619 days

But at least I was inside the stadium now. I walked through the brewpub along the side of the field, then up into the stands. A girls' youth game was taking place on the field, and I climbed the stairs up to the concourse, passing many parents watching the game on the field, apparently with indifference. Someone needs to get these parents some cowbells, whistles, horns, and drums, or how will their daughters ever know what it's like to be on the US Women's team?

I paused to take a look at the stadium, bathed in full sunlight, and really started to appreciate how much the stadium didn't resemble its former incarnation as Civic Stadium. The skyboxes were the most noticeable difference, but there were also the new Timber green seats, the family deck, the manual scoreboard, and the fact that the field no longer looked like the carpet on the side porch at my grandparents' house. The transformation was impressive, and I began to fill with excitement.

After dropping $10 to pick up a Timbers yearbook from one of the booths, which were just starting to open, I made my way out of the stadium and across the street to the Bitter End Pub, which is the designated pre and post game gathering place for the Cascade Rangers Timbers supporters group.

I got there just as Timbers fans were beginning to trickle in, but before long we had a half-dozen Timbers fans gathered, passing out song lyrics, and exchanging stories. Some of us had only met each other on internet message boards before, but many of us felt like we knew each other, even if only in a virtual sense.

At about 5:10, I decided to set out in the quest for my press pass again. Since I had no pass to get into the stadium, once again I had to make the trek around to the now-famous gate 35 (major trek #2). I once again breathed in a few lungs full of chlorine and made my way to the table just in front of the "Command Center" sign. After digging through a pile of Timbers press passes, my name emerged on a pass, right at the bottom of the pile. A full season press pass, with field and press box access. My knees nearly collapsed. After hanging around on the sidelines at 4th division soccer games for the past two years, I was going to get the chance to do the same at the A-League level. It was a very good feeling indeed.

Once again, I passed through the brewpub and back up the stands, passing again the same parents of the girl's youth league game, still going on. I worried for a minute that it might just be my imagination that none of them had moved a muscle in the 45 minutes since I had last passed, but those are the kind of thoughts that kept me out of the really good colleges. Once again I went down the concourse and out of the gate.

But unlike the last time, crowds were beginning to gather. It was thrilling to see real crowds, real lines, hundreds of people, all waiting in line to see the Timbers. The gates would be opening soon, and I could only hope that the game would be exciting enough to bring them back.

Back to the Bitter End I went, and by that time, the crowd of Timbers fans gathered in the front of the pub had grown to about 20. A few Sounders fans had wandered in by that time, and they were treated with a fair amount of courtesy, mixed in with a good dose of contempt. This may have been the first time the Timbers and Sounders had met in nearly 20 years, but the dislike between the two teams has been maintained by the healthy contempt between the cities.

A few rousing choruses of "Green is the color" rang through the pub, and out the door onto Burnside. The pints were flowing, and the stories of the NASL days of the Timbers were flying around as I passed my newly acquired yearbook around. At about 6:00, I decided to head back into the stadium to see what was going on. The crowds were really building by this point, and I wanted to get some more shots of the interior before the game started.

I realized that I hadn't received my press information pack, even though I didn't have a clue what that meant. All I knew is that I was supposed to receive it, and I didn't. Since I had my press pass by this time, I could enter the stadium at any gate (it said so right on the pass). Well, apparently, "any gate" actually meant a few specific gates. I found this out by going to the first gate I saw, where I was told very politely that I needed to go to the last gate. He pointed towards his right, so I headed around the line of crowds to the last gate, which was an exit gate that I couldn't use to enter. With a slight tightening in my stomach, I realized that if you passed all of the gates in the stadium while going in this direction, the last gate you'd come to would be the now-legendary gate 35. I caught the attention of a worker inside, and asked him the same question. He told me that the pass gate was back over to his left (back towards the gate I had originally tried). With a little more hesitation, I went around the growing lines of people at the gate in search of the elusive pass gate. Through a parting of the crowd, I spotted a sign saying "pass gate", apparently attached to no gate at all, just to the steel bars. On closer inspection, I noticed that the bars did indeed contain a door, and as they opened the door for me, I showed him my press pass with the same enthusiasm as Wayne and Garth in Wayne's World, proudly showing their backstage pass to anyone and everyone.

The concourse was very busy by this point, and eventually, the press information pack slipped from my mind. Something much more important was on my mind now. Finding an ATM. The team yearbook had taken the last $10 I had on me, so I consulted with that very yearbook to find out where the ATM's were. A quick check of the map contained therein informed me that there were two of them: one just inside the northwest entrance, and one just inside the northeast entrance. After carefully cross-referencing the position of the peanut cart with the position on the map, and making rough estimates of the approximate distance between the ATM and the information desk as indicated on the map, I was unable to locate either of them. At this point, I decided that a trip to the information desk might be a good idea, if not to locate the press table, then to at least have them give me a compass reading on the ATM. But at that point my cell phone rang, and my chance of finding my press information pack or the ATM were gone for good.

It was one of my coworkers calling from his own cell phone. He told me that he was on the deck of the Multnomah Athletic Club, and that I should come by for a few minutes. I'd need to walk down 18th street, past gate 35, and up the next street over to the entrance. So, I curtailed my ATM surveying, and once again went out the gate and down 18th street (major trek #3).

After going two blocks south, and one block west, then waiting for five minutes for my coworker to arrive at the front door, we made our way out to the deck, which has six rows of benches and a nice view of the field from the south (the deck is about 40 feet up in the wall above the south goal). The deck was nearly empty, and I was only going to stop by for a few minutes. It took some convincing for the person guarding the gate to believe me, however, as he obviously thought I intended to stay and watch the game from here. I guess my press pass didn't impress him. After snapping a few pictures of the field, I thanked my coworker and made my way back into the stadium, making sure I made my entrance through the now-notorious gate 35. I felt my chlorine levels were getting dangerously low and needed to be replenished.

I wandered into the brewpub area (which is immediately adjacent to the field at ground level), which by this time was filled to overflowing. A band was set up on a small stage at the south end, and a few people were dancing right in front of the stage. Just a few minutes later, my boss came down the stairs into the brewpub area. He was another person I had recruited at work that morning to come to the game, and I was glad to see him there. He'd brought his wife and his one-year-old son (into the stadium, not into the brewpub), along with another of my coworkers. That meant I had brought four people into the stadium for the game along with myself, which I thought was a ratio to be proud of. After we talked for a short while, it was obvious the pre-game festivities were about to start, so it was time to see if my press pass would get me onto the field.

It did.

I was so surprised that the person guarding the field just waved me by that I nearly jumped back into the brewpub in shock. I didn't feel at this point like I had free reign to walk down the sideline, so I cautiously slipped back into the southwest corner of the field area. The pre-game was to have started by this time, but something seemed to be delaying the festivities. But after a few more minutes, which allowed the band playing in the brewpub to slip in another song or two, something seemed to be happening on the field.

A small group of people were walking out on the field to a microphone that had just been set up. I moved a little closer, to try to see what was going on. Someone began to speak at the microphone (I think it was Mayor Katz, but I was too far away to tell). It was at that point I realized that I had a slight problem. I could not hear a word of what was being said. All I could make out was "mumble mumble here today mumble mumble beautiful new mumble mumble.." Since I was writing up a report for a-league.com for the match, not being able to hear the loudspeakers in the stadium could prove to make my job difficult. I recognized the Portland Family Entertainment people as they were introduced, but when the NASL Timbers were announced, I was unable to pick up a single name. I snapped a picture of the former Timbers anyway, fully realizing that I'd never be able to identify them.

Then Major Katz proudly announced that something or other was about to happen, and turned and looked towards the southeast corner of the stadium, looking slightly up in the general direction of gate 35. I had no idea what we were looking for, but the first thing that crossed my mind was that some type of aircraft was going to make a pass over the stadium to celebrate the first Timbers game. In retrospect this was a foolish thing to think, possibly due to chlorine poisoning, but I looked up in the sky anyway, eagerly waiting for the Blue Angels to make a low pass over PGE Park.

Of course, I was standing right in front of the stands at this point, and since they were in a much better position to hear the announcement than I was (the speakers are on the front of the roof and point back into the stands), once I realized that there wasn't going to be an air show, I could only imagine how I looked to those in the stands who noticed what I was doing. It would be like someone in the stands at Wimbledon, moving their head up and down while the rest of the fans go back and forth.

Continue to part two