It was great when the schedule came out and the Gold Package got the Bears. A Thursday Night game isn't ideal but decided to make a long weekend out of it. Left home at 9:00 am sharp so we could get to Green Bay and have a nice lunch before the festivities started.
Just across the border in Wisconsin we stopped at Woodman's to pick up some supplies. One of the stock boys thanked us for wearing our Packers Jerseys because he said all the Bears crap was going to make him puke.
We saw a lot of Packers fans on the way up from multiple states. There were New Jersey, Mississippi, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland....that is as many as I can remember right now. You then had all the Bears fans from Illinois.
We arrived in Green Bay around 1:00 LFT and headed over to Titletown Brewery. We had an unexpected detour because the Nitschke bridge was closed. We like to visit the Brewery when we are in Green Bay and we got an extra bonus because there was a buy one get one free entree coupon in the book that came with the season tickets. I had a Tailgate Tower special that they were serving. It consisted of a half pound burger with a brat on it and Renard's cheese curds, onion rings, jalapenos and pepperjack cheese. It was messy but pretty damn tasty. My wife had a roast beef sandwich that had a bun shaped like a bear paw with pecans as the claws. Also had a couple of beers.
We headed to the hotel to check in and arrived around 2:30. There were Bears fans in the parking lot bitching because their room wasn't ready. I was able to check in. Left the hotel around 3:30 heading to Lambeau. The traffic on 172 was already backing up trying to get on Oneida. We were heading to 41 to come in Lombardi from the west so it wasn't to bad except for the people trying to squeeze in the right lane from the 2 left lanes of 172.
We parked in our usual yard for $10. It is only 4 houses down from behind Kroll's. The first thing I noticed was the new scoreboards at Lambeau. Wasn't too much excitement outside Kroll's. The band wasn't as good as some that were there the last few times. for some reason there were a lot more people there though. It was a chore trying to walk through the crowd when we were heading into the game. Didn't seem to be any more Bears fans than there are other fans at games we attended the last couple of years.
It was around 6:15 when we were at the gate and there was virtually no line. We finished our beers and then headed in. The giveaway was some sort of backpack thing. We went to our seats and the stadium was quite empty. The scoreboards really have a nice picture. They show the Packers players close up when they are doing there warm ups. Since we have end zone seats in row 41 we noticed we can no longer look at the scoreboard behind us. It is moved in closer and the picture is distorted up that close.
When everyone finally filled in the stadium all the seats to my right were Bears fans. They were pretty hyped up and trying to tell me to give them more room since the 2 seats to my left were still open. I let them know I would not be moving. Eventually the people showed up. The game in itself was really hard to watch with all the delays. There just didn't seem to be any flow with all the stoppage due to replay reviews and just general delays for who knows what. The Bears fans got quieter and quieter as the game went on. There was something I couldn't quite figure out. It seemed like something was missing and then I realized it was the sound system The music between plays and the delays just wasn't very loud. The vibe just wasn't there.
The other thing that made it a hard game to watch was all the first timers. A lot of "fans" sold their tickets for a profit. People were standing all the time and continually walking through the rows. I believe the game was around 3 hours and 45 minutes. The traffic leaving the stadium was a nightmare. We didn't arrive back at the hotel until around 12:30.
It was still a great game though because they beat the Bears. I have a TBSS cd in my car that I played the song over and over as we waited in traffic.
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