March Madness in Indo

So I have been advised to write about experiencing "March Madness" from Indonesia, before the glory of Kentucky's win begins to wane.  (I can hear all the UK fans around the world making the argument, "NEVER!!!")

But yes the madness of March crept into homes even on the other side of the world.  Granted most anyone that wasn't American had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned "March Madness", they probably thought it was some kind of disease.  Actually Jennifer and Shelly can tell you this isn't far from the truth.  I mean why else would their husbands skip out on sleeping out the night next to them and instead huddle together in a small corner of the office to watch a game on a laptop in the wee hours of the morning.  Yeah I was up early quite a bit in March since we are 11 hours ahead of EST, so a game played at 5pm EST would have been shown live at 4am here. Sheesh... and yes I did pull an all nighter while watching games!

I may have gotten more into this NCAA tourney than any of the others in the past few years, one reason being that Louisville did better than in previous years, but the other reason was because there was a wedgie on the line.  Yep it's ok to go back and read that last bit again... I said wedgie.  The "head wedgie" was the prize that the winner of the bracket challenge from our church in Campbellsville, KY would win.  Once Jennifer found this bit of information out she was very much into the tournament as well since she was really wanting this wedgie.

 Things really got interesting when both Kentucky and Louisville won their "Elite Eight" games and were going head to head in the "Final Four".  This set up a bitter rivalry not only in Kentucky but also here in Indonesia.  Jennifer and I headed down to Semarang for the weekend because it was Shelly's birthday and we wanted to celebrate with her, but also because this would allow me to watch the game with Jennifer's dad who is a staunch UK fan.  It was such a great day celebrating Shelly and then watching the game with Greg.  Even though I am a Louisville fan I really didn't care who won because either way a Kentucky team was in the championship.  If Louisville won I would have been proud of them and if Kentucky won it would have helped my bracket and thus bring me a step closer to getting a wedgie.  So there we were Kentucky Greg and Louisville Greg huddled together in the corner of the office watching the game on a laptop in the wee hours of the morning.  We tried to keep our whoops and hollers to minimum decibels so that our precious wives could sleep.

As you probably already know Kentucky won that game... and the one after, making them the National Champions.  Those two wins also helped me give Jennifer the wedgie that she had been so excited about receiving and very much deserved for putting up with all of my March madness.  Here I thought I would miss out on the greatest tournament in America while we are in Indonesia... so glad I didn't!