I WENT TO THE ROSE BOWL!
Originally, I was going to just go and run the flag with APO. So in December, Mom booked my flight to go out there on the day before the game (last Wednesday) and to return the Saturday after. I was looking forward to running the flag with my friends and then going somewhere with my other friends who didn't have tickets to watch the game.
Since Mom had to pick up Mike from the airport at 3, and my flight was a 6:30, she combined trips and dropped me off super early, which was great because they had me on standby. I got through security just fine and found my gate, where I had to sit through two different flights (an outgoing to Chicago and an incoming from Dallas) and when I saw a lady at the desk, I went and asked if there were any available seats, and she gave me one right away.
It turns out that I was extremely lucky for that! As the hours wore on, they started calling for six people to give up their tickets for a $300 credit and get a flight on an 8am the next morning. Because there was no way I could do that, I sat quietly and boarded the flight when I could. I spent the flight talking with one of the only people on it who wasn't going to the Rose Bowl, poor guy. Almost the entire flight was full of people wearing burnt orange with pride! I heard so many people discussing the game, and how they were really optimistic. When I landed, I found a taxi and made my way to the hotel.
At the hotel, we had two rooms between twenty of us. It happened that for two of the three nights I stayed in the one of the rooms had nine people, and the other had eleven. My room was only for two nights, and so for the third I moved to the other one. Four of the boys claimed the bed (so unfair!) so I slept on the floor in front of the TV. Here's a diagram of the room that I just made in paint!
On Game Day, we were all up bright and early (7:30!) and were were at the field by 10:30.
We did a circuit of the stadium first, which (with seeing people we knew, and taking our own sweet time of it) killed about an hour and a half. We saw lots of fans, and amusing tents and tailgates...
(The sign says "NO TRESPASSING. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.")
I knew that my old spanish teacher from high school was having a tailgate with his wife and her family, and so I made my way over there to chill for a bit. We made hotdogs and put chili on them. Yay for chili dogs!
(That's him, Daniel Diffen. It's still really weird to not call him Sr. Diffen!)I had to be at the flag trailer at 3:30, and so we snaked the flag to the gate...
and were (finally!) let into the stadium at about 5pm. First, they had to waste our time saying "in thirty minutes" (forty minutes later, it was "in ten minutes". This continued until the band had already taken the field!) They had a dog search the flag to make sure we weren't bringing anything in it.
We finally took the field (sorry for the blurry picture!)
and did a simple open and close during the Eyes of Texas. We snaked the flag back to the trailer, and I took a last look at everyone in the stadium, trying to imprint it on my memory for fond recollections later in life. It was cool I didn't have a ticket - I didn't need a ticket. I got to run the flag at the Rose Bowl! How cool is that!
There were nine of us who didn't have tickets, and two of us had to take the flag trailer to the hotel, and so the rest of us started to walk back to the car to go find somewhere to watch the game. On the way, we listened to the people trying to get rid of their tickets, and one guy approached us and offered us his tickets for $150 a pop. He had seven tickets (two groups of two and one group of 3) and we bought them on the spot and headed to our seats.
Can I just have a moment here?
A $150 ticket! To the Rose Bowl! Face value was $233! Eeeeep!
So we went to our seats, and painfully watched Alabama beat us. But we fought a valiant battle! I feel so bad for Cold McCoy! But I won't dwell on that. The game was AWESOME. I was so happy to have scored those tickets. The crowd was pretty much evenly divided between orange and red.
The bands played... Enjoyed the halftime show.
After the game, we sang the Eyes of Texas. And it was beyond awesome. It shows our pride! Everyone in orange had their horns up!
We made our way back to the hotel. Everyone in our room was really disappointed, and we went to bed pretty early (around 2 or so). Apparently the other room stayed up a lot later and had quite the party. Of course, they did have Jose to make them feel a little better.
The next day, since my room was all going home, I moved down to floor six, went out to grab some coffee with the few people who were actually awake, and then we all went to grab a bite to eat,
And then to the metro station to see if we could see a bit of Hollywood.
(Oh look! Hollywood!)We exited the station and were handed a flier for a map of Hollywood, and when we got to the place, the lady behind the desk offered us a 2 hour tour of Hollywood for $20 a pop. We jumped on the offer and hopped in the truck (which was roofless) to see Hollywood!
It was all a little bit unbelievable, and totally bizarre to recognize so much from TV and see it in person. Things like the Kodak and Chinese Theatres, the walk of fame, Sunset Boulevard...
We saw the trees in front of Johnny Depp's house (how clever of him to block it like that...)
And we saw one of Elvis Presley's houses.
The current owners have left his calling box and a little inscription that says "TCB 2" on the brick right next to it! And the door next to it has inscriptions and notes from his fans to him.
We saw where a lot of celebrities have their apartments. (The tour guide said, "Rob Pattinson lives there, but we only see him at night.")
We saw one of Sandra Bullock's houses.
(She also has a house in Austin!)
After the tour, we had dinner and celebrated Tina's 21st birthday with a round of beer. (The waitress might have asked if we were all 21... and nobody disagreed.)
And after that, we walked up the walk of fame and took pictures of stars!
And cause we were all Greens, we took pictures with Kermit the Frog!
We went into the Kodak Theater and I took a picture of...
Hooray!! (Dork moment, sorry!)We went to the Chinese Theater and took pictures of handprints... Like Johnny Depp,
And Shirley Temple,
And the Harry Potter bunch.
With that, we turned around went back to our hotel. But before we got back, we went into this other hotel, which had glass elevators and took pictures of the city at night! It was so cool. They had elevators facing every direction, and we went up and down them all!
And we hung out in the comfy couches in their lobby for a bit, too!
After that, we finally walked back to our hotel and at around 12:30 or 1, I went to bed. Everyone else was still awake! I finally got to sleep on a bed... and it was a glorious 3 hours, but then I had to wake up and leave the hotel and go to the airport. My flight was at 6:10, and I flew from LA to Dallas, and then from Dallas to Austin... IN FIRST CLASS. It was my first time in a long time flying in first, and it was so nice. They served me breakfast, and I chose the oatmeal over the omelet. (Being able to choose kind of made me feel like royalty. Just a little bit...)
It was great to get home. I missed sleeping in my bed.
So, despite the fact that we didn't win... my trip to California was epic. I only hope that I can do it again sometime!!
Hook 'em horns!!
No comments:
Post a Comment