Game #95- Chicago Bears

Chicago Bears vs. San Francisco 49ers Soldier Field December 4th, 2016 Another business trip to Indy, so I decided to take advantage of my Southwest miles and head to Chicago for the weekend. When I booked the trip I knew there was a possibility for some undesirable weather. I mean it is Chicago in the middle of winter, but so far this year they have had very little rain let alone snow. About a week away I saw 0% chance of precipitation all week…except on Sunday, of course. But hey, what am I going to do, not go? Yeah right. The weekend started off right. I landed on Saturday night and hung out with a friend and former co-worker, Anthony Deangelis. I told myself all day, “just take it easy, you have a long day tomorrow. Slow your roll!”. That lasted all of 5 minutes. I had a Jack and Coke waiting for me and it only got worse after that. I guess the stop at Three Dots and a Dash, a Ticki “speak easy” for the strongest Mai Tai in my life didn’t help. Let’s put it this way, I walked about two miles back to the hotel that night at 3am in 25 degree weather, and the 12 hour hang over on Sunday summed up our adventures. Good times… As for game day, I did manage to wake up and head off to Soldier Field in a decent snow storm. My hotel was only about 1.5 miles from the stadium and most of the walk is through Millenium Park so besides the gnarly headache and sick to my stomach feeling, it was beautiful. Soldier is a very unique stadium, a space ship for lack of better words was literally placed right on top of the original field that was erected in 1924. I love the fact that the designers kept areas of the old stadium as it was the day it was built, just solid cement bleachers with the original columns. Around the stadium they have tons of old player pictures (the Ring of Honor), team murals, and statues. Such a stark contrast from the newer buildings being built around the country. It is also the second smallest stadium in the NFL only holding 61,500 so every seat in the place had great views. I knew this game was going to be fairly unexciting. Combining the fact that the weather sucked almost as bad as the two teams (Bears 2-9 and the 49ers at 1-10), if anyone scored a TD it would be a miracle. Turns out because Matt Barkley (taking over for Cutler) was able to hand off to Jordan Howard for 117 yards and a career high three touchdowns, Da Bears were able to smash SF for a 26-6 victory handing their opponents their 11th straight loss this year. Colin Kaepernick, more popular for kneeling during the national anthem than his play this year, was taken out of the game in the second half but that did little to improve their stats for the day as the 49ers only had 6 total yards of passing. That’s about all I can remember besides the snow and headache. I have to say the heavy snowflakes falling at an angle in a stadium made me feel like I was falling for 3 hours, that sucked. After the game I decided to roam around the park to take some snowy pictures at the famous water fountain and Cloud Gate “Bean” before getting on my flight to Indianapolis. Luckily I checked my flight status before getting onto the train because my flight was cancelled and I needed to stay in town for the night. Thank goodness…I was able to take some Excedrin and a nap! The other good fact is that I closed out all the games in the state of Illinois. Next time I head to the Midwest I will likely need to hit up Cleveland.