My First Green Bay Game
A bunch of neighbors and friends went down to San Diego on Saturday to see the pre-season Charger-Packer football game. I haven’t been to a professional football game since the Rams were in Los Angeles.
In attendance were neighbors Matt, Darin and Tim with friends Alex, Marry (Alex’s aunt and die-hard Packer fan), Dave, Robert, Tyson and Kurt.
I had a blast at the game itself but I have a feeling I’ll remember the events leading up to the game much more than seeing Bret Favre take a few snaps (the real reason I went at all). I’ll start with the 5+ hours it took us to get down, taking a route that would normally get us there in less than 3. It seemed as if everyone in SoCal forgot how to drive for the day (as if anyone down here knows how to drive at all). We got to our tailgating festivities a couple of hours after our intended start time. 
Dave and I arrived at the stadium 30 minutes after everyone else because we had gone straight to the hotel to get everyone checked in. By the time we got there the rest of the crew had already been hassled once by the local cops and were in the process of getting hassled a second time. I’d consider us an “active” group but not rowdy or out of control or even close to “trouble makers”. The reasons for getting hassled seemed terribly minor to me and worse, they seemed to contradict how everyone else in the parking lot were acting. For example, the guys were tossing a football around (at a football game!) and the cops came by to tell them it was not allowed. Meanwhile tons of other people were doing the same thing (though most of them were donning Charger garb as opposed to our Packer representation). Pointing that out to “Johnny” only made matters worse.
Next we had the gall to setup our hibachi and smoker for brats and tri-tip. This bled into the parking space behind us so we were told to get everything into our single tiny space. That might seem reasonable because eventually those spaces will be needed by others. But what seemed ridiculous is that a brief scan of the area demonstrated thousands of other setups like ours with most of them taking up way more space than us. I mean, this is tailgating for goodness’ sake! When folks drove up who needed a spot, we moved out of the way, lifted our tailgate, etc. All things we would normally do. Why we seemed to be the target of harassment is just beyond my ability to understand. Oh, we moved with the flow and didn’t let it impact our good time too much but in retrospect I find it a little irritating and worth mentioning.
Later on in the afternoon a fight broke out. I couldn’t tell what started it but I did notice that some of the local Charger fans seemed a bit aggressive for what is supposed to be a simple sporting event. Who knows, maybe some Packer fans were just as idiotic and the two groups played oil vs. water. Just more for the memory store in my view.
Coming home was much nicer. Very light traffic and a respectable 2.75 hour drive time home.
We ended the trip at Matt’s place where he fixed all of us Eggs Benedict, Minton style. You might be wondering, “what is Minton style”? I can’t really describe it because even Matt Minton himself can’t figure out what he did with each plate. Everything is done “on the fly” with the hope that it will come out tasting great. From what I could tell, everybody had a killer meal and no one knew exactly what had gone into their specific plate.
Thanks to Darin for getting the tickets and putting the trip together. And to everyone else for providing a memorable experience!
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