Game Day - Chiefs are going down.

Well as you can guess this was written after the game.  I am pretty sure that there is no way I would have put in that heading before the game started.  But lets go back to that start.   Arrowhead stadium is not the prettiest stadium you have ever seen.   If you want to judge it's curb appeal you would give it a 2 on a 5 point scale.   It looks bleh from the outside.   But that really does not matter because what you are really looking at outside the stadium is the thousands of tailgaters.   Basically every parking lot around the stadium is open to tailgate and tailgate is what they do.  And in a big way.   There are the wimpy little people with a few chairs and a grill, but there are also many that do it up big time.  One, for example, had a full size smoker in the bed of his pickup and was smoking rack upon rack of ribs and who knows what else.  There was the group with an 8' table spread from one end to the other with serving platters and bowls and flower arrangements and crystal glasses and china plates.   There was the group who set up a teepee and was doing the tailgate in there.   There was just about every kind of anything that could be cooked on a grill being cooked somewhere.  There were touch football games and bags contests and ......  And they started at 7:30 in the morning.  By 8:00 the lots were mostly full and by 9:30 when we got there we couldn't find a spot in the lot we had a pass for.  Finally the guy directing traffic said if we could get the jeep over the curb to the grass we could park in this little spot at the end of the parkway.   Jeep, curb, no problem and spot found, but it was probably the last spot in that lot and the lot we were in was no different from most of the other lots.

Enough about tailgating.  One of the new things I want to do is to point out the differences or unusual things that each stadium has going for it.   For Arrowhead it started with the horse and rider on the field.   My only thought was what would Soldier Field grass be like after a horse trotted up and down the field.  It really is too awful to contemplate.   Other unusual things:  When they do the national anthem a large percentage of the crowd sings along.  I don't recall that from any of the other stadiums thus far.   When they end the national anthem instead of the "home of the brave" they say "the home of the Chiefs" and everyone shouts out the word Chiefs.   Not sure how I feel about that one.  As long as we are discussing the national anthem, another weird thing is they don't have a large flag banner being held by people on the field.  Almost every other stadium does.  Instead they have a large Chiefs arrowhead being waved up and down on the field.  Pretty sure I know how I feel about that one, but I will let everyone decide for themselves.  When they finish the anthem they do this whole guest war Chief thing where someone selected takes this huge mallet and pounds on a giant drum while the whole crowd does this war chant and does this tomahawk motion with their arms.   To be honest it looked like a bunch of wind up nerd robots the first time people did it.  By the 10th time it was just creepy.  Another unusual thing is that the fans stand up for every play when they are on defense.  For the whole game.   Very strange and to those of us wanting to watch the game a little bit annoying.   Now some positives is they applaud when a player gets up from an injury and heads to the sideline no matter which team it was.   This is different from most stadiums where they only do it for their players or a certain team from a city which supposedly promotes brotherly love but will otherwise remain nameless where they cheer when the opposing teams players get hurt and boo when they get up.

There have been some people who question which stadium is louder KC or Seattle.  Having had the chance to be at both two weeks apart, I must say Seattle is louder and the fans are more disruptive.  The Seattle fans start shouting from the moment the other team heads to the huddle, where the KC fans just yell at the line of scrimmage.

The fans were generally very nice.   They got a bit less nice in the last 5 minutes of the game or so, but you can't really blame them for that.  In any event there was only one person who was rude and she wasn't too bad. 

Bears fans were represented pretty well.   I am always amazed at how many Bears fans travel for the games, especially as almost all of us expected them to lose.   Probably between 5 and 7% of the stadium were Bears fans.   But boy, give us even a morsel to be shouting about and Lets Go Bears breaks out as loud and strong as you can want.

I mentioned in the last entry that I was going to make some observations about traffic and construction.   I have observed in the several thousand miles I have driven in the last couple of weeks that construction comes in 4 varieties.  There is the mile long set of cones to move you to one lane for the one guy doing something on the side of the road type of construction delay.   There is the several mile long set of cones because they are thinking of doing construction at some point in the near future, with near being a highly variable point in time.   There is the small warning before the lane goes away and you are suddenly upon the people doing construction.   And last there is the we are going to block off a lane on this side of the road because they are doing construction on the other side of the highway.   The last one seems to be limited thus far to Montana.   As you wander the streets and highways of our country let me know if you find any other major classifications of road construction.

Next week we take on Detroit.  As we have already been to that stadium and to be honest it was not a pleasant enough experience that I want to repeat it, we won't be following the Bears there.  But after the bye and the home game against the Vikings we will be heading out to San Diego.  We will give you all the scoop on the Chargers trip, so stay tuned and as always - GO BEARS.

The Day Before - Chiefs Gameday Minus One

It is the night before the game.  This is the time when I usually sit and think about the game and my expectations.  Unfortunately the Bears have me in that quandary again.  Do I hope for a great game and a win against the 1-3 Chiefs, or do I hope for a competitive game and a loss and let them get closer to a great draft pick?  At this point I don't believe there is any chance the Bears could make the playoffs, and even if they did, they could not win past the first round.   So on the surface hoping for the loss makes sense.  But it goes against every fiber of my being to not root for them to win.  Before the game against the Raiders I was content knowing they could not win a game.  But last week they actually looked good for part of the game.  And the Chiefs have the same abysmal record that the Bears have so maybe, but no - it is not to be and to get my hopes up is silly.

Enough philosophy.   The drive down to KC was easy.  All together it is about 9 hours in the RV.  We did most of it on Friday night and then finished the last 2 hours this morning.   The campground we are at is nothing special, but it isn't in the middle of a slum and the spots are almost, sort of, level and the hookups are close, so all in all not too bad.  We have a minor issue that none of the Nav systems can find the place, but hey we grew up with maps and so that problem was eventually solved.   No, I am serious the Nav systems cannot find the place.  I feel like I am in Brigadoon.   Once we got here I set the location in my Jeep's Nav and just to be sure I did a navigate to the location and it said I was there.   We went out and used the Nav to guide us back to the RV and it guided us to a place about 2 miles away.  The same place that the RV Nav said is where the address indicated the campground should be.  Google maps did no better.  It is like the place is in some other dimension and does not really exist on the surface of our planet.   Very strange.

Now those of you who read this regularly know that we always try to get the signature dish for whatever city we are in.  For Kansas City surprisingly that is Fried Ravioli.  I know you thought it was BBQ.  So did I.   But no, if you look on line it will tell you Fried Ravioli is the signature dish.  This presents a problem.  In all the restaurants we have gone to or looked at on line, no one has Fried Ravioli on the menu.   Now there is a list of the best fried ravioli places in KC, but they are all Italian restaurants.  Now it seems to me that a signature dish needs to exist at more than a couple of places.  We are holding out hope that they may have some at the stadium tomorrow.   Otherwise we may be doomed to miss the signature dish.

But fear not.  For those of you who think that BBQ makes more sense we agreed and set out to try some of the best BBQ in KC.   For lunch we went to a place called LCs.  LCs is a pit.  And I don't mean BBQ pit.  I mean dirty, greasy, slide on the floor, unwashed tables and you are afraid to use the bathroom kind of pit.   But it had some really fine BBQ.   Once we slid our way up to the counter and got our Burnt Ends, Ribs and Beans we headed for a table where some very nice Bear Fans we just getting ready to leave.  After discussing the state of the team for a while (they have the same quandary I have) we agreed that they are best off playing for the draft pick and discussed which QB they should take in the first round.  Three other tables of Bears fans joined in and our sitting down to lunch was a bit delayed.   Now something I should point out is there were only 10 tables in this place, so that is a lot of Bears fans having driven down for a game we all expect them to lose.   Well everyone except the Chiefs fan who isn't sure his team wants to win any more games this year based on how they were playing, but that is another tangent all together.

There is one other feature of this establishment that I should point out.   They have a smoker.  Not unusual in a BBQ joint you say.  And I would generally agree with you, but in this case the smoker is inside.  Now the kitchen area is maybe 15x10.   The counter runs along the long side and the cooks work in the middle and the smoker is at the back.  And every time they open the door of the smoker wonderful, fragrant, heavy white smoke billows out and fills the restaurant.   And when they spray the wood to cool the fire down more clouds of smoke along with steam fill the restaurant.  And when they open it to get the bbq goodness more clouds of smoke fill the restaurant.   If you are picturing a scene out of some demented BBQ gods world you are not far from wrong.   You walk out of the place and everyone for the rest of the day knows where you have gone.  But oh does it smell good.

Burnt ends - good but not great.  I like more bark and a little more well done on my burnt ends.  Ribs - really fine.  Some of the best ribs I have had.  Good flavor, done enough to be tender, but you need your teeth to pull the meat from the bone.   Just like it should be.  Sauce, rich, a bit tangy and not too sweet.  Beans really good.  Great flavor and a lot of the bark from the ends chopped into them.   Service - really friendly and helpful.  Overall score A-.

Now for dinner we decided to try a place that was listed as one of the 13 places you need to eat before you die by Anthony Bourdain.   It was up there with French Laundry, El Bulli and the like.   We get there and it is an old Gas Station.   And they still do pump gas there.  There was unfortunately a line that reminded me of the worst of the gas crisis.   They claim it was an hour wait.  At the end of 20 minutes we had moved forward about 15% of the way and most of that was other people leaving the line.  After 10 more minutes and watching the line move, but nobody entering the restaurant (line compression only apparently) we decided there was no BBQ on earth that good.   So we went off to another of the top 10 BBQ places in KC.  There was only a 2 hour wait at this location.  Another had an hour wait and so we finally decided that we needed to get out of that area and head to the outskirts of town if we were going to eat at any of them.     On the way to a place that said it only had a 25 minute wait we happened to pass a place that claims to have the best pan fried chicken in the city.  Well we had already had BBQ today, and they were here and not another 20 minute drive and 25 minute wait and ..... in we turned.

Now Stroud's has pretty darn good chicken.  And the sides are pretty good too.  It is a little strange because you order individual meals and sides off the menu, and then everything is served family style.  Really weird, but good.   Portions are more than huge.  The coach and I ended up taking home more than we ate by a good amount.  For example we ate three pieces of chicken between us and took home 4.  We finished 1/3 of the mashed potatoes.  1/4 of the green beans.  2 of the 6 cinnamon rolls.   You get the idea.

Tomorrow is game day.  We drove by the stadium to get the lay of the land today and it seems like it will be easy to get there.  Tomorrow will tell the tale.   Now it is time to get the game bag packed and get ready for the morning.

Tomorrow I will give you the update on the stadium and the fans.   I also have a few observations to make on road work, having had the opportunity to observe quite a bit of it on the last two trips.

Until Tomorrow.  GO BEARS  - I just wish I knew where I really want them to go.