2018 Super Bowl

Basking under the warmest skies since late September was good enough for many of us.

It turns out there was more to come. 

The Twin Cities was handed a plum today which gives us more than beautiful weather to cheer about.

News out of Atlanta is that Minneapolis has landed the 2018 Super Bowl.

It’s such a delectable announcement for us. It’s eases the pain, a little bit, for all the Super Bowl games the Vikings came close to winning but didn’t.

Kudos to the Minneapolis bid committee. Good job, well done! Congratulations also to the NFL owners who decided the 2018 site. You made a great selection.

“Our Super Bowl” (as already sounds natural to call the Super Bowl to be held here) is February 4, 2018. 

Minnesota will make a good winter host. We excel at this winter kind of thing. It promises to be a good party. 

Minneapolis was host to the 1992 Super Bowl. So it’s been awhile. That game was at the Metrodome. 

Super Bowl 52 (easier to remember than LII, most of us rusty with Roman numerals) will be played at the new Vikings Stadium.

With glory affixed to it already by the honor of being chosen as the 2018 Super Bowl site, the stadium is not an actual structure at this time. 

Construction is underway following demolition of the Metrodome and December 2013 groundbreaking ceremonies.

The new stadium will rise on the Metrodome site in downtown Minneapolis. It’s slated to open in 2016.

The Metrodome was a baseball pilgrimage site of sorts for faithful Minnesota Twins fans. We attended nearly 30 years of baseball games under its marshmallow-like, often maligned roof.

Indoor baseball, ignominious as some considered it, saved us from chilly spring starts like this year at our new outdoor Target Field, and from rain-outs which are a nuisance.

Some of us had no bones to pick with the Metrodome. We have many fond memories of being there. 

With protection from pelting rain, or an occasional thunderstorm, we watched our Minnesota Twins lose and sometimes win, and we kept believing in them.

We wildly waved our homer hankies in 1987 and 1991. They were the years the Twins, considered underdogs against Detroit and Atlanta, won the World Series.  

Their October championships put us on top of the world as we savored the success of the hometown team.  

Now the Metrodome site is set to initiate an era of football in its own football stadium. Vikings Stadium is the crown jewel in the plans. 

News that the 2018 Super Bowl comes to the stadium an amazing journey to this point. 

Sketches of the stadium, as it will be ready for the 2018 Super Bowl, are eye-catchingly beautiful. They’re a combination of fantasyland,  fabulous and football dream come true.

Super Bowl 52 is four years away but it’s okay to dream early in the game.

Snowflakes lazily falling in the frosty pre-game air is the image that comes to me. It clears to a crisp sublime Super Bowl Sunday. Tailgaters grill and excitement swells as the game is about to start.

There’s pleasant escape in dreaming. Anything that sharpens the focus or revs up interest adds to the end result of enjoyment put in and received. There are 1356 days to February 4, 2018 if we begin to dream now.

Closer in, the Twin Cities and the Minnesota Twins play host this summer to major league baseball’s All-Star game. The action is July 15, 2014 at Target Field, Minneapolis.

Ro Giencke – May 20, 2014

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