Week 3, blog #6

I've been to several Detroit Lions games at Ford Field. This year though was the first time that I ever went on Thanksgiving. While the result of the game was familiar, the Lions lost 34-12, the experience of going on Thanksgiving was completely different from the experiences that I've had before.

For starters, traffic was a nightmare. We left for the stadium at 11:00 a.m., and because of parade related traffic, we didn't arrive at the stadium until 12:10. Since Woodward was closed down, we had to take Cass to get to the parking structure and it seemed like everyone else was doing the same.

Once we were inside the stadium, I was surprised to see that so many Green Bay fans had bought tickets. When we found our seats, there were Green Bay fans on either side of us, directly behind us, and in the row in front of us. There were so many Packers fans in fact, that a loud "Go Pack Go" chant broke out near the end of the third quarter. The woman seated in the row behind me said that she had come all the way from Wisconsin just to go to this game, and it appeared that many other fans had done the same.

Another interesting experience was the halftime show. They show it on TV, but it's cool to see how they set everything up in person. This halftime show featured five or six different musicians performing the hits of Motown to celebrate Motown's 50th anniversary. The performance only lasted about seven to eight minutes, but it was obvious that a lot of work went into it. They had about 100 kids doing a choreographed dance, and more people behind the stage running the effects.

One experience remained the same: drunk people, although for this game, there seemed to be more of them than usual. A man sitting next to the Packers fans behind me was drunk before halftime, and in the second half he started throwing popcorn at the Packers fans next to us. Naturally, since he was drunk, he had terrible aim and most of the popcorn ended up hitting me and my mom. Fortunately, he ran out of popcorn fairly quickly and he left before we had to get security involved.

Overall, it was a pretty good experience despite the final score of the game. Hopefully, we will be able to go again next year.