Trip to Morgantown WV

A view of Cheat Lake from Lakeside Resort Golf Course

Brendan, Eileen and the kids moved to Morgantown WV on August 1.  I drove down to for my first visit on the last weekend in September.  Driving to see them is now a lot easier since  it is less than six hours from Rochester as opposed to the slightly more than 12 it took to drive to Aurora IL.  By the way, this Morgantown is almost exactly halfway to Charlotte.  Originally I had planned to drive to Morgantown and then on to Charlotte and back through Virginia to visit my brother Tom but that didn't work out this trip.

 The first thing you notice about Morgantown is the natural beauty especially as fall colors begin to emerge.  The next thing you notice is the HILLS and finally you realize how small the town is.  The permanent population is around 30,000 with slightly more than 30,000 students at West Virginia University.  This was a football weekend with the Mountaineers hosting the Oklahoma State Cowboys, ranked 11th in the country.  WVU recently left the Big East and joined the Big Twelve.  After an embarrassing game against Maryland the week before (37-0 loss) confidence was not high.  With a 63,000 seat stadium sold out--a great time to go to Kroger's by the way as well as safely transit West Virginia's first and only traffic circle--the Mountaineers played a spectacular game to upset the Cowboys 30-21.  Go 'eers?  I know, I would have thought 'neers too.  We enjoined the game at home on ESPN.

Eileen and Braden

When I arrived on Friday, I joined Eileen and Braden for lunch.  Braden was getting ready to attend the Preston County Buckwheat Festival at an even smaller town near Morgantown.  She was going with friends from her soccer team.  I was pleased to see how well her transition has gone with a lot of friends both at school and on her team.

They live in a very nice and new townhouse with three bedrooms on the top floor, a spacious main floor and the fourth bedroom and bath occupied by the West Virginia Pickett teenager on the ground floor.  This is located in the Cheat Lake area and is right on the tenth fairway of the resort golf course.  In fact, Brock and Brady met us with cold drinks there and happily enough observed one of my few good drives of the day.  Fortunately I was unaware of the gallery until after I hit.

After golf on Saturday, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening watching football on TV:  the aforementioned West Virginia game, then Notre Dame-Oklahoma, and most of the Wisconsin-Michigan game.  Sunday we sandwiched in a couple of NFL games on TV, Chiefs game on internet updates, and some of the kids' activities.

No caption needed

Wrestling is the newest Pickett sport.  Brady is in a instructional program coached by one of the WVU assistant coaches.  He is very motivated and works extremely hard especially given the fact that he is typically paired up with a boy who is in his third year of participation.  It is hard to watch him get tossed around but he comes right back and works the drills and techniques the coaches teach him.  He is also playing flag football but with a Mountaineer home game taking over the town, there was no flag football that weekend.

Braden leaves her signature pigtail after a header

Later that afternoon, Braden and Brock both had soccer matches but I could only get to one and that was Braden's.  It was great to see her play and smile a lot while she was.  She clearly enjoys being on the team, has friends, and is playing as a force in the mid-field.  The thing I noticed most of all was how she has added headers to her game, both at mid field and in front of the goal.

You can view the photo album by clicking this link.

Eileen arrived with Brock from his soccer match in Pennsylvania.  We all ate out and then returned home to finish the evening watching football.  What else!  I left early the next morning and left two days later for Charlotte.  More about that on the next blog.