Last Wednesday I went to watch the National Mexican soccer team for the first time in my life. Normally I don’t go to these games because Mexico, for the most part, comes with a very young and inexperienced team to LA. But this time it was different. Since the FIFA world cup will be this summer, they brought the “good team” to Pasadena.
For this reason last Saturday S. called and asked me if I wanted to come to the game with him. I accepted and got the tickets for him, and his brother in law.
Come Wednesday, I got off early from work: at 5. Half an hour later S. Iv. And his cousin Ax. Picked me up and headed to Pasadena.
Since I don’t have any Mexico jerseys, I decided to wear my good old America one. I thought that would be good enough, but once I got into the truck. S. gave me a Mexico jersey (a green one) and he said he did it because he wanted everyone to wear a Mexico jersey.
There were 4 of us in the truck and behind us…S.’s brother in law came with other 4 friends I didn’t know. The plan was to get to the parking lot and from there walk to the stadium together. Nobody expected the parking lot to be that full and chaotic. So we ended up losing contact with S.’s brother in law due to all the cars and him losing cell phone service. I guess that gives you another reason to stay away from Metro PCS.
The four of us ended up walking through the crowded parking lot to the stadium. As I said, it was chaotic. Remembering what happened to us in the 2008 Pasadena Bike Tour (we left the van in one street and no one took the time to read the name of the street. At the end of the race we had to look for the van for another hour at least) S and I made sure everyone knew where we had parked:
Right under the balloon with a number 3 in it.
We walked until we saw a big ass line, so we guessed it was the line to get into the stadium. After waiting there for about 10 minutes. Ivan decided to “peek” if he could get us a better place in the line. So he got out of the line and walked to the front. Meanwhile a drunk guy was making the people waiting in line laugh with crazy jokes. He was drunk. Under his arm I saw a half empty bottle of Patron.
Then Santiago got a call. It was Ivan. He had managed to find a better place in front of the line. We took off. And walked ahead about 50 or 75 feet. We cut in line just about 20 feet away from the main entrance. (just like Santiago and I had been able to do that Black Friday in 2008 outside the Best Buy in La Brea and Santa Monica when he got his laptop)
We thought everything would go smoothly from there on. Things started to complicate when during inspection Alex was not let into the stadium because of his large camera. Since he had been the last of the four of us to get inspected, Ivan, who had been the first, walked without knowing his cousin was having trouble and wondered into the crowded stadium. Santiago had been the second, and I was the third to get inspected. I was the one who noticed Alex had been stopped and not let in. I called out Santiago and told him to wait and went after Ivan, who by then had crossed the line where they scan your ticket.
The security lady told Alex to go back to the truck and leave his camera. He asked her if he could just take the large lent thing off. She said she needed to check with his supervisor. So all of us waited there for about 10 minutes. After the supervisor came, he let Alex in and all of us walked in looking for the right gate.
But before anything, we stopped to buy one of those horn things where you have to blow really hard. To everyone’s surprise. It was harder than expected to make any kind of noise come out of that thing. Alex had no problem, I, however, was only able to blow into it without any kind of noise.
We had come in through the North entrance and were right in front of the 11 gate to get in. We walked in and the guy who checked our tickets to us (Santiago and me) to go to the other side of the stadium because our seats were there and told the others (Alex and Ivan) to look for gate 14 since their seats were there.
Now we are good Mexicans we’re not going to just give in that easily. Heck, we came together and were planning to watch the damn game together too. We had already lost half the original group (remember, the other five guys in the other van who we lost contact once in the parking lot?)
Walked to gate 12. Again, the guy told us to same thing. Walked to gate 13 and the same. Once we got to gate 14 the guy let Ivan and Alex in, but told us to look for gate 28, which was at the exact opposite end of the stadium.
Finally defeated and with roughly 35 minutes before the start of the game, all four of us got together and talked. We all agreed that if for any reason we got separated again, we would meet in the North entrance of the stadium and if it wasn’t possible we would meet in the truck which was right under the number 3 balloon. “Si se arman los madrazos, nos vemos en la salida norte o en el carro”
They went in, while me and Santiago practically had to run to the other side of the stadium. Time was running out and it was chaotic as hell. People walking in all directions and lines of people everywhere. Almost right in front of gate 20 I got a call from my brother asking me how was the game. I told him the situation and said I could not hear him due to all the noise. Mean while Santiago was calling someone.
It turned out to be Pablo, a mutual friend, cousin of a mutual friend in high school. After hanging up, Santiago told me to hurry because apparently Pablo had managed to go around security and was saving us a couple of seats behind one of the goals.
Found gate 28 and went in. The place was packed. You could hardly move. Eventually and from the distance, Santiago was able to spot Pablo. He was sitting way down close to the field. We finally got close to where he was, but now there was another big problem. A security lady was checking the tickets before you could go down the isle. So we waited closeby, pretending to watch the field and letting people go ahead of us.
Suddenly, he lady got called and got distracted. So we when down the isle. There was Pablo with two girls I didn’t know. And he sat there hoping no one would come around to claim those seats.
It was a good match…specially because Mexico won 2-0.
After the end we went back to the truck and waited for Alex and Ivan. The traffic was terrible going back to Hollywood. We ended up meeting Ivan’s wife, Lizbeth and Santiago’s girlfriend Jannet in a pizzeria near Sunset at around 11 pm.
It was a good night worth remembering.
Now there are a couple of pictures.
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