Sunday's Adventures

Yesterday was a blast! We gave Wayne tickets to the Cowboy's playoff game for Christmas (the bonus for me was that I got to go too) and we went with the McLelland's who got tickets at the same time we did so we all got to sit together. The game didn't start until 3:30 and since Wayne took a day of vacation, we decided to go over to Gateway Church. A great church, worship was good from beginning to end. As soon as church was out, we headed over to the stadium early - we wanted to make sure we had enough time to walk around, eat lunch and see pre-game warm ups. The paper said they had 40,000 white towels to hand out and asked all the fans to wear white. On Saturday we went all around to find white shirts so we would be supportive fans but no white towels were to be had and we were inside the gate 30 minutes after it opened. I say - no way there were 40,000 - Jerry! Anyway, while we were walking around to different gates to see if they had towels left (that's what our gate's ticket takers said to do) and we saw all these people gathered around and lining the fence so we asked what everyone was looking at. We discovered, to our surprise, that the players actually park close to the stadium and walk in down this tunnel. We got the whole scoop on who drives what car, who has already arrived and who they were still waiting on to arrive - believe me, these people are experts! We stood there for a while and saw Greg Ellis drive up in his Rolls and walk in (I got a pretty good pic of him) and Marcus Spears. We saw some others but I didn't know who they were, the people around me seemed to know. After that, we went into the much advertised "Corral" to get lunch. Thankfully, it was free to get in b/c of our press pass (it is normally $10) because once we got in there we realized it was a glorified beer barn - they didn't have much food to choose from so we left and found a vendor in the stadium. We took some pics, watched the warm ups and ate lunch. The weather was crisp and sunny but not too cold - a beautiful day!

Before we knew it the first quarter was over and we were commenting on the fact that it was going by too fast. The game had lots of ups and downs which made it exciting but extremely disappointing at the end. Being there was such a blast and there were a few Giants fans around us which made it interesting. When the game was over and everyone absorbed the lost, the crowd was stunned and I was amazed at how quietly people were leaving. The same crowd that was so loud I couldn't hear the person next to me, was just in shock at the loss. We decided to sit and watch players exit the field vs. sitting in our car for the next 2 hours. After almost everyone was gone we walked back to the tunnel where the players park. There were a few people around watching and hanging out but we saw Troy Aikman get in his car and leave and soon we saw Jason Whitten walk out head down, some linemen, Bradie James, Anthony Spencer, Greg Ellis and then we saw Tony Romo get in his car and he got stuck in traffic coming out and had to sit there for a minute while people yelled at him to roll down his window. Then we saw T.O. get in his orange Range Rover with his matching suit - literally the suit was the same color as the car. For the most part as the players were exiting, people were just quiet, watching - it reminded of a funeral. As we walked around back to the gate where we entered we saw the Giants buses being loaded and the small group of fans waiting around, taking pictures with players and getting autographs. We saw lots of their players but didn't recognize any of them except for Eli Manning. He was classy with his fans, taking pics and signing stuff. We made it back to our car and got out pretty easily at that point, headed to Uncle Julio's in Grapevine for dinner and home. It was just a perfect day - except for the loss of course. More to come and hopefully with pics - I took some good ones.