{"id":225,"date":"2009-10-18T21:18:18","date_gmt":"2009-10-19T02:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/?p=225"},"modified":"2010-11-18T16:38:49","modified_gmt":"2010-11-18T21:38:49","slug":"my-day-at-rfk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/?p=225","title":{"rendered":"my day at rfk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For weeks, buddies of mine kept asking if I was going to go to the last of the WCQs, the game in DC vs. Costa Rica on 10\/14. Nah, I had to tell them&#8211;South Africa, what if there&#8217;s an emergency trip to Seattle in November, pumpkins, the budget&#8217;s not there. Then JetBlue got in a price war with Southwest and AirTran and I got a plane ticket for $75, a hotel room for $45, and a rental car for $25. A month later I hit the road for a <a href=\"gallery\/main.php?g2_itemId=3352\">24 hour road trip<\/a>, in which:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>My game ticket got lost<\/li>\n<li>Which was okay, because I got a media pass thanks to volunteering to be interviewed about my plans for South Africa<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Hey, this one here, she&#8217;s not a real fan, she&#8217;s Costa Rican in disguise.&#8221; If there are other countries in which the head of the national federation crash fan interviews, I&#8217;d like to hear it<\/li>\n<li>Got on the plane with three scarves and five banners; got off the plane with one scarf and two banners<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=26oa2ZtR-Bw\">HEY THAT GUY STOLE MY BANNER<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Watched Ruiz and Navas have a killer game; honorable mention to AaFK&#8217;s own Herrera, who made a pest of himself all night<\/li>\n<li>Hey, drunk guy behind me, I don&#8217;t care if you hate Stewie Holden for Houston, he&#8217;s playing for your team now, put a sock in it<\/li>\n<li>You too, drunker guy next to me who doesn&#8217;t even know what&#8217;s going on in the game<\/li>\n<li>Oh, man, we&#8217;re totally playing not to get injured&#8230;wait, Gooch what?<\/li>\n<li>Got a bunch of sideline-level warmup photos, most of them terrible<\/li>\n<li>Kept running into Thomas Rongen postgame<\/li>\n<li>Also some people who really obviously had the last name of Onyewu<\/li>\n<li>A WCQ where I&#8217;m cold and wet, wow, that never happens<\/li>\n<li>Airfix, you are my new best friend<\/li>\n<li>Managed to miss damn near everyone with whom I was supposed to meet up; superluminal nature of trip kept me from most of the pre- and all of the postgame<\/li>\n<li>Mumbled something about dropping some banners off for US Soccer and managed to get free great parking for the effort<\/li>\n<li>ZIP TIES ARE FOR SUCKERS, I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH<\/li>\n<li>The bouncing stands are nice and all but attending a game at RFK is watching entropy in action<\/li>\n<li>Did you know there&#8217;s a dude who works for US Soccer who looks like that sparkly vampire guy?<\/li>\n<li>There can be no better statement of all that is right with American soccer than Tim Howard in a cowboy hat<\/li>\n<li>Playing for the draw, playing to save face, yeah, we know; doesn&#8217;t matter, <em>we are in<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Tired, bruised, dehydrated, damp, typical flight home after a national team game&#8230;only this time I&#8217;m watching Sportscenter highlights of the banner I painted being displayed game I was just at.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This concludes our WCQ cycle, and commences a long eight months of putting together next year&#8217;s vacation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For weeks, buddies of mine kept asking if I was going to go to the last of the WCQs, the game in DC vs. Costa Rica on 10\/14. Nah, I had to tell them&#8211;South Africa, what if there&#8217;s an emergency &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/?p=225\">tell me more <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,6,20,10,8,16,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417,"href":"https:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tifosi.hooverdam.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}