Cheering for Purple in a Sea of Red

Last month we got a night out with my Brother Matt and Sister-in-Law Rana thanks to my Aunt and Uncle.  They gave us some preseason 49er/Viking tickets and Grammy offered to watch both Drew and Adrina.  SCORE!

Well that was until we got on the road and realized not only is there a Niner game, but also the Giants were home as well.  Needless to say the traffic sucked!  What should've taken about 45 minutes from Lafayette where we met up with my brother - was over 2 hours. 

By the time we parked, ordered our first beers and found our seats, we missed the entire first quarter and most of the 2nd.  Oh well, it is what it is. 

Don't you love that fan trying to sneak his way into our picture?

I have to say our seats were awesome!  We were on the 50 yard line and could see everything!

Too bad it didn't mean the Vikings won - yes I'm a Viking fan.  You can take the girl out of Minnesota, but you can't take the Minnesota out of the girl.

The final was 17-6 49ers.  

The newlyweds at the game... trying to stay warm.

I have to say we had a good time, but I did have a few gripes. 

1. The 49ers definitely needed a new stadium.  The sound system and most everything about Candlestick sucked (this was my first and only time at the "Stick").
2. The Candlestick concessions staff was horrendous.  I spent the entire 3rd quarter trying to find Dave's chili cheese fries, because he was like a pregnant persona and had to have those damn fries.  While I gave up and decided to stand in line for a beer right next to our seats- Dave continued to search for his fries.  I remained in the line only to be the next person to be served and was ignored because they were having problems with all the other customers who wanted nachos, but they'd run out of cheese.  So I move over to the bottle beer line to only have security cut-off alcohol sales 4 minutes before the end of the quarter (no alcohol sales after 3rd quarter).  I was two people from the front of that line.  I go back and sit down to find Dave coming moments later with his cheese fries (they ran out of chili) and a damn beer!
3. I thank my lucky stars that we didn't bring Drew.  The SF crowd is not what you'd call family friendly at.all.  Drew will need to be a teenager or later to go to his first football game.  Dave even said Raider Fans are tame but get a bad rap next to the Niner fans.  
4. Summers in San Francisco are flippin' freezing!  We thought we were back in a Minnesota winter for a bit there...
5. SF traffic blows!  It took us more than 2 hours to get there and about 2 1/2 to get back to Lafayette to pick up our car (about 20 minutes from home).  So if you factor we were at the game maybe 2 hours - we spent 4 1/2 hours just trying to get to and from the stadium.  That sucks.

Despite all of that, we still enjoyed the experience!  Thanks again to Uncle Doug and Aunt Connie for the tickets.  They were back in Minnesota and couldn't go - so we lucked out.