Raina: (phone rings, is picked up)
Michael: Oh, thank goodness it's you... (sound of relief escapes his lips)
Raina: what's going on (trying to contain my dread)
Michael: ... I was just offered a ticket to the Super Bowl, but I have to tell him right now... can I go??
Well duh, of course he can go! There are very few circumstances to which I would reply no to that question. I was happy to let him go! And he was thrilled, excited, barely containing his enthusiasm! Here is a picture of he and James in the airport waiting for their plane to D.C. on Saturday morning!
As is our custom, he sent me a text from the plane right as they were about to take off. He also mentioned in a text that when he left the garage at 4am the light was on in my car. Since the kids were eating breakfast I went out to the garage and realized that I had switched the dome light to "on" last night looking for something and had forgotten to turn it off. A turn of the ignition a moment later confirmed that my battery was dead. Just a couple of weeks earlier during an oil change I was told that my battery life was near it's end so I wasn't surprised it was dead. Bah.
Later that night I get these photos via text:
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| dad is notorious for blinking in photos |
Ok, funny little hiccup to start of the weekend alone. I threw the kids in the bathtub and called AAA from the bathroom to get the car jumped. Kids were clean, a very friendly tech came out to the house, all was well again. Total crisis averted.
James is great at taking photos, he sent this one as well:
Tucker was sick Saturday and most of Sunday so we couldn't really go anywhere. It isn't much fun being housebound, especially for the healthy, older brother, but we survived the boredom. What made things a bit harder was the dishwasher had been on the decline earlier in the week and on Saturday it completely stopped working so I had to wash all the dishes by hand. We couldn't eat out since Tucker was sick and I didn't want the kids to only eat fast food so I stayed busy cleaning all weekend. Dirty dishes and vomit off the floors, high chair, clothes and bedding. Fun times!
More fun photos really start pouring in on Sunday:
My heart, however, was warmed once I viewed these photos from the stadium, and I just knew dad was having the time of his life:
Sleep deprived, I manage to get Harrison ready for school early, drop him off and drive the 20 minutes to the pediatrician so Tucker could get the steroids necessary to relieve the barking cough and the wheezing associated with the inflammation in his throat.
When Michael finally gets home, the kids are asleep, all is calm and the crazy, long weekend is over. I expected sympathy. Lots of sympathy. And souvenirs.
I was offered only a token amount of sympathy, then he regales me with his own bits of awfulness sandwiched in between the amazing parts of a Seahawks Super Bowl victory.
Overall his trip was awesome. Despite the earliness of a 6am flight to D.C., our travelers received a heroes welcome on the airplane and were given some free drinks and high fives and plenty of football conversation. They walked around Times Square which was shut down to traffic and turned into a giant Super Bowl celebration area for several days. As seen in the earlier photos they had dinner and drinks with Robert and his friend and I'm certain bought Robert a round or two for procuring the tickets for all of them.
Here are some photos from news sources:
The game was a blow out, it was amazing the Broncos scored at all. As Michael says, he actually got to enjoy the half time show because he already knew they were going to win. New York City was awesome. The game itself was awesome. New Jersey (where the game was played) was not-at-all-awesome.
For safety, there was a very large perimeter established around the stadium basically guarded by the U.S. military with large weapons and Humvees. No one could drive or walk to the stadium. No private cars or taxis. Everyone had to either (a) pay about $50 for a seat on a charter bus or (b) pay $5 to ride the train in and out of New Jersey.
Our travelers are well acquainted with the New York area and thought riding the train in was a fine idea. So did many other people. Evidently the New Jersery Transit authority didn't think (literally, they didn't think) that so many people would take the train; the crowds were 3 times the size they planned for, they didn't even staff extra people or run more trains.
On the way in, apparently the crowds were all funneled into windowless areas, crammed shoulder to shoulder all the while wearing enough snow gear to keep them warm through the predicted 20 degree weather. Michael thinks it was as warm as 90 degrees in the waiting area; people started stripping off clothes, women pulled up their shirts and pressed their skin against the tiled walls to cool down. It was down right dangerous in there.
Another news image:
I should really make Michael blog, but the upshot is they had to got off one train in NJ and switch to another to get to the stadium. They went through an emergency exit or employee only type door, down some stairs and it was as if they were magically transported to another time... they had ended up one floor removed where the NJ folks get on the train but none of the people from NY were there. All was calm and running smoothly and our travelers managed to get to the Super Bowl without further delay.
After the game, there was an announcement that there was already a long wait for the trains, everyone should stay in the stadium and enjoy the festivities. Ok. They waited over an hour, walked to the trains and found a four hour wait to get on a train. Unwilling to accept this fate, they talked to security guards and asked around for anyway they could possibly walk out of the stadium far enough to get out of the protective border and get a taxi back to NYC. No dice. Michael tried to talk a bus driver into letting them buy a ticket. Denied again. Then he followed his friends to the next waiting bus and they all just walked on, sat down and pretended to be asleep with hats pulled down. They had no idea where the bus was going or how they would get off, but anything was better than their current predicament.
As it turns out, the bus went through the Lincoln Tunnel and they new they were going into the city. The bus then drove right by their hotel. A minute later, a guy walked up to the bus driver and convinced him to let his friend off the bus who was staying in the city and at that point our travelers leaped up, yelled "Go Seahawks!" and ran off the bus.
The next morning it began snowing and many flights our of JFK were cancelled so James and Michael were actually happy they had flown through D.C. However the car ride back now included a lot of people fleeing the city during a very snowy time. Seven hours later they made it and returned to Seattle.
And souvenirs she shall receive!
Harrison got a cool Marshawn Lynch jersey-like t-shirt and Tucker got a cute Super Bowl bear. Actually Steve and Dreslaine were also at the Super Bowl and brought us back more great swag including a puzzle map of the US with all the team logos in their regions (for H), a Super Bowl Monkey for Tucker and I got a black shirt with a statue of liberty with her arms raised in a touch down pose (so many people have asked me where I got it, thank you!).
Super Bowl XLVIII will definitely go down in the Team Fein history blog book as "memorable." One more quick note, upon the team's return the city threw a tremendous parade for them ending at the stadium. Zaidy, Rae Ann and Harrison stood/sat, shivered in freezing temps to see the victorious players return (Harrison has layers and ski jacket on under that jersey!).
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