DA MILLER FAMILY'S DAY OFF

By Your Happy Valley Athletics Supporter, Jack Strap

On his DAY OFF, Ferris Bueller said "Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop & look around once in awhile, you could miss it".  With that in mind, DA MILLER FAMILY'S DAY OFF was a trip to Happy Valley to see the sights & sounds and then watch We Are! Penn State! take on the Iowa Hawkeyes.

Any number of things could have tripped up that DAY OFF game plan and turned one or more MILLER FAMILY members into Cameron:

Ferris: Cameron, what have you seen today?

Cameron: Nothing good.

Ferris: Nothing - wha-what do you mean nothing good? We've seen everything good. We've seen the whole city! We went to a museum, we saw priceless works of art! Went to a ballgame & a parade. We ate pancreas!

To start a bad thing could have been the weather because although we luv the show "Survivor", as a group we're not good at "surviving" bad weather elements especially on a DAY OFF that would be spent almost totally outside.  But Mother Nature provided a picture-perfect DAY OFF.

The Road Trip up was as uneventful as you'd like it and with relatively little traffic problems as they made better than expected time while enjoying good tunes & the scenery including scattered patches of high density fog and the ever present mountains.  So they got up to Happy Valley well before lunch and thus decided to go right up to the stadium and ended up in a paved lot (which is good) but behind the Law Building about as far as you can be with a parking pass from Downtown College Ave. & Beaver Stadium.  But DA MILLER FAMILY was at least mentally prepared for a DAY OFF of walking by the veteran PSUer Glenn.   

So on foot they zig-zagged Downtown utilizing all the best routes that the campus veteran knew while hoping that new construction hadn't detoured any of them.  Thankfully Britty wore sneakers which isn't her fashionable norm & Karen who hadn't slept well the night before was a real trooper who only asked "are we almost there" once or twice.  The long walk made us hungry so we ducked off College Ave. to Glenn's favorite after midnight stop--College Pizza for slices & bread sticks which hit the spot.

DA MILLER FAMILY'S DAY OFF then continued with some shopping/browsing on College Ave. culminating in a "grilled" sticky buns purchase at The Diner before heading to the Pattee/Paterno Library to prove Glenn knew where it was, although it didn't look anything like when he studied there back in the early 80's thanks to Sue-JoPa's philanthropy.  Next stop on their PSU Walking Tour was the Nittany Lion Shrine for a family picture, but the line turned out to be too long there, so they started heading back across campus to "The Beave" with a planned stop at The Creamery.

It was an ice cream kind of day, so it was worth the 45 minutes wait at The Creamery which had also changed a lot since Glenn's days at PSU although his favorite remains as "Peachy Paterno".  Also while waiting in that line, Andrew spotted & talked to some of his Wilson Band buddies who were amongst the 103,497 fans in attendance.

Karen, Britty & Andrew then continued east on the Stadium Walk which is a spectacle unto itself while Glenn hustled back to the car to get jackets/blanket as the temps would be dropping by the end of the 3:40pm game.  They met at the Bryce Jordan Center and headed to their WB section seats which were right next to the student section with a good diagonal view of the Blue Band.

They were there in time to see pre-game warm-ups and spot the legendaryJoe Paterno on the field which is a very good sign these days and then they were all psyched to see the PSU Blue Band perform.  In fact, a Blue Band performance set up DA MILLER FAMILY'S DAY OFF as Andrew really wanted to see them again after they performed at Central York High School 3 weeks ago.  As always, the Blue Band was great--the music, the formations, the amazing baton twirler, the Drum Major's flip, etc.

So it was finally game time and Glenn was worried that Iowa, who had beaten Penn State 8 out of their last 9 meetings, was going to put a damper on DA MILLER FAMILY'S DAY OFF.  PSU QB #1 Rob Bolden (whose play caused Glenn to yell "I'll sign the transfer papers" followed by a nearby fan who added "ship him off to Delaware") also appeared to be capable of putting a damper on DA DAY as he was throwing bad passes that were somehow miraculously  ending up in PSU hands.  Sue Reitz told Glenn to look for signs at Penn State, so he felt "The Lipper" must have something to do with these miracles as he looked up to the heavenly blue sky and felt some emotion behind those dark Penn State sunglasses.

The game was an exciting nail-biter and DA MILLER FAMILY not only enjoyed that but the We Are!!! Penn State!!! chants echoing in the stadium, the student led multi-speed Wave & their other amusing antics, The Lion, Cowbell Man, the 1986 National Championship Team being honored at halftime after another Blue Band show, etc, etc. and PSU pulling out the gutty win to ring the Victory Bell. 

So all that was left was another walk back to the car amongst the Happy Valley fans (on which Britty spotted JoePa riding in a car making its way thru the masses) & then a traffic-infested trip home which is a necessary evil & a relatively small price to pay for DA MILLER FAMILY'S DAY OFF.