My Channukah Gift To All Of You

Some of you might remember the original purpose for this blog, and if you don't, well, that certainly seems reasonable. For those of you who don't, the original plan was to make this a forum for me to occasionally discuss sports while mostly keeping track of my travels as I seek out all the various and exciting sporting events this country has available at its professional ranks. Lately, however, it hasn't really been doing much of the latter, which, clearly is my fault.

In fact, the last time I posted a story about my trips -- aside from last month's visit to the Northwestern-Illinois game at Wrigley, was July 11th. Oops. I suppose I should post one of these more often than once every five months. After all, the idea, originally, was to do it every week. But that might have been shooting a little high.

Either way, I know you've all been experiencing a life that is, in general, severely lacking without these stories, so I've come to cure your ills. And while this story is still pretty rough, distended and doesn't quite come full circle in the conclusion like I'd like it to, but it is a totally awesome stadium, a vaguely interesting, and given that we're currently in the middle of the annual Jewish festival of lights, and that this story is excerpted from a chapter that is supposed to deal with my Judaism, it seemed reasonably prescient for you all to see at this time of year.

And so, without any further ado, I present to you my long, distended, and unlikely-to-be-read-in-its-entirety-by-anyone story of my trip earlier this year to see the Giants get absolutely waxed by the Indianapolis Colts.

Originally written September 28, 2010.

It was on a bus in a rest stop just outside the southern Israeli City of Eilat that Brian Garfinkel said something that let me know I wasn’t alone in my own insanity.

“I heard it through the grapevine that you have a short-term plan to see all the professional sports teams,” he said.

At the time I was in Israel on a program known as Birthright, which provided all North American Jews between the ages of 18 and 26 a free ten-day trip to Israel, the purpose of which was to show you the wonder, imbue you with a stronger connection to your faith and heritage and in extreme cases, encourage you to move to Israel, marry Jewish and repopulate the Holy Land. At the time I had no intentions of moving to Israel, nor was I particularly religious. Frankly, those are still true. My only real purpose for going on the trip was because it was a free international vacation with the reputation of being summer camp with sex and alcohol.

In some respects it was exactly that. And it was in no uncertain terms an amazing experience.

But my Judaism was never really my defining characteristic before nor after. In many regards, my religion was something of which I felt very strong ethnically, but ambivalent towards theologically. It was a connection to my family, my culture, my history, and as a result it was always my preference to raise my children under the same principles, even if I never became a rabbi like some suggested only half-jokingly after my Bar Mitzvah. This trip would change those preferences slightly. I was never going to move to Israel, although I wouldn’t mind living in a country so fascinating, so beautiful and with such proximity to the rugelach sold at Marzipan Bakery in Jerusalem. But I did see a heightened importance in my own mind for raising my children Jewish as a necessity rather than a preference. Whether they believed in a God was their position to figure out on their own, but they will read from the Torah and they will listen to their parents complain at every High Holy Day, as is the tradition.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that the trip would give me new partners in crime as I cavorted around the country watching sporting events, but at the very least, it seemed I had one man, Brian, who wanted in. While Brian and I have many plans yet to come to fruition, the fortunate thing about this trip was that he wasn’t the only person who expressed interest in tagging along for a few stops on the journey. As it so happened, Dov Turner, a native of Kansas City cum resident of Chicago was also intrigued by the idea – or at least easy going enough not to reject the suggestion. Dov and I made a racket during the trip of calling the only two-person room for males at each stop so we wouldn’t have to share a bathroom with too many people. And from that strong foundation grew a promising friendship. A few weeks after returning to the U.S., the NFL released the Giants’ 2010 schedule and one particular game stuck out at me. In week two, the Giants would visit the Colts in Indianapolis for the second ever Manning Bowl. Two teams with high aspirations and Super Bowl MVP-winning quarterbacks who just happened to be brothers of the NFL’s Royal quarterback family would be taking the field. I decided I had to be there, and Dov was nice enough to oblige in joining in with me.

As it just so happened, the Giants’ season opener would be but a few days after Rosh Hashanah, which that year fell on the NFL’s traditional Thursday night kickoff game to be hosted by the defending champions; in this case that would be the New Orleans Saints. My trip to Indianapolis to meet Dov and see the Colts would come 24 hours after breaking my fast on Yom Kippur. The start of the new year would bring with it the start of a new season. L’shana Tova to football fans everywhere.

It seems fairly likely that I will always associate my trip to Indianapolis with Yom Kippur, the one Jewish holiday I actually take relatively seriously. In fact, when I had realized when Yom Kippur fell in 2010, which was after I had bought my plane tickets and game tickets, I was relieved to see that I did not actually schedule the trip for the Day of Atonement. Had I done so, I probably wouldn’t have taken it.

At this stage of my life, I’ve fallen out of the habit of attending services, but I still refrain from food or drink from sundown til as long as I can last the next day. Sometimes this is all the way until sundown and other times I tap out around 4:30 or 5 pm. In recent years, I’ve had more difficulty maintaining the fast because Grandma Barbara now hosts an annual catered feast to celebrate the end of the holiday and everyone’s clean slate. This typically includes a wide schmorgasboard of items ranging from potato salads to regular salads to lox, salmon, white fish, salami, roast beef, bagels, rye bread and a host of other items provided in quantities that could feed well more than the average attendance requires. Usually this is a blessing for my brother and I. Elliott and I have made a habit of collecting leftover cold cuts and making sandwiches with them for days after for several years now. One Yom Kippur saw us chowing down on enormous salami and roast beef sandwiches the next morning as we got together to see the positively silly and yet epic action film Shoot ‘Em Up with Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti.

This year I took a large sampling of roast beef for my early morning flight to Indianapolis some 12 hours later. I awoke at 7:30 a.m. that Sunday, September 19, 2010, and headed for the Seven train for what I expected to be a fairly routine trip to LaGuardia Airport. Dov and I had already spoken about our plans and after I arrived in Indy around noon and picked up my rental car we had a number of potential plans in place: a tour of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the NCAA’s Hall of Champions, dinner with my senior-year apartment mate, Pat Dorsey, and, of course, the main event – Giants-Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium.

As I sat on the subway and then waited for the Q33 bus, I didn’t think much of the wait, though I noticed I was going to be cutting it a little close for my 9:41 departure. I wasn’t checking any luggage since the trip was going to be a grand total of 20 hours, so I assumed I would be fine, but I arrived at the airport to experience a stunning surprise. Regardless of checked bags, Air Tran Airways required you to check in to your flight at least 30 minutes prior to take off. This bit of noteworthy information was nowhere to be found on my ticket, and so I, unaware, arrived at the check-in counter 23 minutes before takeoff and was not allowed to board. I was told I would be put on the next flight, but that wouldn’t be leaving for seven hours, and it would touch down at 7:12 p.m., barely an hour before kickoff. My plans were ruined, my day was shot, and my on-time arrival at the whole purpose of the trip was severely in jeopardy.

I used to be prone to massive explosions of frustration, but in recent years I have made a concerted effort to relax, take the long view and keep my head cool in nearly all situations.

This time I failed.

What proceeded was a massive temper tantrum where I pulled off the balancing act of yelling at the flight representatives and apologizing to them for my behavior all at the same time. Next came a long expletive-filled rant on the phone with my mother and father, both of whom gave me suggestions for how to try and get on an earlier flight with a different airline. I went back and forth to several terminals to see where I could find a seat and found that none were available beneath the rather steep price of $440. One was $1,100. Why an airline would raise prices and prevent a seat from being filled in the final hour before a plane departs is beyond me. In essence they could have $100 instead of none should the seat stay empty.

But no matter.

I was stuck at LaGuardia for seven hours until my 5 o’clock Indy-bound flight took off and that was that. For the next hour or so I ran through all the morning’s events in my head, taking particular note of anything unnecessary I had done or any act of random chance that could have shaved off the seven minutes I needed to make it on time. The subway train hadn’t arrived for four minutes when I got to the platform. The Q33 bus didn’t leave 74th St and Broadway for 10 minutes. I took a wholly unneeded shower when I woke up. I finished packing my bags after the shower with the few last items I would need. I made a sandwich from my grandmother’s Yom Kippur leftovers. I actually took the time to make a sandwich.

I MADE A SANDWICH.

Why on Earth did I decide to make a fucking sandwich?!

If I hadn’t atoned properly during Yom Kippur it seemed like I was going to spend the next seven hours doing my penance. Oh well. Lesson learned for next time, I suppose. After getting some of the anger out of my system by stomping around LaGuardia’s Central Terminal a few times, I walked through security when the first man to check my ID greeted me.

“How are you doing?” he said.

“Terrible.”

After noticing my Giants jersey and my destination, the security personnel put together that I was going to the game that night, and while he knew I would have little time to spare before game time, he reassured me, “At least the Giants will win. Then we’ll both be happy.”

This seemed like little consolation for my entire touristy day in Indianapolis being gone, particularly since I wasn’t expecting a victory. Aside from being, well, better than the Giants are, the Colts had lost their season opener in Houston in a reasonably-sized upset despite how competitive the Texans were expected to be this year. I could not fathom the horseshoes starting the season 0-2. To put in perspective just how good and well-rounded the Colts were, the season before my visit they won their first 14 games before handing the last two over in a highly controversial move to rest their starters. After a brief scare in the first half of the AFC Championship game against the upstart Jets, the Colts danced into Super Bowl XLIV where they lost a much tighter game than the 31-17 final score would indicate. Were it not for a surprise onside kick by New Orleans to start the second half, or one or two other minor incidents in the fourth quarter, Indianapolis might have had its second title in four years. To put it simply, a year earlier the Colts had lost only one game in which they actually tried to win – the biggest one of the season. Losing the season opener a year later was a dramatic shock to the system that Indy was unlikely to leave unanswered.

Knowing that and anticipating the loss, I was in the trip entirely for the purposes of seeing the city and checking out what was supposed to be a gorgeous stadium. Most of that was now gone, but I used my time wisely. I called the Indianapolis Enterprise Rent-A-Car to arrange to have my contract drawn up in hopes of expediting the trip from my plane to my car. If that morning taught me nothing, it was that every moment was precious.

In addition, I found that Kyle Peter, he of the Lambeau Field jaunt in 2006 and a venture to Turner Field in Atlanta four months earlier was flying out of LaGuardia at 5:45 and, as luck would have it, departing from the gate right next to mine. I knew Kyle was in New York that weekend, but we had been unable to meet up. By a random twist of fate, we would be spending the afternoon in the airport together, and fortunately the terminal’s sports bar provided enough football games to distract me from my bungled itinerary. Kyle arrived, we watched a few games, caught up and generally had a good time. If my day was mostly ruined I was going to be making the best of it.

Eventually, I boarded my plane and settled in for what was a relatively smooth flight. I wound up sitting next to a 31-year-old woman who taught Spanish in the Indianapolis public schools. She was nice, slightly high strung, conservative and had an adorable Midwest/southern hybrid accent. But she was also jarringly loud. Throughout most of our conversation I tried to speak in hushed tones hoping she would follow suit and spare the passengers around us who might have been napping, but that was a futile battle. During her weekend in New York, she and her twin sister did a Sex and the City-themed tour that provided them with overpriced cosmopolitans and her first-ever visit to a porn shop. If a relatively liberal, easy-going person like me finds those places overwhelming, I can’t imagine how she handled it.

As soon as the plane touched down, I bolted out of my seat and made my way towards the front of the plane so I could sprint through the airport and get to my car quickly. Locals reassured me I had plenty of time to get to the stadium, but with the minutes ticking away I wouldn’t be calm until Dov and I were in our seats at kickoff. I jetted through the concourse until I reached the Enterprise lot where, sure enough, a man was waiting for me with a set of keys and a clipboard. I signed and he told me to enjoy the game, at which point I said to him, “That all depends on the Giants.”

“Well,” he replied, “in that case, I hope you don’t enjoy it too much.”

As I coordinated with Dov, who had spent the afternoon checking out museums and drinking copiously, I sped down I-70 East in my bright yellow economy car, which amazingly did not have power locks, only to find I was, in fact, going to be fine. The drive from the airport to Lucas Oil Stadium was t most 10 minutes. Maybe it would get stretched to 12 with traffic. One thing they could stand to have, however, are some better highway signs. There was almost no mention of the stadium, which caused me to miss my first chance to turn off and pull into a lot. When I finally got off the highway and navigated the crush of marching blue-clad Colts fans, I waved to a policeman who was standing at the corner and asked him where there was parking.

The cop told me he couldn’t hear me and walked over. He wore a large park ranger hat, opaque reflecting sunglasses and had a big bushy mustache. He looked exactly how you would expect a grizzled southern sheriff to look. When he arrived he gruffly said, “Next time, you walk over to me.” I was a bit anxious at this point until he cracked a smile to show that he had been joking around. After easing the tension he directed me to an official lot that was $30 or a highly unofficial one across the street which was $20. After driving by the $20 lot the man waving cars in told me I could park for just $15. Given that no one was wearing anything even closely resembling an official uniform and that the four employees had about seven teeth between them, it was obvious that this wasn’t your classiest parking lot – though I did enjoy the blue school bus with tailgating fans that had “Department of Erection” painted on the side. I gave the attendant a $20 bill and waited for my change, at which point he fumbled through his pockets aimlessly and was somehow unable to find the $5 in change I was owed.

The man was a terrible actor.

Given how relieved I was to simply be at the stadium with time to spare, I decided to forgo the $5 and walk over. On my way I was asked to donate money to breast cancer research by a group of girls who couldn’t possibly have been any older than 18 or 19. I gave them a few dollars and one of them said to me, “Honestly, how can you turn down a campaign called ‘Save the Boobs’?” I decided that given how much younger they were it was in my best interest not to continue that line of conversation, and I moved on to find Dov at the north end of the stadium under a glitzy Vegas-esque lighted sign that read “COLTS” outside the team pro shop.

Ironically, the first thing Dov said to me was, “Is it just me or are the breasts …. larger in this part of the country?”

After everything, Dov and I wound up together at the stadium with nearly a half hour to spare before kickoff. I had arrived, safe and sound, tickets in hand, all was well. Lucas Oil Stadium is a tremendous, tremendous facility. Because of the uniformity of a football stadium, making it architecturally interesting is a challenge in and of itself. What had brought the craze of stadium building back to life in baseball was the retro themes inherent in Camden Yards. Football stadiums for the decade of the 1990s stayed behind that trend. In the late 1990s stadiums began to seize on the retro feel, adding red brick to the design of their exteriors, but Lucas Oil Stadium brings these efforts to a new level, and to me, feels like the quintessential answer to baseball’s retro romance.

Lucas Oil has a completely enclosed, brick and steel façade that gives it an appearance similar to other sporting venues around the city, and one that brings to mind an old classic warehouse or an airplane hangar. The exterior is so aesthetically pleasing you almost forget you’re about to walk into a stadium with a roof. Fortunately, the roof is retractable and that night it was open, which made the experience all the more enjoyable. The entrances, it should be noted, are all heavily decorated with a specific sponsors’ services in mind, which comes off as a bit hokey, but at our gate this involved a gigantic Colts helmet hanging from the ceiling with a face mask made of HDTVs. At the very least, the advertisements seemed contained within the Colts’ theme. The north end of the building features a large glass window that provides views of downtown and allows natural light to pour into the stadium even if the roof is closed. The concourses are wide and spacious – they even have gigantic ceiling fans to keep customers cool – the Colts’ presence is enhanced by the speed blue colored seats and all of the sightlines, even if you’re in the far reaches of the upper deck like we were, are tremendous.

Oh, and it’s loud.

For a stadium that is open and holds only 63,000 people – a relatively small capacity by NFL standards – it is shockingly loud. If anyone ever thought to question how rabid a fanbase Indianapolis might have, one trip there will dispel that notion. The residents are passionate, obsessed and quite possibly possessed.
And sweet lord they are loud.

As the Giants took the ball for their first drive I couldn’t hear myself think, which makes me wonder how on Earth any of New York’s linemen could possibly have heard Eli Manning. My head actually started to hurt and one friend sent me a text message to inquire as to whether it was actually as loud as it seemed on TV. I told him it was louder. Dov meanwhile, was fielding texts from his girlfriend who intimated that she might actually watch the game on TV in hopes of seeing him. He told her he’d be the one in blue.

The one drawback I can find is the Colts seemingly hang a banner for anything. That night they lifted a banner for their 2009 AFC Championship to the rafters, a deserved achievement. But in addition to Conference titles and division championships, others touted Wild Card playoff berths and the presumed title of “AFC Finalist” from their unlikely run to the AFC Championship Game in 1995. For a stadium that is, in so many other respects, so well done, these dramatic grabs at pieces of history seemed hacky. I was half surprised not to see a banner touting Peyton Manning by calling the Colts “1998 NFL Draft No. 1 Pick Champions”. Perhaps more interesting is there seems to be nothing in the stadium about the team’s history in Baltimore, which may be appropriate considering Johnny Unitas asked them to unretired his number because he never played in Indianapolis. The closest link to their Baltimore past is that former owner Robert Irsay is in the stadium’s ring of honor, though to anyone with a sense of NFL history, this seems a bit controversial. At least he’s also accompanied by Northwestern alum Chris Hinton.

If it seems like I’m almost ignoring the fact that there was also a game going on, it’s because a game typically requires both teams to be competitive to be considered “a game”. And this was not that. Indianapolis jumped out to a 24-0 halftime lead, outgained the Giants by 153 yards and took advantage of three New York turnovers in an eventual 38-14 romp. Peyton only threw one more touchdown pass than Eli, but the Colts solidly bested the Giants in just about every facet of the game. The only aspect New York might have had an advantage in would have come if a spontaneous discus competition broke out, which is what I assume running back Brandon Jacobs was practicing for when he accidentally tossed his helmet into the stands, a move that cost him $10,000 in fines.

The best part of the game itself was that my needed bathroom break in the first half came just as the Giants made a coaches challenge so I would miss nothing. Considering what transpired on the field, however, that was probably a bad thing. At least my pulled pork sandwich was good even if it immediately gave me more to atone for next year.

While the Giants gave me little to cheer, I at least enjoyed the halftime presentation when the Colts trotted out the 2010 Butler University Men’s Basketball team, which had pulled the city, and most of the country, behind it with a dream run through the 2010 NCAA Tournament months earlier, that came to an end when a last-second halfcourt shot by Gordon Hayward just clanged off the rim in the title game against Duke. While I had rooted for them in March, my favorite part of the Bulldogs’ ovation was that the video introduction actually included scenes from Hoosiers, which made it almost too ridiculous to be real. It was a far more tasteful video montage when compared with a bizarre sequence in the second half in which the Colts’ mascots were on the video screen performing very sexually suggestive dance moves. This was particularly odd considering team owner Jim Irsay is well known for his strong religious and family values.

After the disastrous exercise on the field came to a close, Dov and I sat in our seats and waited for the stadium to filter out so we could take a few more pictures of the place when it was empty, which enabled you to see hidden goodies like the Colts logo in the seats of the upper deck. I realized at this point that Dov was an extremely pleasant person to see a game with. He’s easy going, he doesn’t mind arriving early, he stays til the end even if it’s a blowout and he doesn’t care about looking like a tourist when taking an endless stream of photographs. And perhaps most importantly, he was willing to travel by himself to a sporting event that he had absolutely no vested interest in whatsoever. As a result, it probably won’t be the last time I invite him to tag along.

I guess something meaningful, impactful and lasting actually came out of that trip to Israel.

Dov and I found the car miraculously sitting safe and sound. As we drove ever so slowly through the traffic we only became more and more aware with how much people love the Colts. My favorite group was easily the bus next to me filled with drinking and dancing Colts fans as well as a disco ball. Eventually we reached our very low quality hotel where we would be spending a grand total of seven hours. Most of that wasn’t spent sleeping, which is just as well because we hadn’t gotten a great deal of time to just catch up with my travel plans going out the window. Much of the conversation revolved around how dirty the hotel was, particularly our bedroom window which was so covered with dirt it was nearly opaque. The room nearly ousted the Econo Lodge in St. Louis five years earlier as the dirtiest I had ever stayed in.

I shouldn’t bash it too much, probably because I didn’t get to try out the “gym”, which was one windowless room with a treadmill, but at least there was a continental breakfast of instant orange juice, biscuits and gravy. We left the hotel after a nap and headed to the airport and found the bleak early-morning light made the area look about how you’d expect a barren field in Indiana to look.

As I waited in the gate area I looked around at the rest of the passengers, all of whom appeared to be depressed Giants fans, who looked like they had just been beaten like they stole something. Perhaps they all ate on Yom Kippur, and the previous night’s whipping was punishment for ignoring the holiest day on the calendar. That seems unlikely considering a number of them were almost certainly not Jewish. Next time I see the Giants on the road, maybe they’ll win and we’ll all leave a little happier.

Of course, we should take it one step at a time. I should probably just focus on waking up early enough to actually make my flight.

Football, Barbecue and Real America

It's been a while since I've posted one of these so I figure I'm long past due. This won't tell you everything you need to know about Kansas City, but if you ever spend a weekend there and get to have anything close to this much fun, consider yourself lucky.

Originally written May 26, 2010.

It’s a testament to Susie’s kindness that she allowed me to invite myself for a second go-round in Kansas City. Knowing that given the NFL’s current schedule rotation, 2009 would be the last time the Giants visited the Chiefs until 2017, and knowing Susie may not be there in eight years, I told her in early 2009, “The Giants are visiting the Chiefs this fall and won’t be back for eight years. As soon as the NFL releases its schedule, I am buying a plane ticket and you are going with me.”

“Sure.”

While Susie pulls for the Chiefs her fandom doesn’t quite reach the obsessive levels of mine –certainly to her benefit – but knowing my mission and that we don’t see each other often, she was willing to play along. There was, however, some anxiety leading up to the trip mostly because without any real plans in place beyond my flight, Susie and I were unable to get in touch. A massive game of phone tag lasted nearly six weeks before we finally connected. To her credit, Susie, who was in the midst of grad school for her MSW, was obscenely busy and not overly concerned with a football game months off in the future.

I, however, wanted to make sure she would actually be picking up at the airport, which, given that she got caught in a different time zone the night before I visited her in Sacramento four years earlier, might have been a legitimate concern. At last we finally got together, everything was set in stone, and all was well. Susie would be at Kansas City International Airport when I flew in on October 2 and fun, friends and food would ensue.

Direct flights to the City of Fountains being as pricey as they are, I would be taking my route through Atlanta, Georgia, my first time ever in the Peach State. I hoped to nap away, but instead the woman next to me decided to strike up a conversation. She was attractive, in her early 30s and able to carry an intellectual chat, which was fine, but her intensity was a bit stunning considering she didn’t yet know my name. During the course of the flight she let me know she was moving to D.C. with her husband and desperately needed a sub-letter for their one-bedroom apartment on the upper west side. It was $1,400 per month, not outrageous by New York standards, but being that I was only four months into my current lease with two roommates on the hook and thought this was a peculiar time to be propositioned for a major life decision, I passed.

I would find this wasn’t nearly as peculiar as what would happen 20 minutes later when she attempted to set my brother up with one of her friends. I mentioned at one point during the conversation that two weeks earlier Elliott had won an Emmy for comedy writing, and she noted that she had a few single friends who love intelligent humor. Unfortunately for her and her friend El had gotten engaged three months earlier, and he was quite happy about it. They’d have to look elsewhere.

In Atlanta, I would get to see one of my buddies in the brief two-hour layover I had. My college roommate, Sam, a life-long Atlantan had moved back to the city after college and managed to meet me for lunch at the airport Houlihan’s. Amidst a discussion of life catchup, the peculiarities of being adults and the rotation of which attractive celebrity Sam put as the background on his iPhone, it was a nice break in the day – a refreshing break from those layovers that usually find me ambling around the airport by myself to see what regional fast food chain I can make my lunch for the day. The only tension came at the end of the meal when Sam insisted he pay for the check, telling me, “You’re in my town.”

I told Sam that he would have to let me pick up the tab when he came to New York, and he reluctantly agreed, though as I write this eight months later he is yet to actually arrive in the Big Apple, while I have made a second, longer trip to Atlanta.

No matter.

After lunch I went back into the heart of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which just might be the most massive transit hub I’ve ever had to deal with. Living in New York and going to school in Chicago, you’d think I’d be prepared, but Atlanta’s airport makes just like its city, spreading out massively and requiring long automated walkways and rail transit to get anywhere. Those in and of themselves are not unusual for an international airport, but in Atlanta they are larger than anywhere else, and given that Atlanta has for some time been the busiest airport in the world by measure of passenger traffic and take offs and landings, it probably needs to be.

The good thing about its size is that it was built with this kind of traffic in mind meaning they actually get you in and out fairly smoothly and with little issue. Despite some travel horror stories, with nearly no stress at all, I was on my way to Kansas City, and Susie was ready and waiting as soon as we touched down.

Susie is one of those friends that will always be there. Given how long we’ve known each other and the fact that we’ve almost never lived in the same time zone, I’m astonished by how often we see each other. It has been nearly once or twice a year that one of us has found the other on either coast or middle America, and each time, we’re seemingly able to pick up where we left off before as if the time passed since our last rendez-vous was only a couple of minutes. It isn’t often, however, that I see Susie with a car, and each time I do I’m amazed at how much she just loves to drive around. She adores long spins through aesthetically pleasing Kansas City neighborhoods and could spend hours behind the wheel at 25 miles per hour.

On this drive we were headed to Susie’s house, but took the scenic route to gather in some of the KC charm. While she and her friends might assume I mean that facetiously – and given my northeast arrogance there’s no reason for them not to – I rather like Kansas City. I can’t say I’d choose to live there, but it’s a very pleasant place when you have a local cadre of friends to take you in. On my first visit 15 months earlier, I had become very quickly absorbed into Susie’s social web, and the overt friendliness makes adapting much easier.

It was because of this typical congeniality that I was so surprised by what we saw as we passed a Reform Jewish Temple. I have little familiarity with Kansas City’s Jewish community, but I can’t imagine it being insignificant. And they certainly couldn’t have been pleased with the anti-Semitic protesters disrupting Friday night Sabbath services in the parking lot across the street. I have developed patience for a number of things in this world, but bigotry isn’t one of them. I can’t get past racism and prejudice as being both mentally lazy and astoundingly stupid. Nearly all things, diet, sex and global populations among them, require variety to make them palatable, and it is the differences between sub-groups of humanity that makes life that much more interesting. As I would detail during a group discussion on anti-Semitism in Israel months later, this wasn’t the first time I had experienced anti-Semitism, nor will it be the last, either overtly or subtly, but each time it is no less jarring.

In this case, the brilliant minds in the parking lot assumed our refusal to accept Jesus was hindering our ability to reach heaven. It was nice of them to let us know, as well as to reassure us God was charitable to understand and accept our naivete. Each protester, which included boys who looked no older than 15, had giant red paper hearts with the word “Love” written across them taped to their chests, and they toted signs declaring, “God loves everyone. Even these people.”

Perhaps the only thing more pigheaded than racism is my reaction to it. I waved to a few of the protestors behind the safety of a passenger seat window. When they smiled at me and I knew I had attracted their attention. As they looked on I pressed a middle finger against the window and yelled, “Fuck off”, which dramatically changed the expression on their faces, but fortunately for Susie and I, the red light turned green and off we were to Susie’s home.

On my previous visit to Kansas City I made it very clear that I intended to indulge in as much of the city’s famed BBQ as possible, and while the years lost on my life and the damage to my cholesterol were entirely worth it, I left Missouri feeling more vinegar and tomato paste than man. While I would want some BBQ this time around, it was hardly going to be the same nonstop barrage of smoke pits, but I had neglected to mention this to Susie. This didn’t result in her force feeding baby back ribs, but she did worry that every meal needed a BBQ aspect, and she, along with her roommate Stefanie, constantly asked me if I was ok not having heavily slathered pulled pork every time we ate.

I probably should have made it clear I wasn’t on the same tangy kick this time around, but I would have my needs more than met the first night as Susie, her boyfriend Kevin and I strolled into the American Royal BBQ Fest. Until a few weeks earlier, I had been unaware that the American Royal BBQ Fest would be that weekend or that it even existed, but I would soon be educated that it was the largest BBQ festival in the world, in what might have been the most appropriate city for it. It was a massive gathering, featuring a contest with hundreds of competitors and some attendance estimates as high as 100,000 people. It was held, appropriately for my experience, in the parking lot of Kemper Arena, which has been host to the 1976 Republican National Convention, NCAA Tournament games and several professional sports teams both major and minor, including the NBA’s Kansas City Kings and, most dearest to my heart, the NHL’s Kansas City Scouts, who would eventually wind up in New Jersey in 1982 as my beloved Devils.

Matt, a friend of the Sharkey family whom I had met a year earlier in New York, was hosting a party in one of the many BBQ tents. Included was an unlimited supply of pulled pork, chicken wings, ribs, cheesy potatoes (courtesy of Susie’s mother), baked beans and a full bar being tended by Susie’s brother Steve, who made sure to operate with a heavy hand. In addition to the delicious food, I was surrounded by an atmosphere I was in so many ways unfamiliar with. I was in the middle of a huge collection of handlebar mustaches, denim and leather jackets, black and brown Stetsons, live country bands playing every 20 feet, and hundreds of men wearing chaps without any hint of irony. I was wholly out of place and felt as if I was in the most quintessentially non-elitist, real American moment I would ever experience.

And while I had no particular love for Garth Brooks and those chaps looked astonishingly uncomfortable, I loved every minute of it.

After being thrust into the enormity of Susie’s family at her bowling league a year earlier, this time I would gain familiarity with its intimacy, as Susie’s mother and father, both of whom I had never met, were in attendance. I didn’t spend much time chatting with Mrs. Sharkey, but I soon found that in the case of Mr. Sharkey it was impossible not to. While we first talked about the Chiefs, since I was obviously in town for the game, which no one seemed to think the Chiefs could win, we soon moved onto Raiders owner , whom Susie’s dad made a point to note numerous times had been passed by by the increasing complexity of the evolving NFL.

These were topics on which I could hold my own, but soon I found myself cornered as Mr. Sharkey gave me a running history of his son Steve’s little league team, which had three great pitchers, one of whom had an unbelievable breaking pitch and another of whom was Kellen Winslow Jr. Seeking a rescue, I soon incorporated Kevin into the conversation who told me later on that when he first met Susie’s dad, he had been cornered and forced to talk about the Royals for two hours.

In a perfect world I would have stuck around for as long as possible. The drinks were still flowing, the food was still delicious, the company great and the music, well, energizing if not my favorite. Unfortunately, with work to be sent off to New York and a long day of traveling on little sleep behind me, I needed to be getting home and getting to bed. I would be sleeping on Susie’s couch for the weekend, which normally would be fine, but in this case, the living room was in the very front of the house, and apparently a serial rapist had recently been in the neighborhood. (Update: He has since, finally, been caught) Amidst concerns for every resident and heightened police presence, I can’t say I was comfortable being the first line of defense against any potential intruders, particularly considering the lock on their front door did not inspire confidence. On a windy night in an older creaky house, I heard the breeze blowing through the floorboards every few minutes and spent much of the night sleeping with one eye open.

I made it through the weekend unharmed and managed to cure Susie’s worries that I might demand constant attention while she had work to do. In actuality, I told her to take her time doing school work on Saturday while I watched Northwestern knock off Purdue in the living room, relaxed and enjoyed some Culver’s that she and Stefanie had brought back for me during their morning errands. Really, the entire afternoon and night served as a prelude to the main event on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium, though it became very obvious that absolutely no one in Kansas City thought the Chiefs had a shot in hell of toppling New York that Sunday.

They may have had a point. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Chiefs, mostly due to their rich place in NFL history as a founding AFL franchise, albeit in Dallas, and because of their almost unchanged, classic uniforms. They have always been, in my mind, one of the more underrated outfits in professional spots. There is a beautiful simplicity to them that belongs with the Giants, Steelers, Cowboys, Celtics or Yankees.

To go along with my infatuation with their uniforms, the Chiefs, when I was growing up, were quite good. One of my earlier memories as a football fan is seeing Joe Montana arrive from San Francisco to lead the Chiefs to a near Super Bowl berth in 1993. For much of the 1990s, the Chiefs were one of the most consistently successful teams in the NFL, topping 10 wins six times in eight seasons and establishing a fierce homefield advantage. In 2009, those days were long gone. The Chiefs of Montana, Marcus Allen, Neil Smith and Derrick Thomas had given way to the slightly less impressive Chiefs of Trent Green and Dante Hall before finally arriving in their promising, but unbearably young and inexperienced squad featuring Matt Cassel, Dwayne Bowe, Glen Dorsey and Tamba Hali.

That lack of experience would leave Kansas City with a 4-12 record at the end of the year, which came on the heels of a 2-14 campaign a season before and another 4-12 mark the year before that. The Chiefs had made two playoff appearance in the last 12 seasons, and while the future might be brighter, it wasn’t soon. This was evident from talking to any of the fans in the area, who approached me with such pleasantries as, “I hope they just keep the game close” and “Man, that Eli Manning is awesome.”

Indeed he was, and at this time, it appeared, so were the Giants. Big Blue headed into the game 3-0 to Kansas City’s 0-3 record. New York was aiming to make a fifth consecutive postseason berth and was just two years removed from a stunning victory in Super Bowl XLII. If there were a dramatic mismatch in the first quarter of the 2009 NFL season, this looked to be it. If I had learned nothing in my life of sports-related heartbreak however, it was not to take individual games for granted, and while an easy Giant victory appeared as though it should be in the offing, I was hesitant to assume anything.

I’ve always been amazed by the capricious nature of Midwest weather, but the plains states make it that much wilder. On the morning of the game it was quite chilly, and I, prepared, wore my Giants jersey over a long sleeved shirt anticipating the cold. Susie did likewise with her late-90s Derrick Thomas, but as both of us would find later, this would prove unnecessary. We went to her friend Matt’s house because he apparently had several sets of season tickets that weren’t going to be used. The last-place Chiefs weren’t the draw they once were.

Arrowhead has become legendary for the tailgating prowess of its denizens and this, to me, was more than half the reason for the trip. Granted, given the team’s current mediocrity, the crowd was less excitable, but the parking lots were still full of fans decked out in bright red under their tents grilling ribs and drinking light domestic beer at 10 in the morning. Matt had given us a pass to closer parking areas, and all along the drive to the building groups of tailgaters were set up along the hilly, grassy areas by I-70. More than one vehicle was painted and covered with massive Chiefs logos, including several fan-owned mini school buses. Fans cooked and drank their breakfast while a group of drummers calling themselves the Chiefs Rumble made their way from tent to tent.

Susie and I pulled up next to Matt and set up a spread that included Krispy Kreme donuts, cupcakes, tortilla chips, Busch Light and Matt’s homemade chili. While I was told by several sources that this was a more subdued affair than it used to be, I was still enjoying being reingratiated with the Midwest. Something about drinking that early made me feel like I was back in college.

From the outside Arrowhead looks uniquely 70s, not unlike the Royals home of Kauffman stadium – clearly dated in design, but still tasteful and unique. The two stadiums sit together in the Harry S. Truman Sports Complex and original designs for the buildings included a rolling roof that would move between the stadiums when they were in use. While the idea was eventually scrapped for its extraneous cost, I can think of no idea that comes close to it in the current day. Perhaps the shifting roof of Seattle’s Safeco Field is the most similar, but it only involves one playing field. This would have been a link between two sports and two buildings that made two large structures one massive one.

Instead the buildings stand next to each other with no connection beyond similar architecture. Arrowhead itself has a dramatic dipping curve on either side of it that almost gives the upper decks the appearance of horns rising up when you view it from one end zone. Both sides of the stadium have massive ovular TV screens that sit above the dipping curves and look like they, too, are either distinctly 70s or something out of an episode of the Jetsons. That would make perfect sense given that the stadium opened in 1972, except that I later learned the TVs were actually added to the stadium in 1991, which makes them seem entirely out of place, but the theory goes that they’re ovular not to reflect the style of the times but because they look like footballs. While I’ll accept that explanation, the resemblance is extremely vague.

Despite that structural peculiarity, there’s no denying this is a fun place to watch football, and the fact that they serve Gates BBQ there overwhelms just about any negative aspects the experience might provide. While the Chiefs were playing a lost season, the crowds still provided significant evidence for Arrowhead’s unofficial nickname of “The Red Sea”. The stands are still packed and everyone is wearing their jersey even if they suspect they won’t be headed home happy. On this day, there was still a mix of blue sprinkled in patches with that red, as the Giants brought a surprisingly strong crowd to a city that doesn’t get a large number of Big Apple transplants. It occurred to me once we were inside the stadium that this was the first time I would see the Giants on the road, and suffice it to say, they draw well.

Very well.

The team isn’t half bad either. The clinical dismantling most fans were expecting ran its course for three quarters. Big Blue would jump out to a 17-3 halftime lead, as Eli Manning would finish the day with 292 passing yards and three touchdowns, including a 54-yard toss to promising rookie wide receiver Hakeem Nicks. The only thing marring the day for Manning, who also passed Fran Tarkenton for third place on the Giants all-time passing TD list, was that he bruised his heel while dropping back on one of his passes. Manning would play out the rest of the season, but the wound would nag.

One of my favorite aspects of the experience was that this being the 50th anniversary season of the AFL, tidbits on AFL history were everywhere to be found. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of the many days that the AFL’s original eight teams decided to wear 1960 throwback unis, but midfield did feature the Chiefs enormous 50th anniversary logo, which, somewhat to my surprise included their old logo from 1960 when they started play as the Dallas Texans. The most prominent feature of the day however was the color pink, which in some ways almost overwhelmed the red and blue that could be found all over. The NFL had set aside that week to promote awareness for breast cancer research and so any and all things that could be colored pink would be. Gloves, cleats, towels, scoreboards and the halftime entertainers were all sporting the hue.

In the case of halftime, however, it was hard not to be distracted by the bizzarity of the performance, a group of at least two hundred women circling the field in pink shirts and putting on a robust jazzercise display.

The day more or less went according to plan except that I didn’t expect the afternoon sun to be quite so powerful. Not only were the long-sleeve undershirts far from necessary in the eventual 70-degree sun, but I wound up coming home with quite the dramatic sun burn. The Giants themselves would feel somewhat wounded by the end of the day, too. While they came away with the expected victory, Kansas City woke up just about the time the Giants were on the sideline making their dinner plans. The Chiefs reeled off 13 points in the fourth quarter to draw the game to a respectable 27-16 final score, and also forced some unwelcome familiarity with the people sitting in front of us.

To this point, the only one of them I saw as noteworthy was the man in front of me encouraging people to ask him about libertarian Ron Paul’s campaign for president, though the Elvis impersonator in our section did raise an eyebrow. This adorable fellow wouldn’t wind up the most memorable fan, however, as the unpleasant looking woman in front of me continued to lean forward and show off her all too classy Chiefs logo tattoo on the small of her back. Some things are not meant to be shown off to the masses, and this was one of them. In addition, there are some things you can’t unsee, and one of those hit me in the fourth quarter, when the Chiefs finally found the end zone on a one-yard touchdown pass from Matt Cassel to Sean Ryan five and a half minutes into the period.

Most of the crowd unleashed typical warm-hearted cheers. She, however, decided a more robust celebration was in order, and lifted up her shirt for all the world to see. I know normally this should have been the highlight of my day, but for the reason that a) this was not an appealing female, and b) I’m no longer 12, seeing those unsightly C-Cups bouncing around is something I would absolutely love to erase from my cortex.

As the clock wound down in the fourth quarter, just about everyone in the stadium had left except for the masses of Giants fans who were now gathering behind the New York bench on the bottom bowl. Just about all the Chiefs fans had left other than Susie, who I’m sure would have been extremely content leaving at halftime, but, trooper that she is, she stuck it out with me for the full 60 minutes. Exiting after the final whistle was a procession of one high-five from a traveling Giants fan after another, as we happily walked back to Susie’s car.

The rest of the night was a big family pizza party at Susie and Stefanie’s where I insisted they let me buy the beer because they wouldn’t let me buy the pizza after housing me for the weekend. From that point on, I ate too much, drank too much and was invited by Kevin to return yet again for a trip to see Allen Fieldhouse and his beloved KU Jayhawks. Perhaps in due time, but as far as this mission is concerned, with the Chiefs and Royals out of the way, I never need to return to Kansas City again.

That’s not to say I don’t want to, and I’m sure I’ll be there at least once more for Susie’s wedding if for no other reason, but as it stands now, in my goal to see all 122 teams of the four major sports leagues, the Paris of the Plains is the first multi-sport city that I’ve completely tapped out – including New York and Chicago, remarkably. It feels good to strike a city from the map, and hopefully they’ll start falling like dominoes as I get closer and closer to the end.

But for that to happen, I’ve got to move own and continue knocking them down. I’ll always have fond memories of Kansas City, but it’s on to the next adventure.