It is a full on annual tradition now. Summer in Saskatchewan means hopping in the car, making our way south to Regina, getting dressed in green, and heading to a Riders game. And like our football trips the previous two years, we were given yet another spectacular day to sit outside and cheer on the good guys. As one super Rider fan used to quip… sea of green, sky of blue.
When my wife and I hit the road out of Saskatoon to Regina in late July, we were embarking on our first “annual tradition” since moving to Saskatchewan. A Riders game. Last year’s game was our first and we had a great time – football, food and for me, the first feelings of belonging in Saskatchewan. With a year on the prairies under our belt, we headed south to cheer on our team in what is now an expected part of every summer here.
And similar to last year, there were preparations before heading to the game. Like applying a Gainer tattoo before making our way out to the stadium…
It’s hard as a Canadian to wrap my head around American college football. Earlier this fall I went to a university football game in Saskatoon. It was charming – beautiful September night, about 7,000 fans, a down-home atmosphere in the pre-game festivities and an exciting game to boot. It was a quaint, perfectly lovely thing to attend, even if the hometown University of Saskatchewan Huskies couldn’t pull off the victory. Fast forward a few months, and with a stroke of scheduling luck, the University of Washington Huskies played the USC Trojans while I was in Seattle attending a conference in November. Walking into the stadium, it was clear this was nothing like the game I saw back in Saskatoon. All this experience would share with that September night is the name of the two home teams.
Although finding your place in a new city and a new province takes time, I’ve been pleasantly surprised how quickly my new hometown has truly felt like home. Before moving to Saskatchewan, I really only knew of the province through a few of its far reaching stereotypes – the cold, the wheat, and yes, the Roughriders. I’m still awaiting my first cold snap – moving here in April was a brilliant stroke of timing. I’ve sampled liberally a number of delicacies made with the staple crop of the province, and now, I’ve perhaps become a real Saskatchewanian (Saskatchewaner?)… I’ve seen my first Roughriders game in person.
Continuing the tradition of my wife and I taking an annual “honeymoon” trip in lieu of anniversary gifts, honeymoon #4 was a weekend in Regina to see our new favourite team. Although this trip was a blast, my wife has insisted that honeymoon #5 be more along the lines of previous destinations (Puerto Rico, San Diego/Tijuana, Boston). But I digress.
Game day in Regina got underway with an incredible bit of good luck and timing. Off on a search for coffee, I stumbled into a celebration of the 1966 Grey Cup winning Riders team happening in our hotel. They had brought along the Grey Cup and I got to spend a few minutes with this iconic symbol of Canada. It’s dented and scratched up. It’s clearly a good times trophy and I can’t imagine the likes of the parties it has seen in its 106 years of life.
When Sunday morning rolled around in Houston and I pulled myself out of bed, I realized I was heading to my third sporting event in the city in just a touch under twenty four hours. My plan was to spend the morning tailgating outside the stadium, but I had to put that idea aside as I was shaking off some sort of bug that I had picked up the previous day. Luckily, I was feeling human enough to make it out to the stadium for a little bit of pregame poking around, if not for hours of beers and barbecue (still a little bit sad about that).
On a quick walk around the stadium, I noticed that people really take their tailgating seriously. Most had a full smoker of some sort set up which made it easily the best smelling parking lot I’d ever been to. There were also a lot of neat games and booths set up by the team – you could measure your wingspan relative to JJ Watt and run an officially timed 40 metre dash.
I’ve been to a few NFL games now, and as much as I enjoy the simple act of watching the sport live, it’s also quite an American cultural experience. Nowhere is that cultural experience on display more than in pregame tailgating.
Four years ago, my wife and I traveled to Chicago to see an early season Bears-Packers match up. With a wee bit of research, we found a tailgating group who welcomed us to hang out before kickoff. If you’re not familiar with tailgating, it’s basically a group of people who meet up in the parking lot prior to a football game, usually to grill some food, have a few drinks and talk some football before heading into the stadium. In Chicago, it looked like this:
This tailgating lot for Bears games is located about a 20 minute walk south of the stadium and, as you can see, it is cars and grills and plumes of delicious barbeque smoke as far as the eye can see. Through this maze, we found our specific spot nestled over to the side of the parking lot:
I am back from a six day mixed work/vacation trip to a city that has its tentacles pretty deep into me. It’s no secret my love for Philadelphia. Years of traveling down there for work have me and the city more than casually acquainted, though it was far from love at first sight. Philadelphia and I are familiar, so to speak. The kind of familiar where we can finish each others’ sentences, but not so familiar that the spark of spontaneity is missing when we see each other.
This trip was a mix of some old favourites and great new experiences. Some of the old? A cheesesteak at Jim’s (in my highly researched opinion, the best in Philly), a couple of pints at Tria and a Flyers game. The new? The revelation that was a sandwich at Paesano’s while touring south Philly, a remarkable meal at Zahav, and experiencing part of an Eagles game sitting among fast friends at a neighbourhood bar.
Speaking of my beloved Eagles, a highlight of this trip was a last day surprise. At the conference I was attending, I got to meet and chat with Jason Avant, one of my favourite Eagles. He was nice enough to sign a picture for me, chat about the game from the night before and even spend some time swapping stories about our respective experiences in Quebec City and Montreal. Me being thrilled at this chance encounter is a massive understatement:
Philadelphia… we’ve know each other a while, but you keep managing to surprise me in the greatest ways.
Please remind me not to make football predictions next year. I’m happy with a few of these I got right, but there are a few really embarrassing predictions in here as well.
Here’s how I did on predicting the order of finishing.
NFC East prediction: Eagles, Giants (*), Cowboys, Redskins. Got this almost completely backwards. Terrible.
As a passionate football fan, Super Bowl Sunday is both the best Sunday of football (the big game, the hype, the over the top snacks) and the worst Sunday of football (it being the last Sunday of football for more than seven months). This season certainly went out in style with a game for the ages that almost saw the 49ers come back from 22 down to win.
This game had a little bit of everything, and really, either team could have won. Sometimes it’s the small things that make the difference between winning and losing, and both teams did some very smart and very dumb things on the way to the eventual result. Beneath the big plays and flow of the game, here are a few things that caught my eye. Continue reading
Last year when I wrote my Eagles report card for 2011, I said simply that the season was a failure. If that was the case (and it was), then I’m not sure how to describe what transpired in 2012. Colossal failure? Total embarrassment?
Truthfully, I could see this coming. Well, maybe not 4-12 coming, but a bad year nonetheless. Yes, I know I “predicted” the Eagles would be NFC East champs, but even I admitted I was picking that with my heart, not my head. Preseason, the early indicators of a sub-par season were there. I had serious doubts about QB, the offensive line was missing it’s top player, and there were too many questions on defence to count. With my vision now 20/20 after 16 games, here’s how I saw the Eagles performance, position by position, and in some cases, player by player for 2012. Continue reading
Bluenose Traveler 