Bitter Cold at Arrowhead Yesterday

My oh my, I considered writing a fanpost on this one. Let me give you a few illustrations of the cold in my tailgate experience.

—Skin could be exposed fro about 20 seconds before it went numb. It made having a bite to eat an adventure.

—We had some slow cooking hot coals going, but the cold made it too slow. Meat literally would not cook over a subdued flame because a properly ventilated grill would be invaded by the wind.

—Because of that, we had to place a grill grate over a trash barrel bonfire to cook our food.

—A can of beer would be frozen in 10 to 15 minutes, and ice would form in a matter of a minute or two from any of the drops lets on top of it. At one point, one of the people in our party suggested that we keep the cooler closed in order to keep the beer and bottled water WARM.

—People were camping in the Arrowhead restrooms. Apparently this is a common phenomenon, but I have only been to a few late season games, so I have never seen anything like it.

Actually, the game ended up being a blast because of the insane cold weather. We spent hours laughing about why the hell we were silly enough to be out in the cold. Everybody stood in the stadium because it was too cold to sit in a seat, and you had to dance/stomp/make some noise at all times in order to keep circulation going. That made the small crowd really active and fun to be around.

I would love to do something like that again, though I may not subject my entire family to the experience, and I would bring a few more layers of socks. My feet turned into frozen blocks that took about an hour to thaw after the game.