Football '13 Week 6: Road Trip! (Cancelled).

       When the schedule came out earlier this year, I got very excited at the prospect of the Saints playing the Patriots.  This match up doesn't happen very often - every four years to be specific.  Plus, since it was an away game, it gave me the rare opportunity to see the Saints close to home as Foxboro is barely a three hour drive from the house.  Not to mention that New England in October is quite the spectacle to behold, nature wise.  I was psyched.  I was all set to get gouged on StubHub and make the trip.

       And then my brother and sister in law decided to have a child.  This fact is kind of a big deal as it is the first of the new generation in my family.  They like children and are far more god-fearing than I am and in that, they decided to have the Christening this weekend.  I love football but family comes first, so I begrudgingly gave up my road trip to southern Massachusetts and instead I am headed in the other direction this morning, on my way to Pennsylvania.  I am not looking forward to a morning in church but ya gotta do whatcha gotta do.  It helps that the kid is absolutely adorable.  

So in honor of my aborted trip, here are the 1998 Bowman Interstate Parallels.  Baseball used the international theme and flags but since 99.9% of football players are from the United States, they used state maps instead:

And as a delightful bonus, on the back they put a mocked state license plate with a position or player appropriate pun (check out that Rickey Dudley):

One of the best parts of a road trip is finding these on other people's cars and chuckling, groaning, or trying to figure out what the hell they are trying to say. 

I liked these silly cards so much, I made two pages, one of veteran players and one of rookies:

1998 had a great rookie class, granted, these are some of the lesser lights. 

The silver lining to the day is that it is a late afternoon game, so all of the church nonsense and most of the family hobnobbing will be done by the time kickoff, um, kicks off at 4:25 (not to mention my brother has a much much bigger TV than anyone else I know).  So rather than getting pelted with objects in the upper deck of Gillette Stadium, I'll get to have seconds of a catered spread in the comfort of my brother and SIL's living room while watching the game.  Hmmmm, maybe they did me a favor?