Gainesville Empties out for Florida vs Georgia Game

It never fails to surprise me when I see how empty Gainesville gets on the day of a major away game like Florida vs Georgia. For those of you who don't live in Gainesville (aka the Gator Nation epicenter), just picture 30,000 people vacating a city whose population is only 110,000 in order to drive two hours to Jacksonville Florida to attend Florida's largest cocktail party. I'm all for partying at the Landing prior to a gator football game-- but does anyone else ever think that it's strange how many students and faculty and Gainesvillians attend? I do.

This weekend is one of the best weekends of the year to eat out at the major Gainesville cool spots, like Burrito Brothers or Cafe Gardens. Unfortunately, it's still a bad day to try to get a chicken salad at The Swamp, because a lot of the sorority and fraternity kids who couldn't attend the game still overrun the place.

The weather this year was great. Yesterday, I was on campus at the Library West, enjoying a big cup of coffee at the Starbucks and studying for an exam that I have next week. There's never any parking near Library West (this is the fauly of the planners of the University of Florida, since they basically provide no on-campus parking for students who actually want to study, but if you want to park to attend a UF football game, they are very accomodating). But I digress!

I left my apartment at about 8am and headed by RTS over to the library, where I studied for a few hours before getting together with friends to tailgate before the big game. Last year, Georgia rushed the field. Because of this major insult to us Gator fans, we have a very strong sense of rivalry. We are out for the kill; we are out for revenge. This rivalry made this year's game against the Georgia Bulldogs an even bigger event than normal.

We got together at my friend Jessica's apartment at Gainesville Place. I wouldn't want to live there because it's incredibly loud, but we watched the game and ordered in Hungry Howie's pizza. It was a great way to unwind. Their apartments have a really crazy layout, and the place was trashed. I like to go there to visit friends and hang out, but I'm not sure how anyone puts up with the noise and the trash. My friend lives in ne of their 4 bedrooms, and the living room is so tiny that at half time we decided that we had to go to a different apartment complex in Gainesville that's nearby, because there wasn't room for the 10 of us that wanted to all watch together.

As always, we had the radio on tuned to Rock 104 in the background, and one of the guys had Gatorzone open so that we could keep track of the plays and the stats. I loved this photo from the game, which I posted from Gatorzone. That really is a great website!