The Learning Experience
For those of you that know Southey, Chris (my youngest brother, most famous for his guest appearances on Feel Da Paign’s webcasts), and I, you would definitely point to Chris as the one who cares the most about education, learning, and all that boring stuff. Heck, he has his own blog about those very things. Dull, I know, but he had to do something since we have the sports pretty well covered. With that being said, Southey and I were able to learn a lot from this trip and even enjoy parts of the trip that didn’t involve the Cardinals, Hooters babes, and homeless guys. For me, the educational part of the trip that I thoroughly enjoyed was our trip to the Arch. There, we not only spent time looking at this great monument and discussing whether we could bungee jump off of it, this while Southey was reluctantly checking out a few student teachers from a field trip, but hey, he was still wounded from the Haymaker Katie gave him at Hooters. We also went inside and walked through the museum, not the main reason we went to the Arch, but maybe it should have been. It was like reading a History book about westward expansion, minus the actual reading. There we observed stuffed buffalo, fake talking Indians, and videos about Lewis and Clark (our brother’s of expedition). In all honesty, I really did enjoy it and did not get bored in the least.
To add to that, they also put in a new baseball exhibit about the early years of baseball in St. Louis and across America, which we had to check out. The exhibit included everything from a baseball signed by Stan Musial and Albert Pujols, to memorabilia from the 1926 World Series when the Cards defeated Babe Ruth & Co, to an old-school Cardinals hat that Southey was dying to wear. The museum had so much to offer and we happily took in it all. Who knew learning could be so much fun?
-DP
Let’s be honest, If education and I are in a sentence then it’s gotta be a joke. When I hear the word education I head the other direction. I’m not going to give you another history lesson like Derek did, I’m going to give you information that you will need for the real world and that’s how to destroy a hotel room. 
By the time we were done with that place we had towels throughout the room and empty pizza boxes aplenty. We even moved around the furniture so we could have more room for activities (that is my reference for the day from the movie Stepbrothers if you didn’t already know). I feel bad for the cleaning people that had to step into the danger zone after we were through with it. When Derek uses the facilities, he really uses the facilities if you know what I mean. He gives it 110% every time he steps in there. But we had clothes all over the place and spilled drinks all over the carpet but we only did those things because the hotel charged us a dollar when we used their phone to try to get some grub. They need to have some sign that says if you use our phone we will rip you off because that’s exactly what they did. So if you need some advice on how to dismantle a hotel room just leave me a comment on the website and I will tell you exactly what we did and how we did it.
-JS
The One That Got Away
This is the fourth and final category on our “The Boy’s Are Back in Town” series. We have taken a look at the good times, the funny times, the times when we got smarter, and now it is a good time to talk about something we would change about the trip. Honestly, the trip was awesome and could not have really been that much better, but as we all know and hear from our moms and Miley Cyrus, “nobody’s (or nothing is) perfect.” This was greatly exemplified by the one and only, Imo’s pizza. Anyone that watches Cardinals games on FSN Midwest will tell you that you see commercials for Imo’s at least ten times a game and you would think it was good, but man was I wrong. 
Their slogan is “everybody knows it’s Imo’s” and now I have joined that group. If Imo’s pizza was ever present at the same place I was, either the pizza or me would be gone because that stuff is plain awful. Let me explain what happened. It was about noon on Wednesday and I was just getting up, while Southey was drinking his morning coffee and we wanted to get something to eat, yet we didn’t really want to have to walk very far, so we decided to order pizza. We could have gotten Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s (which we got later), but no, we had to get Imo’s because the darn commercials made it seem so good. So we got online and checked out their menu and decided that a 17 dollar, extra large pizza would be plenty for us to eat for both lunch and a pre-game snack so we did not have to break the bank on five dollar nachos and hot dogs at the stadium. However, we were wrong; do you notice a theme here? The pizza was average size and though it looked like a delicious Monicals pizza, it was not. The cheese was terrible and had a weird taste. All it made me think about was the Kraft plant that I drive by back in Champaign. So yeah, the pizza was bad, we didn’t even finish the whole thing. Needless to say, we got food at the game for dinner instead and left the remaining pieces of pizza for the cleaning staff at the hotel. There you have it, the one thing I regret from the entire trip. Never again will I eat Imo’s and as Southey described above, the pizza from hell is to blame for my all out effort in the facilities.
-DP
This topic was an easy choice for me. It was not bringing our beloved Xbox 360 and NHL 10. But Derek let me know about everyday by saying “hey do you know what would be fun right now? If we had an Xbox so we could play videogames”. So for that I’m sorry Derek for not bringing the Xbox. 
I’m really not even sure why I didn’t bring it. Maybe it was my fear that my baby would get stolen or that the hotel TV would not have the right hook ups. But when it comes to Derek and I playing videogames it always ends up with the same ending and that is SOUTHEY WINS and PIPER CRIES. So really Derek should be thanking me for saving his trip because if I would have brought the Xbox one of us might not have come back to Champaign alive. Man what a trip!
-JS
However, what I witnessed at Hooters was not something you can see everyday on a college campus. You need someone like Southey. Alright, so here’s how it went down. After about fifteen or twenty minutes of waiting and coming to the conclusion that the Hooters girls in Champaign have much more depth on their roster, not just a few superstars and then some scrubs, we were finally seated. Luckily, I would say we got the Lebron of this Hooters, a big upgrade for Jake especially after seeing the females on the highway (read Piper and Southey = Lewis and Clark if you don’t know what I’m talking about), and maybe that’s why Jake folded under pressure. Here’s the convo…
He proceeds by asking people for money so he could buy a drink because he was really thirsty. People were turning him down one by one until a guy finally gave him a dollar. He then asked me for some money and I respectfully told him that I didn’t have any cash on me and then he walked out and headed down the road. But, unfortunately me and Derek ran into him as were walking to the Arch after Derek just downed one of the nastiest mushroom burgers I have ever seen.(and he didn’t order a mushroom burger, that’s the funniest part about it). So he asks for money again and Derek and I both had about 80 cents that we decided to give him. But this homeless guy was a greedy mug and told us to pull out our wallets and look for more money. He said if he got a dollar from both of us then he could get the rest which I found totally hilarious. I wasn’t about to pull out my wallet because I’m always rolling deep with money and then Derek pulled out his phone and said this is all I have and I thought for sure the homeless guy was going to say “I’ll take it” but he didn’t. The worst part about it is we had too sit and wait for the crosswalk light to come on so we could get away from the homeless guy that wanted to take us for everything were worth. Homeless people—you definitely can’t live with them but you sure as hell can’t live without em.
Toews is without question one of the best centers in the NHL, despite being only 22 years old. He is a great passer, can score when needed, and also is great on the defensive end. This playoffs, Toews has done all three and added two more assists to his unbelievable stats the past month. With his two points in tonight’s 3-2 victory, Toews has scored a point in the last 12 games the Hawks have played this postseason and has shown no signs of stopping now. He has been the engine for Chicago, allowing guys like Dustin Byfuglien to emerge.
After a long day’s travel, men did what men do, which includes “spitting game” (a slang term for flirting, talking, or conversing with women in an attempt to catch their attention and enjoy the night with them, that courtesy of the Feel Da Paign dictionary) to females, and as was the case in 1804 for Lewis and Clark, these women were Native American. As for Southey and I, we’re just not that picky. In fact, as I am writing this right now and Southey is taking us to “the promised land”, we have successfully broke a record in the Guinness Book of World records for passing and being passed by one car. I swear, we passed them or they passed us at least fifteen times in a matter of less than two hours. But hey, the car was being operated by two girls who looked to have been of similar age.
It should be a good time, I will be Tweeting as the trip goes on. If you need either one of us before Thursday, like our good friend Nelly said, “you can find me in St. Louie.”
