Super Bowl XL

There are moments on every trip that help influence how successful you perceive the adventure to have been. The first occasion was at Heathrow when I tried to check in way too early.

The dreaded M25 traffic had been very kind to me and I was at the check-in desk four hours before my flight. British Airways were good to this old man and very understanding when they relieved him from his luggage. It helps a great deal on any overseas trip if you get that little extra service and British Airways excelled in making grumpy feel at ease.

When I arrived in Detroit, another opportunity arose to put a downer on the holiday. I’m standing in line at the immigration desk fiddling with my visa waiver card. Just before being called, an immigration officer goes down the lines telling everyone to ensure they have filled in the section on the back.

You know, the section at the bottom that you invariably think is for the government to fill in, so you leave it blank. As indeed I had. Just as I realised that I had left it blank, I get called to the immigration desk.

Umm… I hesitate. He’s not going to like this. Do I head his way or stop and fill the form in. I dither. He calls me forward again. Some call, upset him by filling the back in now or receive the naughty schoolboy treatment.

I now want to be swallowed up by the earth and be dumped back home so I don’t have to make the decision.

On every other previous occasion time that I had forgotten to fill the card in, I had the been sent to stand in the corner with a dunce’s hat while I completed it. Not this time. The immigration officer filled it in for me!

Now they must have received instructions to make every visitor feel welcome – and trust me, it worked a treat! One tired traveller made to feel at home – even though he had travelled 3,500 miles.

Flying into a strange city, at night, in the rain and driving on the wrong side of the road in the dark looking for a hotel that you have never seen before. Doing all this without a navigator.

Umm… sounds interesting, but not very conducive to peace of mind. One wrong turn later, I found the hotel. Well sort of. She couldn’t confirm my reservation, which caused a few moments of anxiety; until she asked what hotel I was booked into. OK, so I had made a mistake. It was the hotel opposite that I was meant to be at. Trust me, they all look the same in the dark.

Notice that I’ve not mentioned being on holiday at all. That’s because a holiday means a stress free period, just relaxing. Sounds brilliant, but when am I actually going to take a holiday then?

I eventually settled in nicely in the right hotel having found where the bar was located. Together with a couple of glasses of Cabernet and a slice of pizza, the world take on a new picture. Fans from both teams drifted in and out of the bar. The television gave out the weather forecast, “5-8 inches of snow expected Saturday afternoon.”

I heard the barmaid giving shopping mall directions to some Steelers fans, so when she had finished talking I made the same inquiry to plan my second journey for the next day.

I’m afraid that the only thing I can’t compromise on when I’m travelling around the USA is my tea. And I have to drink gallons every morning before I can face the world and it’s many challenges.

So that’s the first adventure in any city I visit is to get some milk from the nearest garage for my tea and don’t forget a paper to read.

There were plenty of free Super Bowl guides available everywhere so I had a rough idea of what was going on and the newspaper had a tree’s worth of coverage with all the supplements. That’s how I found out that the city had organised shuttle buses to take people downtown to where everything NFL was happening.

The price of the room included free continental breakfast, although at the rates they were charging you would have thought the could have thrown in a free dinner as well. After eating, it was the stress of finding the shopping mall.

Earlier, when out on the milk run, I managed to find the one way system. It becomes pretty obvious when all the cars driving towards you are honking at you and using all the lanes.

This time I didn’t have that hazard. The bar lady’s instructions were very accurate, except if you are struggling with the conditions of rain and being in Detroit for the first time. Some signs are also a might confusing to a non-native.

Anyway, on my second circuit I found myself heading in the right direction. Well, I had plenty of time to do this additional tour around Detroit Metro Airport. Just taking the long way round.

I found my way to the mall to discover more Super Bowl XL souvenirs than I could possibly fit into my case. After my escapade with an overweight case on my last trip to Pittsburgh, caution was now the word when it came to luggage weight.

Naturally I had to buy the Super Bowl #7 shirt to go with my home and away shirts with the same number. The closest I had been to buying a game shirt previously was when Greg Lloyd, the legend, was around.

Now that this is the third Roethlisberger shirt I have brought in two years, I’m running out of room to hang them all!

Ed called me while I was shopping suggesting that I join them for a visit downtown. I had to pick up my game ticket at the Howard Johnson from six o’clock that night so didn’t want to detour from my intentions of having a dry run in daylight.

I had come prepared. I was armed with a route planner, so I had some slight hope of making it from my hotel to the Howard Johnson, which was about twenty miles away, heading towards Detroit.

The route planner was very good, but it’s not so easy without a navigator. I made steady progress until… suddenly the road splits in two and you haven’t a clue which way to go. And you are doing forty, in the rain, with cars behind you so you can’t slow down to check which road you are on and which one you actually want.

The next fifteen minutes are spent going up and down a dual carriageway, in the rain before I arrived back to where I was meant to be, according to the route planner that is.

At this point, I was should have been .2 mile away from my destination. Little did I know that I was. Unfortunately for me, there was a tall building across the road obscuring my view of the smaller Howard Johnson behind.

Up and down and around I went until Ed rang and said he was at the Howard Johnson waiting for me. Eventually, greatly aided by his uncle Pat, we caught up with each other.

We decided to make use of the shuttle down to the city centre. The buses were leaving from nearby the Howard Johnson so we all purchased our tickets and joined the queue waitingin the rain to get on the buses.

Ed was not amused by the experience of riding on public transport. He just couldn’t believe that the people were queuing in the rain and he definitely didn’t enjoy the journey standing up.

As usual, I found someone to talk to. I’ll talk to anyone and I began a conversation about music with the guy who sat down next to me. When he discovered I was English, he asked me about Eric Clapton, the rock guitarist.

Had I met Clapton? As it was, I had. It was in the bar at the Portsmouth Guildhall during a Sha Na Na concert. The gentleman in Detroit was impressed that I had seen the first public performance of the Cream at the Windsor Jazz Festival (as it was called then). I’m not even going to try and work out how many years ago that was.

The conversation passed the time away while the bus made its merry way to Detroit’s city centre. Ed couldn’t alight quickly enough and we found ourselves straight out into the thick of it.

It was sleeting badly. Cold, wet and restless, we wandered through the Ford exhibition, where you could have ridden in a Model-T. It was packed, but I guess most of the visitors were trying to escape the bad conditions outside.

I decided that the Hard Rock Café would be a good place to visit as my daughter collected their pins. A golden opportunity to get Jodie a souvenir from my Detroit trip. Umm… that is apart from the huge line outside the restaurant – don’t forget they were queuing in the cold, miserable sleet!

We gave it a miss and headed off to seek out new pastures. (Editor’s note: I later got Jodie a lovely SB XL pin from the Hard Rock Café in Pittsburgh.)

We headed towards the Renaissance building. Ed brought a few souvenirs he had been commissioned to purchase. As usual, we could have all spent a fortune, but there you go. You only get to go to Super Bowl XL once.

Ed and Sheri eventually went off to the casino while Pat’s wife Trish took us non-gamblers back to their home so I could wait until six o’clock to pick my ticket up.

They were very gracious hosts and I did remark on this gigantic muffin they offered me that looked as big as a one of those sponges our mums used to make for Sunday tea.

Then Pat guided me back to the Howard Johnson for the pickup. It was a very organised operation. Signs pointed us in the direction of the ground floor room rented for the process. After identify myself, the ticket was finally in my hand. The pain, the anguish, the drama, the excitement, the emotions. All this for a ticket?

The guys sorting out the tickets were warmly appreciative of my non-American accent. They guessed I wasn’t from Pittsburgh and had to shake my hand admiringly, in respect of someone who had ventured overseas to see the Steelers.

I was just grateful that at long last, I had the ticket in my hand. Back into the dark, wet night before Pat showed me the way back to my hotel.

So there it was… I had my ticket. That’s when I knew at last that I was going to the Super Bowl. Well, almost.

One last test to make sure the ticket was genuine. I had read in the papers that there was a number 40 on the reverse and if you pressed your finger on the numbers, they would disappear due to the heat.

Mine didn’t. That started to concern me. Luckily I was boiling a kettle for a cup of tea and used my initiative. Placing the ticket over the steam that was rising freely, the figures slowly disappeared.

Great stuff. Now I could say, I WAS going to the Super Bowl! Reminded me of all the previous false dawns when we all sang "Pittsburgh's going to the Super Bowl," as we left the stadium after a Steelers' victory. It was finally true again. Pittsburgh were going to the Super Bowl again, and so was I.

A few wines and something to eat before departing early to bed to try and rest prior to what could be one of the great days in life.

You never know the outcome in sport. That’s why we follow our passions. It’s a true reflection of life. Up one minute, down the next. One step forward, sometimes two back. What would Super Bowl XL hold for our Steelers?

True they were favourites to win. The team had overcome all the adversity thrown their way. Now, just one game away from that missing Super Bowl ring destined for the thumb.

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