Second, let's get this out of the way: I knew the Broncos were the underdog in this fight. 5 1/2 points was the accepted wisdom. But Denver lasted a month longer this season that I thought they would, and I vowed to be happy with that. My expectation was just that they play better than two years ago (so I set the bar pathetically low). And, as with so much in life, things go easier when I underexpect.
So, back to yesterday morning, being awakened by the alarm going off at 6:30...
G threw on some clothes and hightailed it to the Calypso Pool area; I took the time to take a shower and insert contacts before following him. I was packed for the day: besides my backpack with its usual contacts lens and asthma emergency gear, I had a bag filled with sunscreens, water bottles, sunglasses, gum, iDevices, and yes, maybe a minibottle of gin.
In the still darkness, I could see G had claimed two loungers up one level in Deck 16. There were no loungers set up yet on Deck 15, but as soon as two were set in place, in the most perfectly primo location, my fanny was in one of them 3.7 seconds. It was 7:07am. Score!
And then the reality set in...it was 11 1/2 hours until kickoff. It was downright cold. And windy. And although we had seen a little bit of a sunrise, it quickly turned cloudy and started to rain. Pool towels had not even been set out yet, and we pulled our loungers back a foot or two where they were partially covered to try to stay as dry as possible, but with the wind, it was a lost cause.
But we are die hards. I love the Broncos and my husband loves me and so there we sat, side by side, miserable and snappy. There were three other equally committed couples out there with us, and they were also determined to stay where they were despite the rain.
Fortunately, the rain was only intermitting until about noon, when it stopped for longer periods of time. We followed our usual routine; first one of us went to get some breakfast food and bring it back to the loungers, and then the other did. Bathroom breaks and coffee warm ups were similarly spaced. At some time, Phyllis came by and said she wanted (or was willing) to join us, and the two became three, which made taking brief breaks that much simpler.
Thank you God (!!!) that this year we were not subjected to watching the Wake Show for four hours, nor the Grand Princess revitalization documentary (prior views: 322 times), nor the 2-hour European history documentary (prior views: 6 times). Instead, MUTS featured a slide show of the top 1000 travel photos taken by Princess passengers accompanied by soft music, and that was perfect. It was fun to try to guess where they had been taken. Then those damn talking animals on that BBC documentary appeared, but I didn't even find them quite as excruciating this year.
Finally, at 10am, the movie The Blind Side was shown, and those two hours passed quickly and entertainingly. Except this time I didn't fry at the end...was it possible I was just so much more laid back than I had been two years ago when Denver played in the Super Bowl? I think so. I had really put it largely out of my mind in the past two weeks, my eyelid had stopped twitching and I was feeling fairly mellow.
The crowd was continuing to gather. I can't say exactly when the last of the chairs were taken. There is a tremendous amount of chair relocation that takes place in the hours leading up to a game like the Super Bowl. Even though we were settled, we were constantly on guard for people sliding into our sight line, and we made small adjustments to route those people walking through to be behind us, instead of in front of us.
At 3pm, the movie Draft Day was shown, but I had trouble hearing it (there were some loud talkers just behind me) and so actually closed my eyes and rested/slept for 45 minutes until I was awakened when it started to rain again. That little break went a long way to making me feel refreshed, the rain didn't last long, and that was the last precipitation we saw until the very end of the game. Yay!!
Meanwhile, we ate a couple pieces of pizza (the lines were soooooooo long) and drank, but just a little (I had one minibottle of gin in Sprite Zero and G nursed one beer) and I think some cookies were consumed somewhere along the way and a bag of popcorn, but it really didn't turn into too much of a junk food fest, and I think that kept us feeling better.
After my short nap, when it started to rain, I returned to the cabin and changed into my yoga pants and sneakers and socks in an effort to stay warm. I had been wearing a heavy fleece almost the entire day. While we had had sun for about 10 minutes, the day had largely been chilly and windy and damp. But dressed in what I call my 'traveling clothes', and wrapped in towels (there weren't nearly enough blankets to go around), I stayed comfortable to the end. We talked about it later, how many times the same towels had to be laundered yesterday. Between the three of us, we probably used 20 pool towels. As it rained and they got wet, we'd replace them with new ones, usually still warm from the dryer.
A tailgate party was set up by the Calypso Pool, with burgers and pizza and wings and chips and salsa. Others may have been set up in Explorers Lounge and Club Fusion and the Conference Room, where the game was also shown (along with the casino). There were certainly plenty of places to watch the game, but, despite its hardships, there is something special about watching it on MUTS. We did the math...of the past 12 Super Bowls, we've watched all but one of them on a Princess ship, starting in 2005 on the Grand Princess on this new thing called MUTS.
By 5:15pm or so, we started to see some pre-game coverage, but only got the video. The audio was just music, but it was upbeat and loud and kept us going. Still, by the time Lady Gaga sang the national anthem (beautifully, I might add), we were acutely aware of the fact that we had already spent over 11 hours in the elements and who knew what emotional roller coaster was ahead. Still, because it was a much cooler day than we had two years ago when the Emerald Princess was in Barbados on Super Bowl Sunday, with almost no sun, we were tired but not exhausted. And fervently hoping that the Broncos would at least show up this time around.
For a non-fan, the game must have been very boring. It certainly lacked any offensive excitement (heck, it lacked any offense at all), but the score was kept close enough that the game had lots of tension for us until the third quarter. Gun shy, I didn't let myself start to relax until the Broncos were up by 14, but by then the spectacle changed from watching the score to watching Cam Newton's sacks.
At the end, I'd did fry, just a little. It's not often that the good guy wins, and, despite that fact that he played like a 39-year old QB, Peyton Manning is a good guy. That the crowd around the Calypso Pool was so heavily favoring the Broncos showed that other people think so too. Phyllis stayed with us until the very end, and cheered as hard for the Broncos as I did, despite the fact she is a diehard Giants fan. As she explained it, she loves Eli and was rooting for Peyton and so was a Broncos fan with only one degree of separation today. Thank you Phyllis! You made the day so much more fun.
My only disappointment was that the feed was cut off at the end of the game and we missed the post game and the presentation of the Lombardi trophy. I've since caught a little of it on ESPN in our room, but will have to wait until we return home to binge watch the online video coverage of it.
It was midnight before I finally fell asleep. Waking this morning, I felt the effects of yesterday. But, as I said to G at breakfast, we would have felt the effects whether the Broncos won or lost. Wasn't it so much better this way? We watched our favorite team win Super Bowl 50 on our favorite large ship, probably watching Peyton Manning play his last down of professional football. We'll never forget that day. Never.
Life is good. :-)