring.

Luckily, Momma Wible hooked me up with a small "airport safe" tube so my breath won't be bad if I meet the next Mrs. Johnson in the land of cheese.

Poppa Wible fed us some terrific black bean chili and that went down pretty good with some Sam Adams. Wible's parents bought the variety pack, so I had one of each, from Irish Red to Scotch Ale.

Delicious.

Wible and Langenbacher's flight was about two hours ahead of mine, so they left me at BWI a little after 2:00 p.m. Since I couldn't get on the internet, I read a pretty decent story about the NHL's most hated goon, Sean Avery, in a copy of The Sporting News that Wible left behind.

Did you know that Avery interned at Vogue this summer? Whatta tough guy.

My flight to Chicago didn't leave the city that Ray Lewis built, until a little after 5:00 p.m. So what did I do with my time?

Jammed to My Morning Jacket, The Allman Brothers Band and SRV and played Space Cadet Pin Ball on my laptop.

The flight to Chicago was OK. Nice guy that spoke little English on the left, cute girl on the right. She spoke no English. At least not to me, but you can bet she was yakin' on the phone with her boyfriend as soon as we landed at O'Hare. Too bad.

My connecting flight left Chicago at about 8:55 p.m. There's only one Gate F at O'Hare, and I nearly got on a play to Green Bay instead of Madison. See, we had to walk out on the run way. There were two planes, one bound for Madison, the other for Titletown.

As a lifelong Pack fan, it was neat to see a bunch of Packers followers headed home, but I needed to be in Madison to cover the Wisconsin game. The flight attendant on the Green Bay plane looked at me crooked when I showed her my boarding pass.

Oh well. I turned and got on the Madison plane.

Short flight from Chicago to Madison. Met two nice guys from State College on the flight and another cute girl who graduated from Penn State two years ago. She teaches fourth grade now. Bless her heart.

I'm in Madison now and it's a bit chilly. Good. Football weather.

I'll check in tomorrow. We're headed to State Street now. Be safe.

--TJ