…knock on the door, “Room Service” It startled me out of my slumber. I stumbled to the door, she asked if we needed service. I said YES! Just give me a minute. I quickly got dressed, she said she would do it up for us in no time. I went down to the continental breakfast. It was done at 10 am so I was just hoping to maybe snag some left over coffee. Noone was in the area except for the lady that was in charge of it, she was cleaning up. Being used to normal reactions I get, I assumed she would be annoyed if I made more of a mess since she was cleaning up. The exact opposite happened. She asked if I was hungry, she showed me what was left, she asked me if I wanted her to make me anything. Unbelieveable, she was so kind. I had a bagel, yogurt and some juice and coffee. She asked where I was from, if I was going to the game and seemed generally interested in what I had to say. Again I was flabbergasted at the abundance of good will that had been heaped on me in Wisconsin. I went back up to the room and saw the maid in another room. She was a young white girl that spoke perfect english, with that canadian sounding accent. I asked if she got a chance to do it, she said, Yep all done!!!. Geez.
Today was the big day, game day. We were excited. There was a casino right near Lambeau. We had a decent amount of time since it was a night time game. We decided to hit the casino first. It was a short half hour drive to Green Bay. The casino was a cool little indian joint. We first hit the all you can eat lunch buffet. 10 bucks for all you can eat and drink. The food was great but I definitely didn’t eat anywhere near to my money’s worth. After that we were out on the floor. I found the craps tables, they had 2 of them one 10 dollar and one 5 dollar one. 10 was too rich for my blood. Both of the tables were jammed pack. I watched for a good 20 minutes until I was able to squeeze in at the one end. The table was extremely slow, meaning the dealers were very slow placing and paying out bets. However it must have been lucky. I started with 60 bucks and walked away with 210. I was the “shooter” for at least 45 minutes, meaning it took me that long to “crap out” That is extremely unusual and my run of luck translated to everyone playing at the table with me, some players literally made thousands of dollars during my stint as the roller. Unreal. When I did finally crap out they applauded like I just finished the encore at a rock concert. Troy couldn’t believe it. He burned through 120 bucks in video poker in 20 minutes. At the table we also got to see some guy place the maximum bet allowed on the pass line when he was the shooter. He lost when he crapped out before rolling a 10. He didn’t look very happy. It was a dumb bet. My casino windfall made up for the majority of the money I had spent to that point an added bonus that made things even better.
It was around 3:30 when we left the casino and headed towards Lambeau. It looked impressive from the outside. The parking lot didn’t open until 3 hours before game time and the gates open 2 hours before kickoff. We had a couple hours to kill. We decided to park outside the stadium lot in a grass field so we could get the festivities underway. Packer fans were everywhere but surprisingly there were quite a few Eagles fans thrown in the mix. It was good to see I wasn’t the only one wearing my Eagles jersey. We went into a sports bar right by the stadium where we had a few beers and talked to more friendly, hospitable green bay fans. When we walked outside I felt stuff bouncing off my nose, sleet! Oh boy. Undaunted we walked around to see more of the sights. They had an outdoor tent set up with food and beer as well as a live band. It was a kicking good time. I knew I had lots of time so I hit the beer pretty heavy. I probably had 7 or 8 in a short time period. I also had my first taste of brat, a sausage like food item you eat on a bun like a hot dog. I’m sure my blood pressure went up a few points after eating 2 of them but they were damn good, a green bay food staple. We continued to walk around and eventually got into the stadium lot. We walked around and saw the mass of tailgaters. We saw the Eagles bus pull in. We saw the Madden cruiser come in. The sleet had turned to an ice cold rain. It was going to be a wet one.
We got inside with little fuss. Wow, the remodeling was impressive. We entered the expansive beautiful atrium and were handed foam “cheese sticks” At first I resisted taking one, I later went back and got one cause Troy said he wanted one for his daughter. Somehow during the stick handoff Troy lost a one of his gloves. We tried to retrace his steps but had no luck in finding it. We walked the stadium a bit seeing the sights. As we headed towards our seats we saw guys renting seat backs. I didn’t realize that the stadium seating was just metal bleachers. From prior experience Troy said it was a wise 5 bucks to spend so we each got one.
We entered the stadium, no ushers, everyone just goes where they should. It was an impressive view, our seats were pretty low and we had a great view of the entire field. To be honest it didn’t look like it would hold as much as Veterans Stadium did but it holds 71,000, more than the Vet did. I soon found out how, I was shoulder to shoulder with other fans. They pack you in there TIGHT. I was having residual affects from the beer and had to hit the bathroom one final time 15 minutes before kickoff. I went into the bathroom and crashed into a hoarde of men. The bathroom was packed. One set of lines to the left and another to the right. The lines to the right were probably about 15 deep, the ones to the left were 10 or less so I decided to jump into the left line. I soon figured out that the left was the line to piss in the SINK! Ugh. I quickly moved to the right side and waited 15 minutes to relieve myself in a conventional manner. Unfortunately my long bathroom stay made us miss the national anthem and the player intros. We made it back to our seats just in time for kick off.
It was sloppy. Sloppy on the field, and sloppy in the stands. The rain was getting harder. I did not have any waterproof clothing, just layers. My legs were just covered by jeans. I wore ankle high gym socks and sneakers. Very dumb in retrospect. The jeans sucked in the icy water. The water bounced off the waterproofed fans around us onto our legs. The game was a mess for the first half. A lot of fumbling by the Packers, a lot of non action by the Eagles. By half time we had to go in to defrost a bit. We wound up spending the entire 3rd quarter in the atrium watching the game on the tv’s. We were that cold. At the start of the 4th we worked our way back in. On the way, we saw a man passed out or sleeping in the middle of the atrium on a chair. It was funny as hell. The kid next to him in the picture gave him a big kiss on the cheek and ran. Funny stuff.
The 4th quarter was when most of the action happened. The rain had let up and the teams started to move the ball more. The Eagles had been more or less terrible up until that point. The Eagles got stopped on a big 4th down play with 4 or 5 minutes left. It looked like the Packers had it wrapped up. However, the Eagles defense held and the offense managed to drive right down the field and scored! I cheered the best I could although I had no other Eagle fans in my immediate vicinity. The Birds held on for the win. How awesome. The Packer fans were disappointed and you heard some angry words leaving but nothing like you would at a game at the Vet.
On the way out a little skinny guy with something big under his rain pancho asked us where Kmart was. We pointed it out and kept walking that direction since that was near where we parked as well. He had a heavy canadian accent. Upon looking at the guy closer we realized what he had under his coat was one of those seat back rental things. I asked him about it. He said his brother told him not to take it but he said he drove 14 hours from Toronto, F it he was taking it! He asked us if we thought he was in the clear yet. We reassured him that his theft should be ok at this point since we were outside the main gates. Funny, funny stuff. The cops did an OUTSTANDING job of routing traffic out of the area, we were back out on the highway in no time. All Troy and I did was recollect about all the funny things that went on that day and night, how nice the people were and how special the entire experience had been. We got back to the hotel around 12:30 am, we had to be up by 7:45 to get up and out by 8:45. I set up the wakeup call. I didn’t need any cold medicine to sleep this time.
