Fantasy football honeymoon

Peyton Manning conducts the Colts orchestra.

My fiancé is currently living in Scotland, awaiting a fiance visa so that he can return to the U.S.  It's a difficult way to live, for both of us.  Life in limbo, waiting for normality and stability, and most of all togetherness, to return.  There was a time when couples had to obtain parental approval before being allowed to wed. This is an extreme version of that, but in our case it's an uncle overburdened with bureaucracy and his name is Sam.


We spend a lot of time talking about the things we plan to do when we're together again.  I believe making plans together is eminently healthy, as is fantasizing about adventures that might never happen except in a shared daydream.  During one such recent conversation, we let ourselves imagine a wonderful, if nontraditional honeymoon.  

As a preface, I should explain that my fiancé is a devout Oakland Raiders fan.  For a long time I thought it might just be a British thing - rooting for the underdog and all that.  Then I thought it could just be a symptom of the taciturn sort of stubbornness that he sometimes displays.  Everyone else hates them, so he will love them with a fierceness that defies explanation or common sense.  However, I did discover an explanation, of a sort.  He claims that when he was a wee boy in Scotland, a lad came to his primary school and announced that the L.A. (at that time) Raiders were the best NFL team and all the other kids should like them.  I've come to believe that we often inherit our loyalty to certain sports teams from others, so that explanation made sense to me.  Though, one does wonder why, at 37 years old and with mature discernment, he never thought to choose another, better team to love.  Still, I respect his right to support the Raiders, even if it does mean that I apologize to him a lot on Mondays: "Sorry about the Raiders."

I love the Indianapolis Colts.  I like several NFL teams, to be honest, and that doesn't mean I'm easy or spread my affections around.  I inherited a love for the Steelers and Colts, and I tenaciously want to love the Philadelphia Eagles.  The Colts, however, have something that no other team has: Peyton Manning.  If the NFL were a pantheon, he'd be one of the fiercest and most revered gods.  His statistics are irrefutable proof of his greatness.  He is simply one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL.  However, there is more: a sense that he is an honorable man, an apparent humility and ability to poke fun at his own public image, and the skill to turn a football game around seemingly by the force of his own enormous will.


A few weekends ago, during one of those bouts of shared daydreaming, my fiancé mentioned that the Raiders and Colts are playing each other at Christmas. More specifically, they are matched on December 26, Boxing Day.  The week 16 game will be played in Oakland, California and that city is a mere 10 hours drive south of Portland.  With uncharacteristic spontaneity, my fiancé suggested that we could go to the game.  Then his practical accountant side kicked in and he started on about how we needed to save money for wedding rings and a honeymoon.  But I'm not always one for practicality and insisted, "That can be our honeymoon!"  Oakland is not far from San Francisco and a honeymoon in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge doesn't sound bad at all.  Then, of course, there is the exhilaration of seeing an NFL game and breathing the same air as Peyton Manning for a day.

How many Pittsburgh Steelers
does it take to sack Peyton Manning?

We are still trying to figure out if we can afford it.  The best tickets currently available are in the visitor's section of the stadium, so I don't know if he'd be safe wearing his Raiders cap.  We have wondered and worried about what the weather will be like driving down I-5 in late December.  There are lots of variables to consider, but just the notion of such an adventure is invigorating and exciting, something to keep us focused on a common goal.  With the distance between us, that mutual fantasy, in and of itself, is priceless.