Stockholm to Portland, a Journey

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.

Story Time!

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!

Sweden Pictures, etc.

As I am nearing the end of my time here in Sweden, I figure now is a good time to post links to where all of my pictures are:

General Sweden

Stockholm on 5/14

Geohashing Day 2011 in Berlin/Poland

Timelapse of the walk I made to the office here in Ornskoldsvik most every day while here for two months

Sweden!

For those that don't know, I'm headed off to Sweden for work, Örnsköldsvik to be exact. This isn't your typical well populated part of the country, so I'll be able to get a good feel of what life is like in the non-tourist parts of Sweden! I'll be gone until June 11th.

Car free month, the finale

So, today is the first day after the completion of the car free month. I still took the train in, because it is just so much less annoyance to walk over to the train stop and hop the train/bus into work. I only had a half day at work today, so walked back to the train stop, and headed home for lunch. After that, I drove out east, south of Gresham, to visit a hashpoint. On the way back, I stopped to get a new pair of shoes and some cleaning supplies.

The general synopsis of the car free month is this:

1. I like riding the train into work. It is a much less stressful way to get to and from work, even on my short commute.
2. I really don't like shopping via transit. It really sucks.
3. Geohashing, and sometimes sf0 tasking, really should be done with a car. Its just the nature of those activities that often a car is, if not required, then still very nice to have.
4. If I decide to buy a house/townhouse in the upcoming months, I want to keep myself relatively close to a train station, because transit into work is now my preferred way to get there.

From now on, I will probably drive into work once a week, so that I can go out to lunch, and so that I can go shopping on my way home from work.

Car free days 29 & 30

On the 29th day, I rode the train in (as usual), but had a company celebration for the completion of a project, so got a ride from a friend. On the way back, I drove his car back to his place, and rode the train from there.

The last day of the experiment was very typical, except that as I was walking out the door of the office, I saw the bus pulling up, so I ran up to catch it, and rode it home instead of walking.

Car free days 25 - 28

Day 25 was Thanksgiving. I spent the day lounging, cooking, eating, and sleeping, as one should on this day. I also completed my Thanksgiving day tasking.

Day 26 was black Friday. I went out on a geohashing expedition, but was unable to reach the point due to a steep, wet, muddy, and leaf covered incline. On the expedition, I did get some food, and a friend picked me up and dropped me off. However, the friend would have had to have driven right by my apartment to get to/from the hashpoint anyways. Other than that I read.

Day 27 I read through most of the day, took a bit of a nap, and was called to see if I wanted to head out to HUB (Hopworks Urban Brewery) for dinner and a couple of drinks. I agreed, and hopped on the train to a friend's who would drive me to where the first friend called from. We then sat around for a bit watching TV, and headed down to the brewpub, where I had a delicious sandwich chock full of Italian meats, and three beers. The beers were Velvet ESB (because it is awesome), Cask Abominable (because I wanted something new), and Dark Helmet (because of the name).

Day 28 was spent completely in my apartment, sleeping, reading, TVing and the like.

Car free day 24

Completely uneventful. Went to work on transit, came back home on transit (albiet a little earlier than normal). The most interesting thing done in the day was that I spent over 2 hours cooking and preparing food, of which none of it was consumed immediately. It is all sitting in the refrigerator, waiting to be reheated at around 2:30PM or so today. Foods prepared: black bean and jicama salad, red thai curry with chicken, and spicy shrimp.