ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 1, 1996 TAG: 9601010004
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
DATELINE: NEW ORLEANS
SOURCE: ELISSA MILENKY STAFF WRITER
note: above
Tech junior Mike "Zonk" Hatfield has been living on fast food and Frosted Mini Wheats cereal during his trip to New Orleans.
On Saturday night, he and five friends stayed at a discount motel just inside the city in a room that smelled of stale cigarettes. The room was $30 per person - $30 more than each of them planned to spend.
``We're running low,'' said Hatfield, who brought only $100 in cash and was down to $40 by early Sunday morning. "Our credit cards are never going to look the same again."
This group of Tau Delta fraternity members represents one extreme of Hokie fans flooding New Orleans this weekend.
While some alumni took advantage of expensive travel packages in the $800-plus range, many students could not afford to stay in the upscale hotels that surround the famous French Quarter and the Superdome, the areas where most of the Tech fans were staying.
Instead, students on low budgets found other ways to survive. Some piled into motels with few or no perks while others sought out long-lost relatives and friends for free lodging.
In Hatfield's case, the group could not find the friend who had arranged for a free place for all of them to stay - a cousin's New Orleans apartment.
After driving 12 hours from Blacksburg in a 1986 red Chevrolet Cavalier and a champagne 1994 Ford Taurus, the six students could not find their friend in the throng of Tech and University of Texas fans who flooded Bourbon Street on Saturday night.
A crowd so thick that, at times, walking was nearly impossible probably was not the best place to meet someone, they all admitted.
Although some had slept in cars on other road trips, the group decided to stay at the Family Inns of America motel with the hope of finding their friend by Sunday night. To everyone's relief, the group found the friend by Sunday morning.
"I think we're pretty much scraping the barrel here," Hatfield said.
On the other side is Tech senior Forrest Mullikian, a fellow Tau Delta member who is staying at the upscale Hyatt Regency, which is connected to the Superdome. All that separates Mullikian's fate from that of his friends' is that he is staying with Mom and Dad, Tech alumni who graduated in 1969 and 1967 respectively.
Mullikian admits he probably would be sleeping in a car in New Orleans had it not been for his parents, Tom and Carol. Like hundreds, perhaps thousands of other longtime Tech alumni, the couple took a plane to New Orleans, stayed at an upscale hotel and sampled downtown restaurants for lunch and dinner.
After years of supporting the Tech football team, the Mullikians said the Sugar Bowl was an event they simply could not miss. Still, Tom Mullikian remembers when he could not afford restaurant meals and five nights at the Hyatt at nearly $200 a night.
The Bell Atlantic public relations specialist, who lives in Northern Virginia, slept in cars and lived on peanut butter and Ritz crackers when he went on road trips to football games as an undergraduate student.
"It's nice to have a nice clean bed, nice clean clothes, not having to run out of hot water," said Carol Mullikian, who works for United Airlines.
Chuck Ernest, a 1970 Tech graduate from Greensboro, N.C., also reveled in his alumni status. He and his wife stayed at the Hotel De La Poste for $210 a night.
``We're doing a lot more things, coming earlier, staying longer,'' Ernest said. ``That's what they want us to do, spend our money.''
Being able to afford a comfortable, even luxurious weekend in New Orleans does not automatically come with alumni status, however.
For some, like 1994 Tech graduate Harry Hawyer, one nice meal in the city and two nights at the Quality Inn is all he and his group of three friends could afford.
The group drove to New Orleans in Tech graduate Andrew Murdoch's 1990 Plymouth Sundance, bought groceries along the way and purchased most of their beer at convenience stores along the side streets of the French Quarter on Saturday night. On average, a beer inside a bar along Bourbon Street costs $4.
Tech graduate student Steve Dingledine, also part of the group, vowed things would be different in future years.
"I'm going to come back in style," he said half-jokingly as he looked up at the New Orleans skyline during the Saturday night pep rally next to the Superdome. ``I'm going to fly in, stay at the nicest hotel, drink the finest wine.''
Then again, some of the adventure of just getting by would be lost years from now, the penny pinchers said. Even Tech senior Anne Dean, part of the Tau Delta group that was temporarily homeless Saturday night, admitted the trip would not be as much fun without turmoil.
"It would probably be easier to go with a posh alumnus," said Dean, a "little sister," or female member, of Tau Delta. "But definitely, it's more fun getting people together, staying together and just getting by."
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines KEYWORDS: FOOTBALLby CNB