Since we have the honor of having taken the longest time to reach the BYU50 box, I thought I could pass along our adventure.

We live in Southern Jersey, just across the bridge from Philly. My wife had staked out the other individuals posting on social media about the NJ box, and figured that they all lived in Northern Jersey and so we'd be at a disadvantage if it was dropped up there. Because of that we researched likely spots up there where the box might be dropped -- which proved to be pretty difficult, actually. NJ doesn't have much association with the LDS Church or BYU really, so it likely would be some landmark / well-known place. So that didn't really help narrow it down.

When the clue was given that it'd be in the "Northern Jersey Shore" we collectively sighed. We were expecting a specific city, not a general area that encompassed 1-2 counties. Given our lack of familiarity with that area, we almost didn't take the drive up. But we took our best guess and thought that it would be either at the Paramount Theater in Asbury Park (the whole Springsteen, Bon Jovi affiliation thing) or at The Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove (huge pipe organ, super well known for music/churches). So we drove up 1.5hrs to the Paramount and just hung out in the car outside waiting for the tweet. When the picture came, we had no idea what it was (we're from South Jersey...) so I tried a reverse Google Image search while my wife looked up the name of the place. Unluckily my search came up empty, and her search brought up multiple places by that name in multiple locations in North Jersey. So while I drove north she looked up pics of the outside of each Strollo's Italian Ice place she could find til we found a match.

It was 25min away from the Paramount and while I drove, she was navigating, tending to our 3-month-old son, and also checking the Twitter feed to see if somebody had already claimed it. She was a total trooper. Google Maps actually led us astray twice... which didn't help the tension in the car... before we happened upon the location. My wife jumped out of the car while it was still moving and claimed the box. She was pumped and it was epic. The family that delivered it had a daughter who interned for the BYU Sports Dept, which is how they were selected to drop the box.

All in all super fun. Perhaps the best part was the pure surprise on my wife's face when she opened the box. She had no idea what was in there, she was just focused on winning the box that her husband had been talking about for the past 2 weeks. haha

btw, to those that have won or seen boxes, are the signatures on the football "live" or are they printed on? They look so uniform and are done with the same weight/thickness/color ink that it looks printed.