Let me just get it out of the way now: That was probably the most painful loss I have experienced as a football fan, and it really screwed up an otherwise fantastic weekend. There are no excuses -- I'm sure that the Colts fans would point to a couple of bad calls as would Pats fans (offensive pass interference on Brown, the awful roughing the passer call). And it is clear that Reche Caldwell could not catch the clap in a Bangkok whorehouse. But the Colts won, they deserve it, and while I'll be avoiding anything NFL related for the next week or so, the reality is that Patriots fans have gotten to be very, very spoiled. Since most of us are also Red Sox fans, we know what it is like to be doubled over in anguish from one of our teams, but we simply did not expect it from the Pats. But being a fan, like being an athlete, is as much about dealing with defeat as it is about celebrating victory. This one will hurt for a while, but pitchers and catchers report in less than a month.
So I made my maiden Vegas trip in a big, big way. We'll dispense with the cliches, and in so doing, dispense with the details, if only to protect the guilty, the innocent and the ones we are not sure about. On the way there and back I re-read Hunter S. Thompson's classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Toward the end he writes something like "A little bit of this city goes a long way. Five days can feel like five years." Most of us were more than ready to leave by Monday not because we did not have a good time but because we had too good of a time. The Thunderstick was a first-rate cruise director and we had the perfect mix of necessities and extra-curriculars (just which is which varied by each individual).
So just one question remains: When are we going back?
Oh, and for the guys: Touche. Touche indeed.
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