Holidays 2023

Anticipating that the first holidays without Rachael were going to be kind of painful, I decided to skip out on the usual family-oriented gatherings and just get away for something really fun.  It turned out that the 49ers were playing a Thanksgiving Day match up in Seattle, and that provided the perfect excuse to get away!  We headed up early in the morning, stopping at a mundane diner for a Thanksgiving feast.  We stayed in the same cool old hotel as last time–the Arctic Club–and took the bus down to Lumen Field.  There were almost as many Niner fans as Seahawks, and as the Niners proceeded to beat the pants off them I almost grew sheepish wearing my nice new Ronnie Lott jersey.  In the final minutes of the game we went down to the visitors tunnel and were able to get high fives from many of the players as they left the field.  Coach Shanahan even gave Josef his hat!!  This was the first Niner game I ever attended, after almost forty years of rabid fandom; I can’t believe I waited that long and I hope to make it more of a habit.

The next day the sports extravaganza continued and we went to a Kraken hockey game which was also a blast, though they didn’t fare too well.  We also got to do some sight seeing, explore the wharf, and had a real adventure on the bus with an aggressive schizophrenic; I think Josef has pretty much sworn off public transit after that one! It was a really special trip with my little companion.

We then had a couple weeks to get ready for our Christmas trip to Mexico, which I will detail in a future post!