The 36 Hour Road Trip – Go Chiefs!

Wow, now that was a 36 hour road trip.

Did you hear? The Chiefs made the Playoffs. If you didn’t hear that… THE CHIEFS MADE THE PLAYOFFS! And hubby and I got an opportunity this last weekend to go to the Playoff game in Houston Texas against the Houston Texans.

Everything worked out where we could, so we said, sure, why not! We road on a bus down with the Red Coaters. It was an invitation only bus. A red coater had to invite you onto the bus basically for you to have a seat. We just so happen to know a few of them and were invited. The bus left KC and picked 9 of us up in Joplin on their way through (saved us from having to drive to KC! yey!). They picked us up at 10:30pm Friday night bound for Houston.

It has been a really long time since I’ve slept on a bus headed for somewhere. A really long time. So Saturday morning when we woke up, I realized I didn’t have a mirror and when we stopped for breakfast I never thought about taking the make up in with me. I didn’t really want to look totally like death warmed over. ha! So I turned my phone on reverse and used it as a mirror. Have you ever done that? Not so easy! Anyway….

We made it to Houston. Please don’t ask me what time, because I don’t have any clue.

Getting there was a bit of a debacle. We paid for a parking tag, showed up at the entrance and were told we needed to move to a different entrance. Once we got to the next entrance, we started getting yelled at by a policeman (sheriff I think). He wouldn’t explain what we needed to do, just kept yelling at us. Finally we got the head of parking on the phone and he explained we were where we needed to be while the policeman kept yelling at us to leave. We tried to have him talk on the phone to the head of parking but he wouldn’t hear it. Finally another policeman (city cop I think) came up and told us to stay, he’d heard it over the radio system that we were where we needed to be. The first guy who was yelling went and got a sheriff (possibly his supervisor) and he came and started yelling at us too while the other one who told us to stay was standing right there. It was a mess!

Then once gates were opened, we went in, tried to park and proceeded to get yelled at again. Not nearly as bad but still… oy! Needless to say, we got in, got to tailgate and all was good.

I did not know this but Chiefs stadium has a reputation for knowing how to tailgate. Apparently we bring this reputation along with us. Our food for the day consisted of hamburgers, hot dogs, brats, chicken, and steaks. Steaks, say what? Oh and the grill man knew how to cook them too. Compliments to the chef!

Now I would like to also note that there were a lot of Chiefs fans who made the trip and a lot came by to talk to us even. We started documenting all our visitors. I would like to mention also that there was a guy from a fellow chiefs clan who came up and “stole” a steak from us, went back to his group and bragged that he got up there, got a steak, and no one noticed. Oh you were noticed alright buddy by a few of us.

Another group of tailgaters were loners and asked if they brought their food, could they come tailgate with us. Of course you can! And they brought taco soup. Really, truthfully, the more the marrier.

We even had people from the opposing team coming by to welcome us to their stadium. Now, not all the fans were that nice, but the ones who were, thank you very much! I’d never been to another stadium before and it is a little intimidating to be wearing a jersey from the other team in a stadium that is predominately the hosting team.

Like I said, we noted visitors and one of them was Darian Thomas. Truthfully I can’t tell you who all came to visit us because there were so many. It was great. There were somewhere between 30 and 36 of us. Apparently we can’t count so we really didn’t know. and the good news is we didn’t leave anyone at any stop! Woohoooo!

The weather you ask? Oh it was gorgeous! The wind was a bit chilly so if you caught a gust brrrrish but otherwise the weather was great. My friend Nicole lives in Houston and she said it normally isn’t this cold so she didn’t know what was up with the weather. But how great was this weather, seriously!

Then it was time to enter the dome. Never having been here before I was soooooo lost. So we had to go through metal detectors. There was a sign up front that said remove cell phones, loose change, belts, and cameras. I started taking my belt off and they laughed at me when I got up there and said I didn’t have to. Ok… whatever, but I would have set off the metal detector. Trust me, I’ve done it at airports forgetting my belt is on because I wear it all the time.

I learned something about Texas I didn’t know… I didn’t know their theme song was Deep in the Heart of Texas. And I loved the dome stadium… we were in t-shirts/jersey’s and comfortable.

So if you’ve never been to a Chiefs game or follow Chiefs football… when the Star Spangled Banner is sung, at the end when it says “home of the brave” Chiefs fans yell home of the “Chiefs.” So when the national anthem was sung, all the Chiefs fans who were there yelled Chiefs. I heard that people who watched it live on TV could hear Chiefs yelled.

The Chiefs started out the game right too… 11 seconds into the game, we had a 106 yard touchdown. At halftime the score was 13 nothing Chiefs.

I also thought it was funny too, being a Chiefs fan I get this… that they were wanting to be loud to throw the Chiefs off, when the Chiefs are known for having the loudest outdoor stadium in the country. Houston Texans, don’t get me wrong, I love you and you played an awesome game.

We even had Knile Davis’s mother and sister sitting in front of us. They gave his mother one of our Chiefs Kingdom flags to wave.

By halftime Texan fans were leaving by but 4th quarter they were leaving in groves. I felt sorry for them as going into 4th quarter they still hadn’t scored. Nancy asked if we wanted to go down on the main floor just behind the Chiefs and hubby and I said we were game so we took off running down to the main floor. We got to one section and the guy told us to go to the next section, we could get in. When we got to that section, that guy wasn’t about to let us in. Nancy did some sweet talking and a guy behind the usher was like she’s with me, grabbed her shirt and pulled her past. The usher shook his head, said whatever and let us all in. We were less than 10 rows away from the field. It was awesome!

Then it was all over. We won with a score of 30 to nothing. We headed out for the bus, loaded up and headed home. Yup, 2 night spent on a bus. Hey, I wound up brushing my teeth in the parking lot with a bottle of water. That’s the way I roll and it was totally worth it. The best part is we had quite a few Houston Fans enter our bus at the end, congratulate us, and wish us well on our return trip home.

We got home around 7ish Sunday morning to 9˚ weather. Brrrr! I’m just glad we weren’t going to watch the Viking’s game. They said their high for the day would be -3˚ and the windchill at -20˚F. Ouch! We go on next weekend to play the New England Patriots. As we were getting off the bus, they asked if we were down for a 21 hour bus trip to New England. We all said, win the lottery so you can fly us there :).

Go Chiefs!