Behind the scenes look at my trip to Vermont and Ottawa.
This is some stuff I decided not to put in the previous weekly log entry.
We met up at 7am Friday morning and departed to St. Albans. Traveling is pretty fun to me, although it’s tough to sleep. Since I’m so big, it’s almost impossible to get comfortable. On the way out to Vermont, we watched movies- or attempted to get some zzz’s. About an hour from our destination, we stopped at UNO’s for some grubbin. The Rage doesn’t really have a set budget, but this season we’ve allowed total freedom on meals.
Vermont for some reason reminded me of the Goonies... at least around the outskirts. It was very green… and the hilly, winding roads passed by large lake inlets… (I think it was Champlaine). There were lots of small 1700's era restaurants and most of the houses were located on the mountainsides.
The hotel was conveniently right across the street from the stadium. Originally I was supposed to bunk with our crazy bus driver Fernando, but he decided to get his own room. Woo hoo!
It was kind of rainy the whole time, but it never was enough to get drenched.
After the match was over…. I got a shower and walked to a local B&P. They sell beer! I don’t drink, but it was weird to see alcohol at the gas station. Hahaha.
@ 11am we checked out of the Comfort Inn and headed to the Canadian border. When we got there, the border control officers checked our ID’s and went through the bus. I thought they would have been a little more anal, due to the bombings in London… but it was really laid back. There were no problems what so ever.
Canada was cool. The first thing I noticed was French. All the signs were written in French and almost everyone spoke the language. The team stopped at a large mall to eat, and it felt like I was in a different world. I noticed that the locals were staring at us like we were tourists… Haha! It didn’t help that I was taking pictures for my professional portfolio and the guys were wearing their traveling track suits. American money is accepted, but you get the equivalent change in Canadian… which kind of caught me off guard. Some of the players got screwed too, because they only had large bills to pay for souvenirs.
We played at Carlow University, which is just inside of Ottawa. The game went into double overtime and we actually won!
As I said before, our bus driver Fernando is an interesting character. He’s from Peru and speaks with a hard Cuban kind of accent. Back in the day he drove us to a few games and asked to stick with us, because he’s a big soccer fan. He’s a great guy… but drives like a fucking maniac. I think that he moves faster side to side, then he actually does going straight. He told me stories about the 70’s…. and how he used to sleep around and do cocaine with prostitutes… no lie.
Well anyway- some drunken Fury fans started causing problems and walked over to our bench during the first overtime. One dude starts to unbutton his pants, like he’s going to pee on us and Fernando flips out! He was like "Fuck yoooou! You are nuttin but a stupid beeeeeeech… Jou come to me after the game and I kill you!" It just so happens that there was a railroad spike laying on the ground right in front of him and he picked it up. So now the driver is swinging the metal spike in the air, they are spitting at us and some of the players start launching Gatorade at these jerkoffs… Security runs over to the situation and breaks it up before anything serious happens. Jeeze! Thankfully none of our guys got in trouble.
The ride back to PA was long and tedious. The trip took about 10 total hrs. This summer I have visited NY (2 times), NYC, VT, OC NJ, MA, RI and Canada. For me that's pretty awesome!
We met up at 7am Friday morning and departed to St. Albans. Traveling is pretty fun to me, although it’s tough to sleep. Since I’m so big, it’s almost impossible to get comfortable. On the way out to Vermont, we watched movies- or attempted to get some zzz’s. About an hour from our destination, we stopped at UNO’s for some grubbin. The Rage doesn’t really have a set budget, but this season we’ve allowed total freedom on meals.
Vermont for some reason reminded me of the Goonies... at least around the outskirts. It was very green… and the hilly, winding roads passed by large lake inlets… (I think it was Champlaine). There were lots of small 1700's era restaurants and most of the houses were located on the mountainsides.
The hotel was conveniently right across the street from the stadium. Originally I was supposed to bunk with our crazy bus driver Fernando, but he decided to get his own room. Woo hoo!
It was kind of rainy the whole time, but it never was enough to get drenched.
After the match was over…. I got a shower and walked to a local B&P. They sell beer! I don’t drink, but it was weird to see alcohol at the gas station. Hahaha.
@ 11am we checked out of the Comfort Inn and headed to the Canadian border. When we got there, the border control officers checked our ID’s and went through the bus. I thought they would have been a little more anal, due to the bombings in London… but it was really laid back. There were no problems what so ever.
Canada was cool. The first thing I noticed was French. All the signs were written in French and almost everyone spoke the language. The team stopped at a large mall to eat, and it felt like I was in a different world. I noticed that the locals were staring at us like we were tourists… Haha! It didn’t help that I was taking pictures for my professional portfolio and the guys were wearing their traveling track suits. American money is accepted, but you get the equivalent change in Canadian… which kind of caught me off guard. Some of the players got screwed too, because they only had large bills to pay for souvenirs.
We played at Carlow University, which is just inside of Ottawa. The game went into double overtime and we actually won!
As I said before, our bus driver Fernando is an interesting character. He’s from Peru and speaks with a hard Cuban kind of accent. Back in the day he drove us to a few games and asked to stick with us, because he’s a big soccer fan. He’s a great guy… but drives like a fucking maniac. I think that he moves faster side to side, then he actually does going straight. He told me stories about the 70’s…. and how he used to sleep around and do cocaine with prostitutes… no lie.
Well anyway- some drunken Fury fans started causing problems and walked over to our bench during the first overtime. One dude starts to unbutton his pants, like he’s going to pee on us and Fernando flips out! He was like "Fuck yoooou! You are nuttin but a stupid beeeeeeech… Jou come to me after the game and I kill you!" It just so happens that there was a railroad spike laying on the ground right in front of him and he picked it up. So now the driver is swinging the metal spike in the air, they are spitting at us and some of the players start launching Gatorade at these jerkoffs… Security runs over to the situation and breaks it up before anything serious happens. Jeeze! Thankfully none of our guys got in trouble.
The ride back to PA was long and tedious. The trip took about 10 total hrs. This summer I have visited NY (2 times), NYC, VT, OC NJ, MA, RI and Canada. For me that's pretty awesome!