Amazing what you will do when you get free tickets. My sister Becky gave us four free tickets to the Browns preseason game against the Detroit Lions, so we decided we were going to go. The first step was to decide who exactly we were going to invite. Adam does not really know anyone in Ohio any longer, so that part was up to me. I mean, why waste free tickets?

I called up a few of my friends and immediately got Tim and Derek. That out of the way we all just had to decide how we were going to get there. We decided to all meet here and leave for the stadium in one car. This is because otherwise we would be paying parking on more than one car. We all met at my house around 5 and we would have left right then, but I ran into a little bit of a problem.

See my Browns hat, which Jacqui bought for me for my birthday several years ago was on the floor in the basement and apparently during one of the rainstorms we have had recently the basement managed to flood right in that spot. Needless to say the hat was uncomfortably damp and had a distinct bad odor to it. I put it in the sink, ran hot water on it, and used some dish washing liquid. Honestly, I should have just said forget it and just left for the game, but it was really upsetting to me and I wanted to do something. I left the hat smelling better, but soak and wet, outside on a chair. I figured it’ll dry and if it rains that is not going to hurt anything at this point anyway.

We all left and it started raining on the way there. The drive was a bit arduous, since everyone in Ohio basically drives as though they have never seen rain before. We were using the Magellan GPS, and it gave us another way to get there, so we got off the highway and followed the directions, which actually worked out very well. The street we exited the freeway on only had a few lights, no traffic, and basically we were not stuck on the highway staring at break lights, so I think that worked out fantastically.

We found parking and headed to the stadium on foot, since parking close to the stadium is around $25 and parking about a half a mile away is only $10. Not a hard decision when everyone in the car can walk just fine. Adam had checked the weather report and they were predicting rain, but the only rain we saw the whole time was when we were driving in to Cleveland and again when we were leaving.

The first thing we did in the stadium is head to the team shop and I bought a new hat. We bought some other stuff and headed to our seats. We made it to our seats just in time to see the opening kick-off. Joshua Cribbs ran it in for a touchdown, which was promptly called back for holding, but the entire first half had that energy for the most part. It was a lot of fun as we got to see all the Browns players we wanted to see play. It did not go perfectly, but it went really well. I wish it could have stayed like that.

The first problem was we all wanted to hang out and drink a beer, but the NFL has apparently decided that beer can not be sold after a certain time, and that time is apparently after half-time. Lame. The second problem is that the Browns went with the 3rd string QB for the rest of the game, and honestly none of us wanted to sit there and watch him. We left, paid for parking, and started the drive home. Great experience despite that.