Superbowl Frenzy in Phoenix Arizona…

From our camp here at Sun Life RV Resort in Mesa, we done some exploring in town but there are hoards of people here. When we made our appointments for our physicals at the nearby Mayo Clinic we never realized how many big events were taking place at this time.  In fact, the first day we pulled into town the Pro Bowl was scheduled to play that evening making the traffic a bit heavy.

It looks like there will be considerably more congestion the next few days as the TPC Phoenix Open tournament is going on now and the Super Bowl will happen on Sunday. There has record attendance at the Open and the attendees witnessed Tiger Woods play his worst golf as a PGA pro thereby not even making the cut. I am sure there will be less people in attendance now that there has been rainfall for over 20 hours with more yet to come. Is this really the

However, before all the rain came through town Sharon and I drove a few miles west into Mesa and caught the light rail train to visit the Super Bowl Extravaganza held in downtown Phoenix. The train was only $4.00 for an all day pass which included transfers and buses. With event parking as high as $40.00 near the event, this was a no brainer… The newscasters here are saying parking at the super bowl will be $100.00…yikes!!! desert?

The train took less than 30 minutes where we exited on 3rd and Washington right in the heart of the portion of downtown that has been cordoned off for the festivities. Lots of people in town were sporting their team’s colors and lots of slick advertising could be seen over the place including on the skyscrapers. We walked into the main area with a large stage where we saw there were Native Americans dancing. There would be all sorts of free entertainment on this stage throughout the day,

Lunch was covered by Papa Johns and Tostitos as they were giving out samples of their new products. A Bacon Cheeseburger Pizza slice and a bag of rolled up chips and spinach artichoke dip together made a decent gratis lunch. However, we would likely never order the pizza nor the chips because we didn't care for the heavy sauce (thousand islands dressing???) on the pizza and the rolled up chips were, well, rolled up and difficult to use for dipping (what were they thinking?). But for free… it was pretty good after all.

The coolest thing we attended was the Verizon interactive technology exhibit called the Verizon Powerhouse. While standing in line Verizon representatives helped everyone download the Verizon Powerhouse app allowing for all kinds of fun things once inside. Sharon virtually chatted with Clay Matthews, a Green Bay linebacker. We both virtually caught a football from our favorite team’s quarterback and do our own version of the end zone dance.

The neatest thing we did there was to wear virtual reality goggles where we found ourselves inside the locker room listening to the coaches pregame talk and then running with the team through the tunnel out onto the field of cheering spectators. Next you become part of a play where after catching the football pass, you run in for a touchdown eluding tacklers along the way. The view was 360 degrees so you have a panorama giving the sense that you are actually doing all the stuff you are seeing.It was great fun standing in the line watching all the people wearing the goggles running in place and trying to miss tacklers. Many were clapping and cheering but mostly all had this grin from ear to ear as they were experiencing the game day action. I especially loved watching an elderly lady in a wheelchair experience it all as she had her feet moving and had that same ear to ear grin… how cool for her to experience such innovative technology!!

Now we will take it easy today as the rain continues and probably take this time to make plans for where we will watch the big game. No tickets for us as a the going rate is well over $5000 per ticket according to the media unless we win free tickets from our registration at the downtown event.  Most likely we will enjoy the game at home on TV and think of all the money we saved…