Ok here's how it went in Detroit

As I told you I went to Detroit last Friday for some of the Super Bowl festivities. My brother-in-law Dan provided the tickets and transportation for a birthday gift I won't soon forget. We started off the morning by going to the Renaissance Center, which was media central. When we got there it was incredibly exciting right from the start. The place was bustling and we got there as Cold Pizza was ending. We saw Woody and Skip and the rest of the crew. Dana was interviewing Clinton Portis. The crowd was full of energy and it was neat to be there. After that interview we walked around some. We saw Joe Theismann, Matt Leinart, Bonnie Bernstein, Tom Jackson, Chris Carter, Shannon Sharpe, the Bud Light daredevil, The NFL Network crew of Eisen, Mooch, and Terrell Davis. One interesting story from there was walking down the hall and seeing Sal Paolantonio walking the other way. As we approached him I gave him a head nod. He got a kindof confused look on his face as he returned the nod. When we saw him on tv last night Steph commented, "He's still probably trying to figure out where he knows you from". Just in case you ever read this Sal, you don't know me. I was just giving a friendly nod.

After that we went to Ford Field to see what was up there. It was pretty dead. I did my usual attempt to try and find an unlocked door so that I can wander into stadiums when I shouldn't. This time I found an unlocked door and two security guards standing on the other side. They weren't in flexible moods and I sensed that if I pushed my luck they may attempt to test my flexibility. Luckily for them, I backed off and went on towards the gift shop. In the gift shop I bought my dad a Super Bowl XL edition of the terrible towel. He says he plans to use it as a golf towel. I like my clubs too much to do that to them. We then went and checked out the Winter Blast. The Winter Blast is a city festival that Detroit does every year. They had sled dogs but no snow. They had a wave pool and surfers but there was a pretty decent line to check that out. So we just walked on down through and looked here and there but did little else.

We ended up at the NFL Experience. Dan and Darcie had provided me a ticket and we waited in line for about a half an hour while about 300 people cut in front of us. The organization at the door wasn't the best. Once in we went downstairs right away to check out the autograph session. There was a young guy at the gate of the cattle herding system they had set up to hold people in line. He couldn't tell us who was signing that night. He also couldn't less us enter the line even though there were rows and rows of the cattle things with no people in them. He said we could wait in the line that was waiting to get into the official line and then we could get autographs from mystery players to appear later. Fearing that we would be waiting in line for Jeff Garcia and Vanderjagt we decided to skip that part of the NFL experience. We wandered around the world's largest football card show which seemed to include everything but football cards. We did get some free cards from some of the big name card makers. We also played a plinko like game where I won a pack of cards and Dan won a mini autograph ball. By chance I did get Garcia and Vanderjagt cards. We then went upstairs to check out the rest of the show. Upstairs we got our pictures taken with Marcus Allen. When I finally got through the line and up to Marcus I asked him if he got tired of this type of thing. He said, "No, I've got stamina". I'm not sure if he meant it to be a joke or not but I laughed out loud. We walked around the 3,000 cheerleaders who were incredibly loud. We saw all of the things where you could run or kick or catch or whatever. We didn't do any. I wimped out. We saw a place where you could get free pizza but the line for that was longer than the one for Ronnie Lott's autograph. So we got in line for Ronnie Lott's autograph. He was a half hour late but signed Dan's football and a pennant for me. I posted that picture. Diet Pepsi machine was there but I'm still very anti-Patriots so I avoided him. We did find out that signing autographs downstairs was Larry Johnson, Chris Chambers, Scottie Vines, and Jason Hanson. I like Larry Johnson but not enough to wait in that line. After that we left, hit White Castle, and then came home exhausted. It was a fun day.