Harborites off to the big game

Two Harborites will be among the tens of thousands of fans headed to Super Bowl XLIX this Sunday for a chance to see the Seahawks win the league’s biggest game for a second time in a row.

Aberdonian Doug Cotton and Gary Vining, from Westport, both flew out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Wednesday. The two best friends will meet Vining’s father, a snowbird living in Scottsdale, and go to the big game as a group.

Getting the tickets, Vining said, started at last year’s Super Bowl in New York, where Vining’s son saw the Seahawks beat the Broncos. Vining’s son met a New York-based ticket broker and kept his information, then passed it along to his father. Vining will have the tickets in-hand when he arrives in Arizona.

Both Vining and Cotton booked their flights to Arizona long before they knew the Seahawks would be there, too. They had plans to be in town during the game just to partake in the festivities.

But when the Seahawks won the NFC Championship, they decided they should try to get tickets. Vining called Cotton last Saturday to let him know that the three would have seats inside University of Phoenix Stadium.

“He said, ‘I just want you to know that we’re going to the Super Bowl,’” Cotton said. “I said, ‘You’re kidding me.’ … Of course, I was pretty elated.”

Vining also called his father, who is 83, to let him know the news.

“It was pretty amazing,” Vining said, adding that his father’s knee had just been replaced, and that he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to walk. “He said, ‘No problem.’ He was so pumped.”

The three will stay at Vining’s house in Sun City West, a few miles northwest of Glendale.

Vining said he knows how rare this opportunity is.

“It’s a bucket-list thing,” he said. “It’s probably once in a lifetime it’ll ever happen.”

Cotton echoed the sentiment, adding a bit of topical comic relief following Marshawn Lynch’s answers to questions at Tuesday’s Media Day. “I’m just going,” he said, “so I won’t get fined.”