My friend is a Green Bay Packers fan and I root for the Minnesota Vikings. Our two teams are in the same division and play each other twice a season. Every year we talk about going to see a game, but we inevitably do nothing about it.
Well, this year, he was determined that things not play out the same way again. When the schedule was announced, my friend bought us tickets for the game in Green Bay, and told me to start planning to attend.
We got flights, hotels, and hoped nothing would go wrong with any cancellations. It wasn't to be, however. Weather and the new Omicron variant were causing too many disruptions to travel for us to get by unscathed.
In my case, it was a big snowstorm hitting Chicago. My flight to Green Bay was supposed to pass through there, but they canceled it instead. My wife managed to find me a different flight that passed through Atlanta instead, and I met up with my friend at midnight on Saturday.
It was snowy, and cold like Antarctica on Sunday morning as we got ready to go to the game.
All the pre-game shows were talking about the fact that the game should be among the all-time top ten coldest NFL games ever. I've always wanted to see Green Bay's Lambeau Field, but I would have been happy to do so in September. I never really felt the need to witness the frozen tundra. That's what we got though.
So, I put on four pairs of pants, a long-sleeve shirt, a wool sweater, a jacket, a coat, several pairs of wool socks, two stocking caps and a hood and off we went to the stadium.
For Christmas, my wife got me a viking stocking cap that came with horns and a beard, and I wore that around as long as I could stand it.
It actually looked pretty great, but to wear it you hang it over your ears, and that got annoying after a while. It spent most of the game down around my neck.
The cold wasn't quite as bad as I suspected that it would be. Probably because of the nearly 80,000 people that were packed in all around us donating their body heat to the air.
My feet hurt most of the night, but I think it was more because of the uncomfortable boots I was wearing than because of the cold.
There were a lot of Vikings fans sitting in our area, so I had a lot of people to commiserate with as the Packers methodically dismantled the Vikings.
The game was never close, and the Vikings didn't even put up the slightest fight. Their starting quarterback had been ruled out because of Covid just a few days before the game, and the second stringer they put in there was absolute garbage, as timid as could be.
I think my friend enjoyed the game, though. Why wouldn't he? His team was in control from beginning to end. As for me, it was a pretty sad way to mark the first time I'd ever seen my favorite team in person. I'm going to have to try to see them again soon so that I can wash the bad taste out of my mouth.
We survived to the end of the game with a little help from a cup of hot chocolate and a jumbo bratwurst, and before we knew it we were back in the car with the heater on full blast heading back to the hotel.
The next day, we came back out to the stadium again, and took a guided tour.
We saw the stadium from way up above.
And right down on the field.
We saw the giant G at the top of the stadium.
And got to walk out the tunnel with fake crowd noise pumped in over speakers for the full effect.
We saw a Super Bowl ring in the club sections.
And the players inducted into the team's hall of fame.
My favorite part of the day was looking at the trophy room at the end of the hall of fame.
The Packers have four Lombardi trophies, and it was really neat to stand right there in their presence.
It's the only chance a Vikings fan will ever get to be in the presence of Lombardi trophies, since we haven't won any and likely never will in my lifetime.
Good thing I'm more a fan of the NFL than I am of the Vikings, so there is still joy to be had from things like this.
As we left the stadium, we were treated to a beautiful sunset.
We got pictures with the giant Vince Lombardi statue in front of the stadium, then bid our final adieu to Lambeau Field.
We had dinner at a place called Hinterland, which is right beside the stadium.
They sat us right beside the fire, which was blazing hot. We had to scoot our chairs away to handle it. It was quite a difference from the night before during the game.
We ran into another issue with our travel plans when we discovered that my friend's flight the next day left at 8:00 AM. We thought it was supposed to leave at 8:00 PM. He wasn't flying out of the Green Bay airport, but instead out of Milwaukee, which was a two hour drive from Green Bay. If things couldn't be changed, he was going to have to leave at 4:00 in the morning to catch his flight.
He was my ride to the Green Bay airport too, which meant I would have to leave with him, and then spend a very, very long time at the airport waiting for my 5:00 PM flight.
Luckily, at about 3:00 in the morning, he finally got through to someone at the airline, and they bumped him to a flight that left at 2:00 PM instead. That made things a lot easier, but I still had a good wait at the airport.
My friend dropped me off at about 10:00 AM, and headed south for Milwaukee. I went to my gate, and found a seat. I didn't have to look hard to find an open one, because I was the only person there. The Green Bay airport is small. It only has two terminals with only six gates a piece.
At 10:00 when I arrived, one of the gates near mine had a flight leaving, but after they cleared out, there were no more flights in terminal B until mine left at 5:00 PM, and yes, I was the only one there waiting for it already.
I was completely alone in there.
I sat by myself for hours, listening to my audiobook as I tried to pass the time.
There was a store that I visited and bought a soda at when I first came in, but when I went back to buy something else, they had pulled down the gate and closed it up. Not only that, but they had done the same at the TSA station. They'd pulled down the gate and closed off the whole terminal, and closed me up inside.
Every now and then, a worker would come through the area, but for the most part I was totally on my own. I found that they had some games at one of the gates.
There was a fooseball table...which did me no good, because that's not a game you can play by yourself.
But they also had a cornhole set up, what we used to call bean bag toss when I was younger...before they established the American Cornhole Association and started broadcasting it on ESPN.
I messed around with the bean bags for a while until it got too boring.
I did appreciate being completely alone, because then I didn't have to wear a mask the entire day through, but otherwise, it was kind of sad and lonely. I bought a lot of stuff from the vending machine to entertain myself with, which wasn't a good idea. Not a lot of healthy food in vending machines.
At last, they opened the TSA station back up, and started letting people through again, and I had to put on my mask as the waiting area filled with people. Eventually we got onto the plane, and I had the best seat in the house. I was assigned to the exit row, which meant I had no seat in front of me, just miles of leg room.
I'm going to have to ask for the exit row every time from now on. I had no idea that such a thing was possible in an airplane.
I flew back through Atlanta, and arrived back in Houston at midnight and my adventure was over. All I can say is that next time, my friend is going to join me in Minnesota instead. They have a roof on their stadium.
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