It is Game Day and we made our way to the stadium for Monday
Night Football – at 1:30 in the afternoon.
Watching football on the west coast is weird. MNF starts at 5:30. So with an hour or more drive to the stadium
and wanting to get there early as usual we are leaving our RV at 1:30. By the time we get to the stadium it is
about 2:30 and the parking lots are starting to get a few cars. They don’t really start to fill up until
about 4:00 tonight. Getting into the
parking lot is easy. Just follow all the
other cars off the highway and into the lot.
Unfortunately we are apparently at the wrong gate. We find this out after the person at the lot
takes the part of the parking pass they are supposed to take off and scans the
pass. They tell us you can’t get there
from here – you must go out of the parking lot, around the stadium and enter on
the other side. We ask how do you do
that?. There is no road that seems to go
around to there. They say “I don’t
know”. I ask how will I get back into
the lot, you have taken off the part of the pass and scanned it. They say “I don’t know”. I say so what should I do now. They say – well you get the picture. Finally someone comes over and says “oh no,
all you need to do is go down to the end of the row there and use the inner
ring road to get to the other side of the stadium”. So off we head down to the end of the row and
there we meet another person who says “oh no, the gate to the inner ring road
is locked. You can’t get there from here you need to go back to the gate and
around the stadium”. We explain as
before and ask the questions as before and he says – “I don’t know”. We thank him and decide to seek our own
path. We drive in the direction where
the letters are going down. We are
looking for lot A1 and are currently in G4.
So left and in are the directions we head. Finally we find someone who says – “Oh, the
only way open into the inner ring road is down by gate K”. At that moment the other attendant opens up
the gate to the inner ring road to let someone out and into the lot we are
in. Waving our parking pass frantically
we go to the gate and she lets us out.
Finally we are able to drive around and get to the location for A1 where
the attendant says that we are one of the few cars that have come in to this
area and she can’t understand why because usually there are a lot more. We do not bother to enlighten her.
From lot A1 it is a quick escalator ride up to the club
level and after looking around the club for a bit we head for the little bar
they have there. We get a drink (we
needed one by now) and order an appetizer.
Their new carne asada natchos.
The waitress takes our order and then comes back with another server
about 10 minutes later to ask where we saw carne asada natchos because they are
not on their menu. We point to the large
sign on the wall announcing their new for 2015 menu items and the top one which
is the natchos. They say oh, I didn’t
notice that before (this is the middle of the season and signs are everywhere
around the lounge). Without hopes for a
positive outcome we await our natchos.
Needless to say they fulfilled our expectations.
We then headed for our seats because as far as a club goes
there is absolutely nothing to recommend this one. There are no special foods or drinks, no
where to sit, no special give aways or programs or anything. They do have wait service at your
seats. But unlike several of the other
parks which offer this by way of the team app.
They offer it by flagging down one of the servers who steps over and on
people to get to your seat and take your order and payment and then steps over
and on people to get back to the aisle and when your order arrives they step
over and on….. well you get the idea.
Apparently they don’t, but you probably do.
The “Jumbotron” is mostly advertising for their various
sponsors with a small video space in the center to show replays. I am fairly certain my TV at home is
larger. Certainly relative to the
distance you are from the screen it is.
Now the advertisements were interesting.
You could see them very well because they were larger than the
screen. For example the charger gals
want to thank California spray tan studio and the Beaches wax studio for their
support. Lets just leave this topic
and head to the game itself.
As you all already know somehow the Bears won. The crowd was about 20% Bears fans and with
about 15% empty seats that became a significant percentage of the crowd. On our side of the field it was probably 30%
Bears fans. That is huge considering how
far away San Diego is and that it was a Monday night game.
Leaving the stadium was easy. You sat in the parking lot next to your car
for about and hour and a half after the game until a large part of the lot
emptied and then got in the line to wait your turn to exit. Or you got in the line right away and waited
over an hour to get out of the lot. Your
choice. We chose the former. Being in one of the inner lots we had to wait
until all the outer lots emptied before we could have a shot at getting out of
the parking area.
All in all I understand why the chargers want a new
stadium. The one they have is a
dump. At the moment it ranks as the
second worst stadium we have been to.
We left San Diego Tuesday heading for Dallas to see some
friends. We stopped at Phoenix “on the
way” to see some of the Coaches relative’s.
More about Dallas and the rest of the journey in a future post. But before I leave you I want to relay some
of the fun we had getting to Dallas.
ON THE ROAD
California Highway 78 is an interesting road. It runs next to, and sometimes under, the
California Dunes Recreation Area. The
under is part of the fun. Here you are
barreling down the highway and suddenly half the road is buried in a couple of
feet of sand. There are no fences or
barriers to try and stop the sand and the highway isn’t raised above the ground
level to keep the sand from flowing freely over it. Nope it sits level with the ground next to it
and becomes one with the dunes environment.
After a while you leave the dunes area and enter a land of
brown hills, brown desert and the typical brown sage brush farm. These areas are interspersed with occasional
bright green areas where someone has decided this is a great place to grow
“insert plant here” and has irrigated the fields and grown a crop. Parts
of this road go around the hills and parts seem to enjoy becoming one with the
hills and remnants of the dunes. So it
does things like do a straight up climb to the top of a tall hill followed by
the crest and a swoop down the backside of the hill. Followed immediately by a climb up the next
hill. The drops and climbs were so close
together that you saw places where trucks had scraped the pavement because they
were longer than the space at the bottom between the two hills. Now anyone who is a fan of rollercoasters
would have thought this was great, but even they would have been a little
concerned when you get to the top of some of the hills and the road abruptly
makes a sharp left or right turn and there is no longer a road in front of you. After a couple of miles of these
rollercoaster like hills we see a sign that says “Dips Ahead”. I am not kidding you. It turns out these new dips neither climbed
so high nor dropped so far, but instead were like huge overgrown speed bumps
placed 20 feet apart.
And so it goes on California Highway 78.
If you will indulge me for a moment I need to engage in a
little rant about driving in Texas.
This is different from the story/rant about driving on California
Highway 78. This is just some
observations and you need to keep in mind the thought that runs in my head
throughout this is “Who Does That?”. Now
the other thing you need to keep in mind
is that the speed limit on most Texas Highways is 70 mph.
Lets start with what had to be a fascinating budget meeting
one day. I imagine if you were a fly on
the wall the conversation went something like this:
Sir, we have a problem with some of Highway 10.
Well what is it?
Sir, the road has buckled in some places and there are
potholes and when that happened apparently the low bidder we used didn’t secure
the road well and it kinda twists up and down a bit.
Well how much is it going to cost to fix?
Sir, it will be about $ome large number of thousands of
dollars.
Well, we don’t want to spend that – what else can we do.
Sir, we could put up a sign telling people there is a rough
road ahead.
Well, how much will that cost.
Sir, only a couple of thousand.
Well, lets do that then.
So end result, you are speeding along this highway at 70 and
see a sign that says rough road and all of a sudden the road drops out from
under you, twists and bucks like a bronco and then is straight and smooth once
again.
WHO DOES THAT?
Next we have the guardrail.
Now we have all seen guardrails up on tight turns. They are there to guide you and provide
protection in case you miss the turn so you don’t shoot off the road into never
never land or a corn field, or mesquite tree or whatever. Sometimes these guardrails get damaged when
someone hits them. In Texas they
apparently don’t fix them, cause someone might just hit it again and it would
just get damaged. So what do they
do? They put up a sign which says –
wait for it – Guard Rail Damaged Ahead.
Like that is going to help stop a car which is plunging off the
road. “Oh look Marvin, the guardrail is
damaged up ahead. Maybe You shouldn’t
hit it.”
WHO DOES THAT?
Next you have the signs over the road that point out which
lane goes to which highway when they split.
In Texas they put the arrow on the line between the lanes. Not in the center of the lane. So you kinda get to guess, do they mean the
left lane or the one next to it goes to that highway. This leads to lots of last minute jockeying
for lanes at 70mph. so people don’t miss their turns or don’t turn off on some
road they don’t want.
WHO DOES THAT?
WHO DOES THAT?
Last we have perhaps my favorite Texas road sign of all. Various lanes closed ahead. What kind of a sign is that? What good does it do? How does it help the driver speeding along at 70 do anything to avoid the closed lanes, help move traffic along or avoid an accident? Why even have the sign.
WHO DOES THAT?
Last we have a feature of the drivers here in Texas. Apparently they have mistaken a turn signal
for a yellow light. It means Drive Real
Fast. If you want to change lanes and
you put on your turn signal everyone in the lane you want to turn into speeds
up so you absolutely can’t get in front of them. So in Texas the way you change lanes is you
quickly turn on the turn signal as you turn the steering wheel and dart in
front of someone into the next lane.
WHO DOES THAT?
I leave you as always - Go Bears. On to the Rams.
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