A few weeks ago I talked to a friend I hadn't seen in awhile who works for Virginia Tech.  We're both sports fans and the conversation turned to the school pride and loyalty of that school's fans.  ACC schools playing host to Tech routinely raise the price of tickets knowing the folks in Blacksburg will buy their allocation of tickets and more.  I told him a Tech road game was the college football equivalent of a Grateful Dead concert, equal parts performance and floating party.

It's hard to describe the atmosphere around Virginia Tech football.  It's not just that Coach Frank Beamer has put some great teams on the field.  Hokies show up not just for the team, but to be around each other.  You get a sense that they feel like part of something bigger than themselves, something special.  And they are.

I had the day off Monday and was headed for Home Depot when the news came on the radio.  I literally felt sick, and immediately thought of a beautiful fall afternoon in Chapel Hill when I had watched UNC and Tech from the visitors side.  I came to the game a Tarheel fan and left feeling like I had spent an afternoon with old friends I didn't know I had. 

For all the hours of coverage of the recent tragedy, that's what you don't get a feel for.  Why Virginia Tech is something more than just another push pin on the map of America's college campuses.  

Tech was, and will surely be again, a happy place.  Hokie fans are, without a doubt, some of the funniest people on the planet.  While most of us consider maroon and orange a dubious fashion choice they wear it, paint it on themselves, and even festoon their cars with it.  And they do it gleefully.

I have a favorite pre-game hangout in Chapel Hill, the obligatory bar-b-que and ribs place.  Before the game I drove up and noticed fresh orange paint all over the place, like strange crescent crop circles.   Inside were some Hokie fans, laughing over who knows what.  When I finished and went back to the car, there they were holding spray cans of orange paint and trying again to paint their shoes.  I suspect some drinking had taken place earlier in the day because they kept missing and laughing harder every time they did.

At the game I found myself surrounded by Hokie fans.  Where the Carolina season ticket holders I normally sat next to had gone, and how the Tech followers got their tickets is still a mystery to me.  But soon I knew all the newcomers by name, where they came from, what they did, and what the students among them studied.  I didn't have to ask, they just sort of took me in.  

The Hokies I sat with were an impressive lot.  Contractors, engineers, veterinary students.  It wasn't like being around people from elite universities who spend time contemplating life.  These people were engaged in living it, and making the world a better place for the rest of us.

On the field it was a close game, much closer than the Tech fans expected.  They cheered as hard when things weren't going well as they did later when the tide turned in their favor, and didn't have an unkind word for the opposition.  They even tolerated my cheering for UNC, although they took more than a little delight in needling me about it.

At the end of the game we wished each other safe drives home and they headed back, most of them to Virginia.  To the Shenandoah Valley, a place that seems light years removed from the violence and madness the rest of the world so routinely has come to expect.

When you think of Virginia Tech, think of this.  A place you would be happy to send your children, an institution you would be proud to be a part of, and people who care about each other and the rest of the world.  With all the twisted images of the past week, those are the ones I will hold onto.