As silly as some friends of mine are telling me, I have been going to every Cal football game this year. Still, I've been enjoying the trips so far, and despite the outcomes of the games I've had fun.

Anyway, I was looking forward to the trip to Tucson, Arizona. The Bears-Wildcats series has featured quite a few exciting and unpredictable games. In fact, only 3 games out of the previous 16 in the series had been decided by more than a touchdown, and 7 had been decided by only a field goal. Going into the game I knew that Cal had a decent chance of beating the Wildcats.

How to Get to Tucson in 10 Hours, but only Spend 4 Hours Traveling

The trip had an interesting begining. Due to my shifting schedule, I had to make my arangements later than the 9 members of Bay Area Young Blues (or BAYB for short) I was going to travel with. To help save myself some money, I decided to catch a Southwest flight from SFO that would arrive before their flight from Oakland even left. Dan Rosler of BAYB told me to bring a good book; I decided to take a taxi to Tempe to have beer and food at the Bandersnatch. (they make decent pub grub and have a smoothly delicious Milk Stout) mmmm.

My flight was uneventful and I even had time to dash up to the roof of the parking lot of the airport terminal to watch the sun set. I made it back to the airport with what I thought would be 20 minutes time to meet the BAYB flight. However, upon reaching the passenger level, I saw that I had 2 hours and 20 minutes before they arrived. Oh well. Fortunately I followed Dan's advice as I brought along a good diamond-hard science fiction novel called Dragon's Egg (by Robert L. Forward) that I was in the middle of reading. The Starbucks coffee bar in the airport provided a great place to read (and ultimately finish) the book.

Their flight eventually arrived and we got our cars (Two Chevy Corsicas, 1 white, 1 "blue-grey"). Unfortunately, the cars weren't all that great...they didn't have a cassette deck, and the power steering had no free play what so ever (If it was my choice, I wouldn't have rented from a car company whose colors are red and white). Fortunately, we found a good radio station (KZON 101.5) that came in throughout the two-hour drive to Tucson.

We Make it! Finally!

We got settled into our hotel just before 1am. The hotel had an annoucement sign inside that said "Go Wildcats! vs Cal"...we thought that it would be a good thing to change it. At first most of us decided to snack at the Coco's next door to the hotel, but when we finished walking there, we found it was closed. Some decided to try late night eating at some other place. Others, myself included, decided that we weren't that hungry. The group that went out reached a place called the "Village Inn" had some fun, and managed to change the sign in the hotel to say "Go Cal! vs Wildcats" In the morning the sign still said that, so we got some photos and went to Coco's for breakfast. When we got back, the sign to "Go Wildcats", but then Dan opened the glass door over the sign and flipped the "W" over to an "M".

Game Day

After breakfast, we drove to the campus and parked for free in a covered lot that was within walking distance of several post-game dining establishments. We walked through the campus, visited the student store, bought some souvineers, and slowly made our way to where the tailgate was (a good 3/4 mile from the stadium); We were among the first to arrive. It was a nice tailgate. The lunch was fine and it was all you can drink...well worth the $10. It was just too far from the stadium. The cheerleaders, flag guy, Dawn the yell leader, and Oski eventually showed up...however, the band could not make it to the tailgate...kinda makes it hard for the cheerleaders to do a routine without the band, and nobody had a boom box to play a tape of the band. Dan and Keith Lam, both former members of various Cal singing groups started singning Big "C", so I and a few others joined them in singing some other Cal songs. We also met one alumna whose daughter was attending the University of Arizona, so I had to sing "Fall Down, Arizona" for her. Following that, we decided it was time to walk back to the stadium to catch the pregame show. Fortunately, Joan Parker, invited us to ride one of the two busses that transported a few alums to the tailgate (thanks Joan!)

As it's been every other time I've been to Arizona Stadium, we were put in section 17, which has a nice view of the south endzone. Despite that the game started during the hottest time of the day, it was a quite pleasent 88 degrees with 19% humidity and a breeze from the north at game time.

A decent sized straw hat band showed up, and about 2-300 Cal fans attended. I moved down to sit with Terence, Steve, and Erik who decided to sit between the band and the Cal fans. We did our best to make noise, but it was Dawn and the band who started the Go!...Bears! cheer (not me as Marty had said).

On the other side, I wasn't impressed with the Arizona student section. The only organized yell that they made was "U...of...A" and that involved the entire stadium. I was impressed with The Pride of Arizona. The only things I didn't like were when they played Also Sprach Zarathustra (better known as the title music for 2001: A Space Odyssey) while the Wildcats were on offense and when they played "Always Coca-Cola". I noted last year that it seemed like they had stolen the idea of playing the opening of the Peter Gabriel song "Sledgehammer" from the Cal Band, and they played it again from time to time this year. They even serenaded the Cal Band with Big "C".

My only comments on the game are:

My favorite cheer during the game was:


Still...losing sucks.

Things Got Better at Night..

After the game I rejoined the BAYB group and we worked our way to University Avenue and stopped at a place that looked like it had a Southwestern type menu with drinks...It turned out to be a Tapas bar instead, and we really weren't prepared for some many choices. Still, we ordred a pitcher of cider and started discussing what to do Sunday to watch the 49er game. As we were getting ready to find a different place to eat, a gentleman walked up to our table and said "I have a solution for you." He then inivted all 11 of us to watch the game at his house. He told us he's a law professor (named Woods) at Arizona and a niners' fan and that he had a satellite dish so he could watch the niner games. We got his phone number.

After eating we decided to see what Tucson night life had to offer. Students did not mill about the University avenue area, but we did have a few suggestions. Those of us who came down for the Copper Bowl remembered a place called "Dirtbags" which was on Speedway. Our waitress at the Tapas bar mentioned three places, Paragon, The Wildcat, and The Outback. We saw that Paragon was close to our hotel so we decided to try that...on the way to Paragon was the Wildcat, which from outside looked pretty dead. We were then disappointed when we reached Paragon, as we found out it had a dress code, which many of us were not prepared to meet (no tee-shirts, athletic shoes, cut-off shorts, or combat boots). We ready to make our own party when another car drove up and this guy wearing combat boots and cut-off shorts got out. We told him about the dress code, and he said, "Go to The Outback on Stone and Franklin"..so we did.

And we were pretty happy. The cover charge was a reasonable $3, the age registriction was 21+ and the drinks were not expensive. On the way to the dance floor I also saw pool tables, dart boards, and other games. The place was pretty crowded, but only once did I feel that the dance floor was too crowded. It also helped that the place had excellent air conditioning. The music was an interesting mix of dance tunes from the 70's, 80's, and 90's (but for some reason, they played the censored version of Nine Inch Nails' "closer"). At midnight, two members of our group celebrated birthdays too. We ended up leaving after almost 3 hours of dancing and drinking so that our ears could recover (next time we bring earplugs).

Thank You Professor Woods!

The next morning we called Professor Woods to confirm that we could invade his house, and he again said "No problem", and he even suggested a place for us to have brunch, The Blue Willow (at 2616 N Campbell). His suggestion was great as the restaurant features Omlettes, Quiche, Crepes, and other delicious items. After that we purchased food and drinks to bring to the professor's place and arrived just after kick-off. The house itself was quite interesting. It had been expanded several times...the first time was to house priests and monks, then an interior decorator added on a very tall and large living room at the front. The professor said it's a great place to raise a big familly in (it has 17 rooms).

Home Again!

Following the game we safely made it back to Phoenix with enough time for us to catch our flights. I don't know what kind of sign this is, but one of BAYB's members got blue boarding card number 49. I said good-bye to everyone and wished them a happy flight. Naturally, their flight left late...While waiting for their flight to leave, I heard an announcement asking for one of them by name to come to the gate immediately...At first I thought "wait a minute, she's on board", then I reallized why they didn't think she was on board, and started to laugh (and got some strange looks). Personally, I'd rather have one of the California shaped boarding cards myself.

I had no such problems with my flight and obviously got home safely. Anyway, Thanks Dan, Keith, Jim, Gary, Lee, Renee, Melissa, Jenifer, and Mary for allowing me to join you all. It was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to the trip to Corvallis.

Copyright 1995 Sean "Yoda" Rouse
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