We woke up on Sunday, November 17th to a bright and sunny day. It was windy and cold compared to Florida standards with temperature around the high 50's. We went to Sonic for breakfast because it's quick and cheap. I do not like Sonic. I have been there 3 times always willing to give it another chance and I think there is food is just bland. We were only 5 minutes away from the stadium. We stopped at a gas station to get a cooler for the beer and then parked in the general tailgating lot. We started to see purple right away. Good sign. We weren't sure how the fans would be as we have had some good luck with the opposing fans in the other stadiums we have visited around the country (except Philadelphia) so we were hoping for the same reaction here. (I wish I had more pictures of the trip. We did take a lot but we spent a lot of time with the video camera instead.) We cracked open a beer and walked around the parking lot. We visited this parking lot the night before just to see where we would be. There is a HUMUNGOUS Tampa Bay Buccaneers flag that flies in the lot. I was actually scared of this flag because it is so big. We looked at the dimensions online and it is the largest flying flag (other than the American flag) in the country. I can't find the dimensions now of course, but I think it was 40x80 feet and waves 150 feet in the air. Let's put it this way, look at the picture and see how big I look by it. This was even on zoom and I am still quite a ways from the flag pole.
In the parking lot, a huge motorcoach type RV pulls up next to us that looked like this:
I thought it must be $100,000 and then as I looked them up now, yeah, just kidding. They are $200-$300K! A bunch of people came out including a group of women. Then a guy comes around the corner of the bus and all the women are like, "Hi Rod!" We look to see a guy who appears to be Rod Stewart. As stated in earlier posts, I do not get star struck very much so I was the same with him. Then he comes up to our car and introduces himself as Rod, in a British accent, of course. Then another man introduces himself to us as "Barry" and they walk back to their group. We sit and think this over...A more than expensive bus pulls up to us, a guy that looks like Rod Stewart, who's name is Rod comes over and introduces himself and what appears to be his manager, Barry, does the same. He has the British accent, hair, nose, clothes and earring but for some reason I am still skeptical. Where's that mole on his face? We didn't want to take an obvious picture of him but here he is below. You'll have to look click on the picture but he is sitting in the chair with white jeans and velvet jacket. You be the judge.
One of the other Vikings fans come up to him because it's Rod Stewart and he introduces himself. He says he's Rod...Rod Peeler. Ok, cat's out of the bag. It's not the white jeans, velvet jacket wearing, gold earring, spiky hair, British Rod Stewart but Rod Peeler.... from Winnipeg, Canada. It was so weird. He might be a Rod Stewart impersonator at night but he's a 61 year old realtor by day. And he's also a Vikings fan!
We wanted to get into the stadium early so we could look around a little and on our way walking to the stadium, there were 2 Tampa Bay fans who stopped us and asked if we were the ones partying with Rod Stewart. They had seen him from a distance and were taking pictures of him. We all had a good laugh after telling them it wasn't the Rod they thought it was.
We get into the stadium and it is just awesome. It was both of our favorite stadium we have been in. The Vikings got beat 19-13, but when you are watching a game on the road, the loss doesn't hurt as bad as at home. The jets did a fly over the stadium before the game and that was fun to watch. Watch them for yourself:
Here are a lot of pictures we took that day:
Michael posing in front of a group's tailgating area
Walking to the Stadium
A group of Vikings fans
The famous Pirate Ship inside the stadium
The wench going to punch me because I'm a Vikings fan
Purple!
In our seats
See the smoke from the cannon? The cannon fires off every time the Bucs get in the red zone. It also fires 3 times when they score a field goal and 6 times for a touchdown. It fires out nerf-type mini footballs. The fans on the ship also throw out tons of red and gold beads to the fans below every time they play a pirate song. 
Another picture of my unruly hair and the character that sat next to me. He was fun.
The reflection of "Raymond James Stadium" in the foam of Michael's beer.
3 comments:
The Stadium in Tampa looks like so much FUN!!!!
That looks like a blast!! I love that stadium. I think it was Rod Stewart because I did like his body and I thought he was sexy ;)
I thought for sure that it was Rod Stewart because:
(A) - he had Hot Legs.
and
(B) - When he pulled the knife out from his waistline I figured that the First Cut would be the Deepest.
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