Trip to Boston

As most of you know, last weekend I went on a trip with my dad down to Massachusetts to see an NFL game between the San Diego Chargers and the New England Patriots.

Friday we flew from Halifax in the evening. Once we got to Logan International Airport we hopped on a bus to go pick up our rental vehicle, a white mini van, which would be our wheels for the weekend. We drove from Boston to Lee which is 2 hours North-West from Boston. We stayed with my grandmothers cousin. It was a very hectic household with their three boys constantly coming in/out. When we got there the town was pretty excited because their high school football team had just beaten a team they haven't won against in a while. (One of the boys plays on the team) My Uncle Buff is also a huge Red Sox fan. So we watched the game on TV as Okajima and Pappebon blew a huge lead over the Yankees and ended up losing. We also ate this "strange" pizza; a white pizza with broccoli and black olives for toppings.

Saturday the plan was to get up around 10:30 then go to Joe's Diner for breakfast then head to Amherst for a college football game between UMass and Towsen. Well we did get to the game, but only for the second half. Even though it was a division II team it was still exciting to watch. There were thousands of people there. It was cool too because the college band comes on at half time and does this big marching/playing performance. UMass ended up winning the game.
At night we went back to Lee and watched the movie Inside Man starring Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster. I recommend it.

Sunday was the big day. It was also dad's birthday. We started the day off by having brunch at Joe's Diner. It was a cool little Diner, well in fact the whole town of Lee was cool. It looked like your stereotypical New England town with old looking architecture, Narnia-like lamp posts, houses with American flags everywhere, sidewalks made of red bricks, and big oak trees lining up the road leading in. Definitely an American town.
So after we ate at Joe's Diner we grabbed our stuff and drove the 2 hours back into downtown Boston. We spent about an hour walking around the Public Gardens and Common Area there. Sort of like our Public Gardens in Halifax, but not as nice. I was hoping to go to the Virgin Records Megastore but we found out it had closed out which was unfortunate.
Around 5:00 we left Boston to drive to Foxboro to go to the game. There was tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of traffic. We ended up not getting there until 7:30. There are three lanes of traffic that just slowly inch along to get to the stadium. To make matter worse, all they were talking about on the Patriots radio was the Pat's Videogate scandal. It was cool though driving in just seeing all the tail-gating going on.
We finally got there and joined the mass of people (about 99% Pats fans) towards the stadium. Being the brave soul I am, I wore my Chargers jersey with pride. I had lots of people making comments such as "I can't believe your father let you wear that, take it off" or "Hey buddy I think you're in the wrong place". Once we were patted down and got in we walked around the stadium for a little bit. It was crazy just seeing 69 000 football hungry fans in one place to watch the game. It was some loud. Since I had standing room tickets, I had to stand in one place for four hours so naturally I got to get to know some of the Pats fans around me. It was funny the first time the Chargers made a big play because I shouted out in excitement and EVERYONE around turned around and looked at me. The people were wondering how the heck somebody from Nova Scotia ended up liking San Diego and I had to tell them the ol' LT Fantasy Football story. In a friendly gesture, one of the guys let me move into his spot for the fourth quarter so I could have a better view of the game. He also told me "You're a pretty cool Chargers fan if there is such a thing."
The actual game was rather disappointing for me since the Chargers lost 38-14. It was bad right from the begining as Ben Watson had a TD on their first drive. When the Chargers did get the ball back, Rivers threw an interception. Going into the second half the bolts were down 24-0. In the second half Gates and Neal had touchdowns which gave me something to cheer about. There were some exciting plays on both sides of the ball and it was just neat getting to see so many of the NFL's stars all in one game. LaDainian Tomlinson, Shawn Merrimen, Antonio Gates, Tom Brady, Adalius Thomas, Randy Moss, etc....
After the game I once again had many people making comments to me because I was a chargers fan. These included "Hey, call Goodall, this guy was spying on us"
"How'd they do, oh"
"Hey you @##$ing idiot, take that off you @$%#$%. Come on you're a $@#$%@#$ idiot"
"What did LT get, huh? How'd he do"
"You suck LT"
I mean I was practically on par with LT for the night. They were talking to me like I was LT and that I had a bad game. It was quite humbling.

Monday morning we were still in the parking lot. As you can imagine, 69 000 people leaving an event means a crapload of traffic. We didn't even turn on the car to pull out until 1:00 in the morning. This time on the Patriots we had to listen to fans talking about how they were going to win the Super Bowl for sure, how nobody can stop Randy Moss. Hect they were doubting that any team in the league was even capable of beating them this season. Some callers were asking how they would rank this years team in all of league history.
We got to the airport around 2:30 and I slept on the floor curled up by an escalator and had a little nap. Then we flew home and I went to class until 8:30 that night.

THE END

p.s. More pictures and video coming this week.