It all started this summer. I stopped by Seagull Book in Sandy to say hi to Brian. The NFL had just ended their lockout so we were both happy that there was going to be a pro football season. As the conversation progressed it turned to Dad and how he had talked about going to a Denver Broncos football game, he always liked the Broncos and Denver is certainly close enough, so it could have happened.
But it didn't.
So Brian and I said we should plan a trip to an NFL game sometime.
The next time we were at Mom's we brought up our conversation, and Mom suddenly lit up and said something to the effect of, "Let me do that for your birthdays!" When we got home that night we started researching possible games to attend, and sent text messages back and forth, at which time we got Mark involved.
We eventually agreed that Nov 17 NY Jets at Denver would be the game.
That turned out to be the right choice.
The night before the game, I got a wild hair, and decided to do something to bring Dad along.
I recently saw a movie about a man who traveled all the time for business, and at one point in the movie he pulled out a small cardboard cut-out of his sister and her fiance', and took pictures of it in front of famous sites. They asked him to do this for them, since they couldn't afford a honeymoon and wanted to have pictures of themselves all over the world.
So, I cropped a picture of Dad and taped it to some Popsicle sticks, so that we could take him along.
Sometime between that day and a couple of weeks ago, one of us made a comment that we should each grow a mustache for this trip, and much to the chagrin of our better halves we all grew manly staches (well at least Brian and Mark did, I did have some hair above my lip, but nothing compared to Mark's or Brian's).
Brian and I were able to fly out of Provo to Denver, which was really nice. We went to Mom's, and she took us to the airport from there.
Mark found us not long after we got to to Denver, late because our plane's computer wasn't functioning. After meeting up we decided to take a trip to Pikes Peak, because that is a place that Dad would have likely gone. Unfortunately when we arrived it said it was over a two hour drive up, we didn't think we would have enough time, plus we didn't want to fork over $40 for the trip, so we turned around to head back. We made a stop at a Wellness Center down the road to take a picture of it's marquee proclaiming a 25 cent joint, as well as a stop at Santa's Workshop for pictures.
We got to Denver and our hotel a little before 3pm, Brian and Mark each fell asleep shortly after getting into the room. After their quick naps we took the short walk to Mile High Stadium. Mark was told by a coworker that there were plenty of restaurants and other things to do close to the stadium, so we went to check it out.
Turns out there wasn't as much as we were lead to believe, but that was fine. We walked around the outside, checked out the sculptures of a giant mouth guard, helmet pads, and face mask before we headed one block west to find some food. All we really found was a Denny's, KFC, BK, and a Mexican food joint. After looking at the menu at the Mexican restaurant we headed to Denny's.
Our server was quite the hoot. Teresa, a middle aged lady, dressed in Broncos gear, asked what she could get us to drink, as in alcohol. We told her that we were crazy enough without booze and she chuckled and left to get waters. When she came back we had the picture of Dad propped up in a hooded sweatshirt. When Teresa saw that she nearly fell over laughing as she said, "You're right, you are crazy!" Just the type of thing that Dad would do at a random Denny's.
After Denny's we took some pictures on the way into Mile High, focusing on the staches.
The first impression of the inside of the stadium, especially the field, was very impressive. It really let you know that this is the big time, as opposed to your local college team. The lights were so bright, and the field looked immaculate. We wandered around about half the stadium as we made our way to our section, stopping in a room with Denver sports stories, pictures, and paraphernalia.
When we got to our seats it was still 30 minutes or so until kick off, and there weren't many people in the stands, particularly on our row. Our row never filled up completely, which was a blessing in disguise because there was one crazy fan who needed all the extra room for his antics.
There were tributes to the military as part of the pre-game show, and the usual sideshow competitions to keep people "entertained".
The Broncos received the opening kick and on the first play they completed a pass for 30 yards, but after that not much else happened for either the Broncos or the Jets. The Broncos had the ball inside the Jet 10 and went for it on 4th and 1, but the half back got stuffed for no gain. Not much else went on the rest of the first half, lots of 3 and outs, punts, and a field goal for each team. What the first half of the game lacked in excitement, was made up with our own form of entertainment as we interacted with the other fans sitting near us.
By this time the guy down the row from me was really plastered, still flailing his arms around, and stomping as hard and heavy as he could without completely losing his balance and tumbling over the seats. In the group in front of us was a woman who kept turning around yelling at a Jets fan a couple of rows behind us. She would try to get his attention, and eventually asked Mark and Brian to pass along messages to him. She was wearing a Dawkins #20 jersey, I had no idea who Dawkins was and would yell randomly "Come on Dawkins!" The lady was also getting more and more drunk as the game went on, and she would turn around and tell me that Dawkins wasn't out there because he played defense. I kept calling for him to do something, so she asked Mark if I knew anything about football. I played dumb and said something about soccer being called football where I came from. She probably thought "Why does this guy need to sit behind me?" But it was fun razing those around us.
Eventually there were a couple of touchdowns, both of which were scored at the end zone on the opposite side of the field. After that more three and outs, but Jets got another field goal. After a Jets punt late in the fourth quarter pinned the Broncos at their 5 yard line, it was finally Tebow time, as he ran and even completed a few short passes to get the Broncos to the other end of the field.
The Broncos drove to the 20 yard line on our end of the field. The teams lined up and were about to snap the ball when someone went racing out onto the field in the near end zone. The fan was quickly tackled by security and lead away, but that only added to the roars from the crowd. After the fan was taken away and with just over a minute to go Tebow rolled out to his left, the Jets were blitzing and had man coverage on two Broncos in the end zone. As Tebow was nearing the sideline I thought, "Just run it!" and that is what he did. He ran right at us for the game winning touchdown. The whole time the play was developing the lady in front of us was waving her arms and calling for Tebow to come to her.
When he scored the place erupted, it was electrifying. Eventually the cheering turned to chanting "TEEEEBOOOW!" It was awesome. A perfect ending.
The final seconds were run out as the Jets took the ball to midfield and Sanchez threw a hail mary to the goal line, which was knocked down.
After the game we weren't in much of a hurry to leave, it was fun to just take in all the excitement and energy of the crowd.
It was too bad that our super fan left early, but probably a good thing too, there was a high probability of me being mauled or at least smacked by his flailing arms.
When we made it to the hotel Brian lay down and was out quick. He actually said that he nearly dozed off in the 4th quarter, it wasn't really that slow.
It was so fun and crazy! It was great to be able to go with Brian and Mark.
The next day we didn't have any solid plans, so we decided to check out a tour of the US Mint in Denver, something Grandma Jessie would have done, but all the tours were full. So we just took a walk through downtown Denver. It was fun. We saw some interesting art, the Denver library, a used book store (where I found a Book of Mormon for sale, you know the kind that missionaries give out for free all over the world). We didn't really have any idea what we were looking for, but we had a good time just hanging out together. There were lots of Blues Brothers references and jokes.
Just want to say thanks to Mom for sending us on this trip, and to Jess for hanging out at home alone for two more days so that I could go.
It was an experience that I will always remember.
1 comment:
Perfect description of the perfect trip. Good job, Dave.
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