Tone Parsons

On Sunday, my brother-in-law, David, took me for a little ride.

He had purchased tickets for the season opener at Qwest field in Seattle: The Seattle Seahawks vs. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Now, I’m not much of a sports guy, but this sound like all kinds of fun (and now I can say that I’ve attended an NFL game).

The game plan was simple: David was going to pick me and another guy, Steve, up and then drive our asses across the state and back again… all in one day.

So… I got out of bed at 3 am, showered, and poured a ton of coffee down my gullet. At 4:15 am, David pulled up in his mini-van. We then went and picked up Steve. By 4:30 am, we were on the road.

I’ve taken a bunch of pictures (157 total) which you can view here (opens in a new tab/window).

Sadly, there’s no descriptions on the images (because I’m a lazy bastard), so I’ll give you a quick overview of what you’ll see if you look at them.

1. Photos of us driving through the god forsaken middle of Washington state (including some pics from a rest stop… oh boy!)
2. Photos of us driving through the Cascade mountain range
3. Photos of us driving through Seattle
4. Photos of the arena
5. Photos of a bunch of freaky people who like to dress up a little too much (see below and left)
6. And finally, photos of the game

Oh… and you may notice that there is a blur on many of the images on the right hand side. That’s because I put my greasy ass finger on the lens and didn’t have any way to clean it off without scratching the shit out of it.

My bad!

We stopped in some podunk two-mule town for breakfast around 7 am. We were going to hit the Sherie’s Restaurant, but noticed that there were only 4 cars in it’s parking lot, while the parking lot of a greasy spoon was over half full, so we hit the greasy spoon instead (I think it was called “Bob’s”). They served stupid amounts of food for a small price, and it was pretty good.

We then hooked up with some of David’s friends and caravaned to Seattle.

We arrived in Seattle pretty early (around 10:30-ish), found a place to park near the stadium for the low, low price of $40, and walked around for a bit. We watched at the vendors set up and took a few pictures, then we decided we should eat before we went to the game (food is much cheaper on the outside).

I had a portobello panini with a bowl of soup at some restaurant across the street (I didn’t think to look at the name). The gates opened at 11:30, so we decided to go in and find our seats.

I was glad that I had a couple of beers with my lunch because they were $8 in the stadium for a 12 oz (bejesus!).

The game itself wasn’t great, and we were way the hell up in the nosebleed section (section 301, row Y, seat 9 for me), but it was very, VERY loud! There were 68,440 screaming morons in attendance. We ended up in the area where the Tampa Bay fans were sitting and it was fun watching their reactions when their team lost.

After the game, we got back into the car and drove the 279 miles (449 kilometers) back home. Again, we stopped in some town that I could care less about for dinner. We decided on some steak place with the word “Buzz” in it’s name.

You can tell the class of a place by the way they make you order. For instance, McDonald’s is low class because you order at the counter, pay for it, and then they bring you your food. The steak house had the same policy, and I was pretty worried about what the food was going to be like. It was actually damn good and came quickly. I had the 12oz top sirloin with a baked potato and salad. It was thick, large, very tender, and juicy. One of the other members of our party ordered the chicken fried steak which turned out to be about a food across and 6 inches high, served with 4 eggs and hash browns. Just wow!

We finally got back to Spokane around 10:15 pm. I thanked David for the adventure, grabbed my backpack, and walked in the door exhausted.