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What do an isthmus, Californium and aspartame all have in common?

Well, not much, really. Except that they were all correct answers which helped Red Card the F.O. – a motley crew made up of Revolution President Brian Bilello, Director of Marketing Cathal Conlon, Account Executive Kyle Lindsay and myself – finish third in last night’s Midnight Riders Trivia Night held at the Pour House on Boylston Street. As much as I’d love to take credit for our solid showing, I have to admit that Bilello (@RevsPrez) was our MVP. Apparently MIT is a decent school or something. I am proud to declare that I, however, was the one who knew which HBO series debuted in 1998 and became the first cable show to win the Emmy for Best Comedy; Sex and the City. Actually, maybe “proud” is the wrong word.

The night wasn’t without late drama as we actually took a five-point lead into the final question of the evening only to be tripped up by which city saw a baseball stadium demolished in 2000 to make way for a football stadium in 2003. Our guess was Cincinnati. The correct answer was Seattle. Alas, victory slipped away at the death.

We actually finished on the podium with a third-place showing, but passed on our prizes to the fourth-place finisher in exchange for the entire bar joining in on a particular chant about not liking D.C. United very much. You know the one. As you can guess, it wasn’t hard to convince everybody.

Of course there were really only winners on the night as it was announced at the end of the event that approximately $7,000 had been raised for Adam Kopoyan, an incredibly brave young boy currently recovering from a traumatic brain injury. You can read more about Adam’s story and you can continue to donate to the cause HERE.

All in all, a fantastic night put on by the Midnight Riders and all for a good cause. Red Card the F.O. will most definitely see you next year … and we’ll be ready.

We knew when as early as yesterday morning that there was a threat of severe weather forecast for today. (“What do they mean by severe?” “Don’t know, it just said SEVERE across today on the seven-day forecast.”)

That said, Jay Heaps took the initiative to try to move training up 30 minutes this morning. While the team ended up getting underway a bit earlier than originally scheduled, even that didn’t keep us from avoiding the weather outright. At the end of the team’s 75-minute training session at UT-Dallas, the sky opened up and even Jeff Lemieux had to finish recording his post-practice interviews at the hotel to avoid getting the equipment wet.

The group came back to the hotel in south Frisco and everyone showered up and got ready for lunch. With TVs on in most rooms, about half the travel party knew that tornadoes were in the area and headed our direction. As just about everyone was in the meal room – and some had even wrapped up and headed back to their rooms - team administrator Nick Kropelin came in to say that the hotel warned him the tornadoes were a few towns over and the hotel said to stay in the stairwells if we needed to go up to our rooms.

The guys keeping themselves entertained
in the Hotel basement

With the heads up, we continued to eat lunch and just a few minutes later, the hotel-wide announcement came over the loudspeakers directing everyone to the basement through the lobby area. Most of the group went straight down from the meal room, but some had to run up to the team’s floor to make sure everyone was heeding the announcement and hustle them down. (Mind you, some of the group had already experienced this situation last year when we had tornado sirens and hotel announcements come in Kansas City for our U.S. Open Cup match in May.)

After a headcount came up correct in the basement, everyone – including all the hotel’s guests and staff – settled in. While we were only down there for about 30 minutes, maybe a bit longer, the staff was tremendous and provided drinks and snacks as everyone was crowded into an area no bigger than a bank lobby.

Finally we got the go-ahead to go back to our rooms and saw that our area was spared. The cell that came over us apparently did some awful damage a short distance away, several towns over. What we did see was spectacular lightning, the remnants of hail and driving rain that was on the backside of the cell that came through. We didn’t really experience much heavy wind, but the sky was still pitch black until the storm moved further off to the northeast.

For all of our friends and family who tried to reach members of the travel party while we were in the basement, we appreciate it and we’re all fine. Unfortunately we didn’t have cell service and then it took about an hour to settle out and return to normal.

We hope that all of our FC Dallas brethren are OK, including friends, family and supporters.

The Revs played their second placement game on Saturday morning, heading to the Nike Football Training Center early after breakfast at the hotel.

The Revs played their first placement game on Friday, so it was back to the game day routine.