PART VII : MONDAY NIGHT STECK AND MESHED ON A BUS!

Wake up in cold Green Bay after a good hard night of NO PARTYING!!! Nip across the street to Lambeau Field - but the damn security guard won't let us inside! Are we to be shut out of the spiritual home of the Cheddarheads?

A picture outside historic Lambeau Field - home of the original Cheeseheads.

And that would be inside Lambeau! Thanks to the nice Packers PR man he unlocked the pearly cheese gates and let the hooligans inside. Little did he know that we'd go from here to interrupting the Packers players over lunch and trying to woo highly touted QB Matt Hasselbeck to come to Scotland!

After a quick tour of the Packers Hall of Fame - which is excellent by the way and isn't too far behind the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it was time to head west on the quiet roads of Wisconsin with the Cheddarmobile breaking speed limits all the way to Minneapolis!

Yep, we did it. 6 games, and 2000 miles and several cans of good ole American beer along the way!

The whole Scottish gang was reunited in the Twin Cities. From L to R - Blinky, Fester, Dom, Jackie, Shuggie, some Minnesotan women in a Randy Moss shirt and Preston!

Since this is Packer Hater country, we were a wee bit nervous about donning the Cheese in close vicinity of any groups of 2 of more male adults who may or may not be inebriated. So when we saw this bunch of guys on top of an old school bus partying their purple asses off - we got very nervous!

Then we ran into Viking Dave (that's the Vikings Logo on his head in case you were wondering) and he offered us free beer …

… ON THE BUS!

This was the best! On top of a rusty old schoolbus, with a keg of beer (how did they get that up there?), downing drinks with a man dressed as a chicken in a Hershel Walker shirt, dodging flying footballs while barking our asses off! You could sense that these moments would be the apex of our existence. We didn't want to come down!

Exclusive Cheddar Cam^TM shot from the top of the bus!

But we had to go inside the 'Dome and say hello to an old friend, the 2000 NFLE Offensive MVP and World Bowl MVP - Aaron Stecker (#22), who has been returning kicks for the Bucs this year. Just as the Bucs were leaving the field after warm-ups. 'Steck' spotted us in the end zone, among a hoard of purple maniacs, and he calmly jogged 50 yards over to where we were and shook our hands. How cool was that? (Sadly he must have caught some of our fumbilitis from this handshake …)

This place was CRAZY LOUD. Monday Night is always special (i.e. more drinking time) and this crowd was pumped! It was as loud as Kansas City that's for sure. And it went just nuts when Bucs WR Keyshawn Johnson fumbled on the Bucs 1^st play, and then Vikings QB Daunte Culpepper ran in for a TD on the very next play!

Steck returns the opening kickoff. Statistically he didn't have a bad day (7 returns for 160 yards), but one costly fumble in the 2^nd quarter led to a Vikes TD. Ouch!

And we were pumped too! We were surrounded by some great fans, who were just as liquored up as were and we really got into this game! This was as much fun as we've ever had at an NFL game. Purple Power Baby! Skol Vikings! (Except when Steck had the ball - we stayed real quiet!)

Horny in Minneapolis!

The Vikings ran out 30-23 winners thanks to a great 4^th quarter TD from Randy Moss and stayed unbeaten. The Bucs meanwhile had lost their 3^rd straight game, with Keyshawn having another poor day.

Steck was all smiles after the game, while Preston is still lamenting that fumble. But Steck will bounce back. We boldly predict that #22 will become the 1^st player in Bucs history to return a kickoff for a TD!!! (It's never been done in their 25 years). As Aaron is from Green Bay, we keep our fingers crossed that it can happen in Lambeau!

So that was about that. After stumbling out of the 'Dome way after midnight we met the Hershel Walker chicken crossing the road, and he directed us to the only place we could still get a drink at this hour. This was no place for chickens!

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