Rose Bowl

All I wanted for Chistmas this year was Rose Bowl tickets. I'd never been to a big time sports event and wanted to try it at least once in my life. That and I never get to watch Wisconsin football out on the west coast. Wifey reluctantly agreed to the tickets and sharing the experience with me. But she certainly complained about it enough.

Getting to the Rose Bowl was in itself a little daunting. I did not want to drive over an hour and then struggle to find a $40 parking spot. So Wifey and I took public transportation, which consisted of an Amtrak train from Fullerton to LA, a Gold Line Metro from LA to Passedena and then eventually a shuttle bus from Passedena to the stadium.

The train had 3 TCU Hornfrog fans. What I learned is that Hornfrog Fans and all other Texas Fans have their own little hand gestures in support of their school. Not something I've come across before. The Hornfrog hand gesture is a peace sign with the index and middle fingers bent over instead of extended straight out. Seriously, all their fans walk around doing this to each other all day. Those 3 Hornfrog fans readily identifiable in their purple were vastly outnumbers by the red-clad badger fans in the train car.

The disparity in numbers became even clearer when the train reached LA. There were a few tiny pockets of purple adrift in a sea of red. Overall, I don't think taking public transportation saved us any time or money. It may even have cost us some time, but I'm guessing it was still less stressful than having to drive and sit in traffic.

Passadena was soaked in red. We got there just after the end of the parade. The streets were covered in very cold people and lots of trash. We walked around a bit there really wasn't much to see after the parade. We caught an early lunch which was very nice. Almost any meal without the kids feels that way now.

This town knows what it's doing. By the time we left lunch, the streets were surprisingly clean. Crews were removing plywood from all over old town. We got in a surprisngly fast line of shuttle buses. I don't know how many busses they had, but it seemed like at least a hundred. No joke.

At this point, Wifey was begining to feel a littel sorry for the TCU fans who were outnumbered at least 5 to 1 everywhere they went. Then it ended up that there werre about two sections for TCU and the rest was Badger Nation. But somehow our tickets were smack in the middle of Horn Frog Territory. Their band and cheerleaders were about 40 rows directly in front of us. We got that stupd handsign in our faces all day. There seemed to be about five or six other Badgers in our section and that was it. I have to say the TCU fans were extremely kind and there was no trouble at all. Very nice to see.

Navy Seals are cool. I'm jumping out of a plane soon, just like they did.

People take an awful lot of digital pictures these days.

It was a great exciting game, but the wrong team won.

Getting out was a little toughter than getting there. Absolutely exhausted by the time I got home.