After a layover in Chicago I got on the short flight to South Bend, Indiana at 5:30 Tuesday afternoon. After landing I hailed a taxi to the Howard Johnsons about two miles from campus. Surprisingly enough (considering Notre Dame was closed for the week) it was the only hotel I was able to secure a room at. I normally stay at this one place right off campus. The reason I bring this up is to warn you all not to ever (ever) stay there. It was awful (have any of you ever stayed at a hotel where you aren't comfortable going under the covers...this was one of these place). If you have a chance be sure to check out the reviews on tripadvisor.com as all the comments are extremely accurate. Anyway, I left the hotel at the crack of dawn on Wednesday to begin setting up for the day's signings. Going into the day I was a little nervous about not having enough time to prepare but I did get it all done with some time to spare (I underestimate myself sometimes). The first to arrive was Coach Parseghian. He signed all of our multi-signed Notre Dame pieces as well as some awesome individual product. Ara is one of, if not the, greatest coaches the Irish have ever had. He won two national championships there and even signed a handful of Play Like A Champion posters with the championship years...very strong!




It took Ara about ninety minutes to complete the signings. It was all working out perfectly as Reggie Brooks walked in about fifteen minutes after Coach was done. Reggie blew threw the signing in about forty five minutes. I have always enjoyed talking with Brooks as he knows a lot about football( and loves to talk about the game). As a former Redskin he loves talking NFC East football and about the DC area in general (two of my favorite topics). Aside from autographing the project pieces Reggie also signed some Play Like A Champion 8x10 photographs. We are starting to build up a pretty serious line of the classic Play Like A Champion 8x10s. The are all very cool, affordable pieces for any Notre Dame collector.




After Reggie finished signing I had about an hour to finish setting up for Weis. Charlie walked in right on time at 1:00. He had an extremely serious look on his face and immediately begand setting up helmets. I must admit I was slightly nervous about this signing. While Coach Weis and I have gotten pretty tight over the past two years I knew that he could not be in a great mood after the team's recent losses. I was totally wrong...Charlie was awesome. Once we sat down to sign photos we started talking music (as always). We are both huge Springsteen fans so we spent some time analyzing the new album (in my opionion the album is great but will still go down as Bruce's worst one with the band....but even Bruce's worst album is still better than pretty much anyone elses!) We also talked some baseball as Coach Weis is a huge Yankees fan. Charlie finished the signing in a little less than two hours. Thankfully I had a ton of help throughout the day and by the time Weis was done everything was basically packed up. I then proceeded to head back to my scary hotel to watch Game 1 of the World Series.
Thursday morning I was able to catch an early flight to Cleveland. I really thought that, with me getting out of South Bend on time for once, that my travel luck was changing. I could not have been more wrong. After a few cancelled flights and delays I made it back to New York at around 6:00 PM. Even with the problems in Cleveland I still feel that everything evens out in the end so my next few trips should hopefully be painless.
Check back tomorrow for a recap of the Tony Hawk appearance.