Hi everyone,

Well, it’s been a month since The Big Game, and since I’ve finished all the ancillary stuff related to public education contract negotiation.

I’m now able to focus on real work. Of course, my contributions weren’t needed so much around the bargaining table as they were with rallying support among the masses and providing crucial input at critical times.

So I finally have time to break down & analyze the surreal process of attending a Super Bowl.

The first part – the getting there.

For me, the process began with a simple email, received 30 minutes after the end of the NFC Championship game

The lottery process itself is an arcane device. You have to indicate before the playoffs start if you are going to buy the whole set of 2-3 rounds; only if you do do you then become eligible to enter the ticket purchase lottery. According to CBS, here’s the full percentage breakdown for where the tickets go:

• League office: 25.2% of tickets
• Seahawks: 17.5% to participating team
• Patriots: 17.5% to participating team
• 49ers: 5% to host team
• 29 other teams: 1.2% each (34.8%)

That’s how they got Mice Tice for a hundred grand.

So each team gets 17.5% of tickets, but of that they only have to save 35% of those for season ticket holders. The rest go to players and get lumped together as part of a package they can sell for thousands per. In total, of the 12,450 tickets the Seahawks were allotted, they made available 4350 tickets for season ticket holders.

I didn’t care about the math, but it then set in motion a series of investigations to see whether it would be possible to entertain the idea.

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The game was in “San Francisco”, meaning we had to work out the logistics of

1. Getting a flight to either SFO or SJC,
2. Finding a place to stay in either location,
3. Working out the logistics of getting to Santa Clara, where the game was actually being played, and
4. Getting the time off from work

before committing to actually buying the tickets.

Trying to get a flight wasn’t a problem; trying to get an affordable flight was. On average, Air Canada has seven direct flights a day to SFO and none to SJC. The competition, WestJet, doesn’t currently fly direct to either & forces you to fly Delta after a transfer if you still want to pursue it. So if you wanted to know what the combined effect of lack of competition and international consumer anti-Americanism look like, here’s an example. 

Our window for departure was effectively Saturday, since we both had to work on Friday, and the last flight out is at 7:15 pm. The cheapest flight available was leaving Vancouver at 7:00 am Saturday morning and a United code share, meaning no French but also no amenities. 

It was scheduled to be a 737-Max 9, so while I’d have to take a middle seat (she has the status; she gets the window) there would at least be a movie and a Coke to enjoy.

The flight home was more complicated. While the dedicated professional in me didn’t want to miss work, the Scotsman in me couldn’t justify paying the high prices on getaway day to do so.  Some quick math determined that a Tuesday morning flight would in the end cost less ($250 CDN vs. $1000) than trying to blast home after the game. The flight was a similar idea – 7:15 am departure – but the plane itself was a Mitsubishi CRJ900, a 76- to 90-seat regional jet considered the “workhorse” of the aviation industry because of its ability to provide efficient, cheap routes for carrier subsidiaries. It’s cabin layout,

attests to the fact that it was designed to cattle-carry people to their destination. No movie, no Coke; but, I’d be on the ground by 10:00 and at work by 11:00.

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Once we nailed down the flights, next came accommodations. Now, as anyone who has been to the Bay Area knows, SFO is not exactly close to downtown. Given that our flight home was at 7:15 am & SFO is a known shitheel for passenger screening, we thought it’d be best to stay by the airport. The adjoining town of Millbrae had the convenience of being a stop for both the BART and the Caltrain, so one could get us downtown and one could get us to the game. After WineWife gleaned Expedia for available rooms – a factor I have no say in since the “Motel 6 incident” – we found a tolerable La Quinta with an airport shuttle for around $800 dollars CDN for three nights about 25 walking minutes from the station.

Luckily, the to & from the game was easily worked out. The “Bay Area Host Committee”

had plentiful information on their website, so that was why we settled on Millbrae. We could take the train from Millbrae to Mountain View, and then transfer to the VRT tram which would take us to Levi’s Stadium.

The time off work was handled on Monday. Depending on how you look at it, my decades of known sports fandom & working for the baseball team might’ve made it difficult to ask for Super Bowl Monday off from work. However, because I was doing it unpaid all it took was filing the request and answering a short email from my boss asking, “because of hangover?” to get it approved. Government agencies love letting you go to things when you aren’t trying to somehow make it on the company dime. I’m not too concerned about that, as I’ll just get mine back in other ways,

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So, after all that was taken care of, I went on the website & tried to figure things out regarding the seat. I was told that my ticket would be approximate to my price point in Seattle, which didn’t help at all. The official seating map wasn’t much help, as it just showed prices with extra zeroes above what I paid for the whole season.

Looking at the costs, I knew I’d be sitting up top & on the NFC sideline side. But with everything else in hand, I clicked “purchase”.

It turned out that I was in the second-cheapest section, but from the virtual map of the stadium it looked okay.

Now the waiting began. The hardest part was keeping the secret, because every part of me wanted to brag about the fun I was going to have. That’s why I subtly threw it in at the end of “Hate Week”. The only people who knew I was going were my brother (in case I needed a lawyer), my mother (so she could brag to the rest of the home), WineWife’s family (because they were looking after the dogs), and you sweet bastards.

We arrived in San Francisco on time and underfed. The Air Canada lounge in the US departure area has reduced its hours because of the commensurate reduction in US travel by Canadians, so there were no state-sponsored Cheerios for Beerguy that morning. But the shuttle to the La Quinta got us to the hotel by 10:30, and since the room was ready, we could transform into tourists and make our way downtown on the quietest subway ride imaginable, the BART.

We knew there was something called the “NFL Experience” downtown, but at $75 a pop we felt a walk-by might be in order. It was at Moscone Center, and took up about four city blocks. It was filled with tents so the plebs walking by couldn’t see inside, and surrounded by fencing and various forms of religious protester/proselytizer.

Having no need for that, we set off for Chinatown to have dim sum.

It was fantastic. The building would have been condemned in any other part of the city, but in a heritage neighborhood like Chinatown it was considered “rustic”. The kitchen was full of all the relatives who’d escaped Mao making various forms of delicacy just as they always have for the last 75 years. We ended up ordering too much,

so we carried it around all day rather than waste it. (That decision paid off around 11:00.)

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We then worked our way back to the “Experience”, hoping to experience it. At the restaurant we asked two people with pretty full LX tote bags what they thought of the whole thing. One guy, wide-eyed from being given lots of “free stuff” he’d paid $75 to get, said it was “outstanding” because it was like they brought the Hall of Fame for people to experience. However, having been to Canton twice, I think I can safely say

The other person was more sanguine. He said it was good, but there were lines for EVERYTHING. And while it was cool to get all the free stuff, it felt to him like it was designed to get people who weren’t going to the game to spend money on the NFL regardless.

What to do… what to do

A question soon answered by the Ticketmaster app, which proclaimed the event now “Sold Out”.

But a quick look up turned my faux-sadness into abject horror

Before my eyes lay the newest kind of American religious nut, the anti-male circumcision crowd. Those of you familiar with my Seahawks attendance know I’ve sent photos of the usual Sunday morning scream-preacher, but this was a level I couldn’t have anticipated. As you can see from their aesthetic, they decided that the manliest of weekends provided a bullhorn of an opportunity for them to advertise their broken weiners.

The five minutes I listened while WineWife was in the SFMoMA gift shoppe was hilariously captivating, as incel after incel berated their parents and non-Christian religions over their pre-pubescent mutilation at the hands of an industry thirsting to sterilize the population one quick cut at a time. Wanting to have a little fun, I asked one of these emotional cripples their opinion about female circumcision, since it happens later in life and scars more people more dramatically.

I was swiftly told that that was unimportant to their cause, and that that occurs in “pagan” parts of the world which are not their concern.

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Having heard all I needed to hear, we departed for somewhere a little more our speed.

You just know a place called Black Hammer Brewing is going to be a good time. A rich selection of beers, emphasized by the fact that they sell nothing but beers. I asked about a cider or wine for WineWife and was swiftly told that they only sell their own product. Thus, I got a 20-oz Pilsner and she got a 20-oz glass of water with a witbier’s orange slice for flavour.

We then made our way back to the BART & back to the hotel. We’d been up since 4:00 am and were both running out of gas. Sunday was going to be a big day, so an early bedtime seemed more than appropriate. But that didn’t stop us from hitting the Safeway on the way back to pick up some beverages.

A tasty treat that went down well with leftover Chinese and Casablanca.

Who knew what tomorrow would bring, but today had been pretty damn good. A good night’s sleep meant a great day tomorrow.