MLK Day Parade and Late Night Sporting Events

This blog is about my Midwest Adventures and I don't want it to be about politics so I will sum this up in one sentence. Tuesday's events in Washington DC made me smile.

Monday was MLK Day and we received an inter office e-mail last week regarding some of the events that the Thunder were going to be taking part in that day so I thought I would check them out. I have a tremendous respect for what Dr. King did with the Civil Rights movement but I have to admit that I have never really gone out of my way to do anything to honor him on his day other than to volunteer at a high school basketball tournament a few times so I decided to do so this year. On Monday Morning I decided at the last minute that I would head over to the Oklahoma History Center to watch a bell ringing ceremony in which some prominent people living in OKC community were going to speak, including Thunder broadcaster Grant Long and player Chucky Atkins. It was to start at 10:45 and I showed up at 11:00 which was just enough time for me to catch the last 2 minutes. I thought it was going to be a much longer ceremony but I was wrong. Still worth the trip though as I got to walk into the atrium of the center and was blown away. The state of Oklahoma has a very storied history and though I didn't have the time to pay the $5 and check out all of the exhibits, I did decide that I will be going back in the near future.

Monday afternoon I went into downtown OKC to check out the MLK Day Parade. One of the things I was looking forward to was the Thunder representation as I knew that some of the players would be in the parade as well as members of our dance team and drum line. Don't know the dancers but the drummers have become my buddies so I was looking forward to cheering them on. Started watching the parade at about the 6 block mark and realized that the Thunder were near the front and that they were being accompanied by around 50 school kids and a handful of the front office people. One of my co-workers spotted me taking pictures and she told me to join them "the more the merrier" she said so I ended up walking the rest of the parade route with them. I even helped lead some of the cheers while the drummers did there thing "Let's Go Thunder". I was surprised how long of a parade it was. I would guess that the total route was 1.5 miles or so. Good times though and 3 of our players: Russell Westbrook, Kyle Weaver and DJ White rode in a carriage pulled by horses.

It is almost 10 pm here right now and I am about to watch the UW-USC basketball game live on Fox Sports Oklahoma. I'm still not used to all of these late events due to the time zone differences. I'm just glad my Huskies are going to be on national TV so that I can see them. Last night the Thunder played a 9:30 game against the Golden State Warriors in Oakland. Great shootout game as the Thunder lead 72-68 AT HALFTIME. Gotta love a game with 140 first half points. Thought we had lost it down the stretch when Seattle native Jamal Crawford put the Warriors ahead with 1.4 seconds to go. Jeff Green had other ideas though and hit the game winning buzzer beater: Final Score Thunder 122 Warriors 121 and the game ended just a few minutes after midnight.

Usual strange temeratures here in OKC. Today's high was in the high 70s. Tomorrow in the 50s, Friday low 40s and Saturday's high might not get out of the 30s. Still hasn't rained in 2009 though.