The Super Bowl Tickets

What a freaking nightmare.

You know the plot about something of value causing nothing but misery? Well, I have now experienced it.

Let’s start at the beginning.

I was one of the few Giants season ticket holders to be offered Super Bowl tickets. My immediate reaction was to refuse the tickets and remain safely at home to watch the game.

There were two problems with this reaction. The first is that it is difficult to have something of value without trying to get some advantage out of it. I suspect that’s simple human nature. The second problem was that everyone else was of the opinion I should go.

I looked around at Super Bowl travel packages. They ran around $5,000 per person not including the $900 ticket price. That means, for two, we’re talking about $12,000. That was not going to happen.

So if you don’t go, everyone says sell them. The problem with this is, unless you know someone to sell them to, putting them up for sale involves a bit of a process. A process that can’t begin until you have the tickets in hand and I wouldn’t have them in hand for almost a week. That leaves a fairly short window in which the tickets can sell. The reality is you risk $1,800 to make about $2,000 which is clearly just not worth the grief.

That leaves one with refuse the tickets or go.

Then there is the question of who goes with you? There is no good way to resolve that question. My resolution was actually the result of a misunderstanding on my part. But, once it was in place, I stuck with it. That disappointed someone else that I didn’t mean to disappoint, but it is what it is. No matter what I did, someone would have been disappointed.

So now I’m apparently on my way to Indianapolis. Or at least I have an $1,800 cashier’s check that I’m shortly going to take to MetLife stadium in an attempt to retrieve the two tickets. I also have something of a Rube Goldberg set of travel reservations that are going to run me around $1,700 dollars.

It’s going to be, on Saturday, fly from Newark to Chicago to Louisville. In Louisville, pick up Hertz car and drive to Seymour Indiana. Stay overnight in Seymour and then, on Sunday, drive about an hour to Indianapolis. Find stadium, find place to park, go to stadium, watch game, find way back to car and drive back to Seymour. Finally, on Monday, reverse the flights going from Louisville to Chicago to Newark.

With my luck the Giants will completely lay an egg and Monday’s paper will read something like “Worst Super Bowl in the History of the Game.” Watch Brady throw seven touchdown passes so I can be thoroughly miserable the whole trip back wishing I had my $3,500 dollars back.

I was miserable all week because I couldn’t decide what to do and I’m still miserable because I disappointed someone and now, once I get the tickets, assuming that doesn’t go wrong somehow, I have to worry about the safety of the damn things until the game.

I now know how Frodo and Bilbo felt about that stupid ring.

I should have had the courage to stick with my initial reaction. More to follow on this I’m sure.