Soccer Road Trip

This past weekend, I went with my son, Mark, my best friend, Bob, and Bob's son, Christopher, on a soccer road trip. Our goal, drive from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City to watch the World Cup Qualifying match between the USA and Costa Rica. It sounded good at the time, but after 10 1/2 hours of driving on Friday, I was beginning to wonder.

The following picture is of Bob, Chris and Mark waiting outside the stadium for the gates to open. The Costa Rican team bus has just passed through, to the enthusiastic welcome of several dozen Costa Rican fans.



The drive was beautiful, though. After lunch in Las Vegas at an In 'n' Out, we puched on through to Arizona, and then into Utah. Utah was beautiful. And many of the mountains still had snow on them. See the following picture.



We had intended to stay in Beaver, Utah. But we were not that tired, so pushed on to Salt Lake City. After settling in at our hotel, we took a welcome walk around the downtown area, checking out places to eat. We finally settled at a Buca di Beppo, which was wonderful.

On Saturday, we woke up late, lazed around, and around noon, finally rolled out of the hotel to walk around some more. We walked past the Rio Grande train station, now the headquarters of the Utah Historical Society, and the Union Pacific Station (below).



After a short rest at the hotel, it was off to the soccer match. Below is USA keeper, Kasey Keller, warming up. He wound up being the star of the game. After an early score by Landon Donovan from 18 yards out, the US team controlled the match through the first half. Beginning the second half, the Costa Rican team decided to make a game of it. They had several close scoring chances. If it had not been for Keller being at the top of his game, the USA might have lost this one. Instead, he made several crucial and acrobatic saves, and came away with the "clean sheet" (no goals allowed).



Below is a view from our seats, 90 minutes before game time.



The stadium was full of red, white and blue. Of course, it did not help that the Costa Rican colors were also red, white and blue! Over 40,000 people attended the game, and it was a superb game, won by the USA 3-0. Below is a view of the snowy mountains from our seats.



Below is a picture of Mark, Bob and Chris in the stadium, by our seats. Interesting that about half the seats in the stadium had backs, and half were bleacher seats. It appears that the stadium is being upgraded a section at a time. Perhaps the success of the Utah football team, which produced the San Francisco 49ers' first round draft pick this year, Alex Smith, had something to do with it. We were also told that the university had spent $180,000 to put sod over their artificial turf.



After the USA win, we stayed and watched a rather uninspiring MLS match between Real Salt Lake and FC Dallas, won by Dallas 2-0. One of the pleasures of the drive was the discussions we had. Another was listening to favorite music, from Dire Straits to the Old 97's, to Bill Cosby comedy, to Simple Plan. We also listened to a book on tape, "The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs (Portuguese Irregular Verbs)" by Alexander McCall Smith, a wildly humorous tale. See a review here. Overall, it was a great experience, though a long drive.