TL;DR
I have season tickets, and have not been to a regular season game yet, but have been following remotely at ridiculous hours of the day due to being in Sweden. I'm headed home soon. If you don't want to read the whole back story, scroll down to the "So Why This Post?" heading.
In January, wanting to get more into the new MLS version of the Portland Timbers than I had been with any soccer/football team in the past, I decided to buy myself a season ticket in the Timbers Army section. I had only been to one Timbers game before, the Boca Juniors friendly the previous season. I had a great time there, and loved what the Timbers Army brought, so I decided to try to become part of it.
Fast forward a couple months. The season starts, but I watch the games from my home, being a bit too lazy to find a bar to watch them in. However, I did buy a ticket for the USOC play-in vs. Chivas. I stood with the Timbers Army for the first time, and had a great time! I was now completely and utterly hooked.
Another week passes, and now I am excitedly waiting for the home opener, and am even considering taking that day off from work, when I get some startling news. I was asked to go to Sweden for my job. For two months. Starting the Monday before the season opener. While was now completely in love with the Timbers, my job and career come first, because that's how I can afford to go to the Timbers games.
So now, the week of the home opener I was in a small town, called Ornskoldsvik (I can now pronounce it, and will gladly do so if you ask), in a small hotel room with pretty crappy hotel internet. I didn't have the bandwidth to stream the game from a questionably legal stream, so at game time, I followed #RCTID (I don't have a twitter account, so couldn't post to it), the commentary on ESPN, FSC, and various other sports sites, as well as on forums. Trying to get all of the information I possibly could about the goings on of the game. At 5AM. That's right, I was so excited about the game, I actually woke up for the 5AM kickoff, just to be able to follow the commentary. Later that day I caught the national anthem and tifo on youtube, and was completely speechless. I just didn't even know how to react to that. That evening, even though I was on crappy hotel internet, I started downloading a video capture of the game.
For the weekend, me and my coworker borrowed a 3G modem from the office, so we could skype home, and do other internet related tasks. I stayed up until 2AM Sunday night/Monday morning, just to watch the Dallas match. Even though I would need to wake up at 6:30 so I could get to the office the next day.
That monday, we moved into an apartment for the remainder of our time here, and now had good internet! From this point on, I ended up catching about half of the games live via streams, and caught about half of them afterwards via downloaded streams. Waking up at 5AM, even just once a week, is a bit much for me.
That brings us to the present, now the day of the DC United game. We now stand perfect at home after 5 games, and will hopefully extend that to 6 later today (well, tomorrow for me). I leave Ornskoldsvik on Wednesday, and will spend some time in Stockholm and Oslo before flying back to Portland.
So why this post?
I fly out from Stockholm Arlanda airport at about 10:00 AM local time (1:00 AM Portland time) on June 11th, the day of the Colorado home game. Back up the 30 minutes it will take to get to the airport via transit, the 1.5 hours of buffer/checkin time, and at least an hour of wake up/checkout/breakfast time, and that puts me at 7:00 AM (10:00 PM previous day in Portland). After the international flight, I have a good 4 hours of layover in Chicago before arrive at PDX at 6:30 PM local time, or one hour until game time. I have arranged for a friend to pick me up at the airport, and he will also hold onto my bags for me, as I am planning on going to the game. That's right, I am planning on making a 6000 mile journey, and to catch the Timbers game. All told, by the time I will end up getting home, it will probably be about 26 hours from the start of my day, until the end, and I can't think of a better way to be welcomed back to Portland, than by the loving chants of the Timbers Army.
When it comes down to the day, I will do my best to post the trials and tribulations of the journey in real time as I travel. I'll probably *gasp* actually sign up for a Twitter account to do so, even though I doubt I'd ever use it again afterwards. Wish me luck!
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