A little change of pace for this Super Bowl Bye Week column. No movie quote format this week. This week, the column is going to serve two purposes. First, it’ll be an attempt to continue the euphoria that this city is currently experiencing after witnessing what happened Sunday at CenturyLink Field. Second, it’ll serve as historical record so that as time goes by and some of the memories fade, we can use it to remind us all of the incredible event we were a part of Sunday. Here, in timeline format, was my personal account of January 18, 2015.
5:30am: The alarm has just gone off. To be honest, I probably didn’t need an alarm, but not because of my excitement for the day. A combination of the windstorm that howled through the night and a string of emergency vehicles driving by my place with sirens blaring, I was pretty much up a good portion of the night. But fatigue will not keep me down today. But I will need to pick up a 5-hour Energy at the gas station on the way to Seattle.
7:00am: Arrival at the tailgate. The scene is surreal. The alley is packed. There are piles of twisted metal where people left their canopies up all night and the wind just destroyed them. There’s also an unexplained river of Styrofoam. Normally when the alley is full, I can park on 1st Ave since parking’s free on Sundays. Not the case today. Everything was already taken and I had to bite the bullet and pay to park. The lot next to me already turned into a lake due to the rain overnight and now has whitecaps on it with the wind.