(Written by kencraw)

Sorry this has taken so long to post. As I said in an earlier post, I’ve been pretty beat the last couple weeks since the trip and while I occasionally can sneak in a blog post or two from work, I couldn’t sneak in this one because of all the pictures… makes it pretty obvious to the boss I’m not working. 🙂

I left Roseville (suburb of Sacramento where I both live and work) on Friday at 1 PM after having come home from work (as a quick aside, I thank God daily I have a 5 minute drive to work… I literally just have to drive around the block to go to work.) to get packed up and ready to go. The plan was to meet my brother in Vacaville who was coming with his room-mate from the Bay Area.

They were running a bit late so I got a chance to checkout the new children’s play area that substitutes for the old Nut Tree. Boy was I impressed. Not only did they have the old train back in business, but they also had a mini-roller coaster and a bunch of other kid/toddler friendly rides. For those with little kids who are looking for a good mid-trip stop, this place is as great as the Nut Tree ever was.

In any case, the bro arrived around 2:30 and after having a late lunch at Fentons (yes, it’s the same as the one in Oakland) got on the road around 3:30 PM. The trip up to Oregon was pretty uneventful, sans getting a call from a good friend who had just found out he was having a boy. Other than that, we knew we had to give Oregon credit for rolling out the red carpet for the Cal fans visiting including setting up replica cities of where us Cal fans grew up:

We arrived in the booming metropolis of Cottage Grove, a town where we could get a good deal on a Holiday Express room, at 10:30 PM. Despite being twenty miles from Eugene it was sold out because the Ducks were playing. Luckily my brother’s roommate was a Oregon alumni and knew to book the room early.

Despite my pleading, I couldn’t talk my companions into waking up at 5:00 AM and heading over to Eugene for the GameDay festivities, so we hit the sack without having to set an alarm. We work up just in time to catch the show on the in-room TV and checkout the creative signs. I was glad to see that “Les Miles – More Tedford” got to a prominent spot on the field and was very visible.

But we did make it over to Eugene well before game time. After my brother did a left hand turn from the right lane to get into the parking lot, thereby cutting in line of about 200 Ducks fans, we found our way to the press parking lot:

From there we headed over to the GameDay site which was just across a small creek from both the stadium and the press parking lot:

The setup for the GameDay show is pretty simple. They’ve got a big field behind a raised stage where they shoot the show from:

Of course at 10:00 AM the show was long since over so all we got to see was the left over trash:

And the left over signs:

My brother and I aren’t sure if the sign shown has the same impact when it’s being held by a woman, but oh well, it was the only big sign left behind.

After we left there, we headed over to the training facility for the Oregon football team. On our way there, guess who we ran into:

Continuing on to the practice facility, on game days they convert the facility to be a large pre-game lounge:

They cover up the field with a roll out surface so that they can setup tables and booths without harming the high grade artificial surface:

In addition to concessions and a band, they also had TV’s setup all over the place to watch all the other football action around the country:

Of course, taking a step back and looking at the facility as it is used during the week, it’s clearly an awesome setup that attracts a lot of recruits. The one aspect I found odd was all the billboards around the field. Maybe they take them down mid-week, but if they don’t, I can’t see how it won’t over inflate the ego’s of the players on the billboards. I made sure to take a picture of all 6 of them:

And if billboards aren’t your style, you could always go for the inflatable duck:

After I was done touring the practice facility I headed up to the pressbox to get settled in and say hi to a lot of the guys I hadn’t seen since last season:

Down on the field, it was not long before the Cal band showed up:

After the teams came out of the field, I saw a sight that was definitely worth taking a picture of… my only fear was that my camera would break in half trying to take a picture of this much power in one frame:

After the pre-game warmups the Oregon band came out onto the field. At first it seemed like they were going to pull a Stanford as they came out in a very disorganized sense. Luckily any fear of that was quickly erased when they dropped into regular formations (I call this one the ‘subscript “O”‘… I guess I can’t change lenses as quick as I hoped):

Then they did the team entrance:

Finally they did the national anthem and they had this pretty neat setup with banners:

At this point I had to put down the camera and cover the game, and we know how well that turned out. The lone aspect of the game worth writing about here was the end. Usually the normal sequence of events for a reporter is to make their way down to the field about 5 minutes before the game is over so that they can be on the field for post game interviews right after the game. I got so caught up in the game that I completely lost track of time and that my cohorts had left.

At that point, I figured it was better to hold out to the end of the game so that I didn’t miss what happened in transit. I did that and then did my best bulldozer impression fighting my way against the exiting crowd. Luckily Crawford’s are well suited for this kind of activity. It also helped that it was a dejected crowd that was willing to make a hole.

While I wasn’t able to get to the field before all of the players had headed into the locker room I was able to get to the press staging area for post locker room interviews (that’s where the meaty interviews are). This was the lone area where I was unimpressed with Oregon’s facilities. They had just the one press interview room that was used by the Oregon reporters. Us Cal reporters did our reporting out on the field which was very difficult with the Cal fans left around us celebrating. It was pretty hard to understand what Tedford was saying amongst all of the “Tedford! Tedford! Tedford!” chants.

After going back up to the pressbox after the interviews, which were moved into the tunnel to give us at least SOME sound isolation, I made my way to campus where my brother and roommate were waiting for me. The path from the stadium to the campus takes you through this wonderful grove of oak trees:

And then across a foot bridge across the Willamette river:

And the river itself (this picture would have been 10 times as awesome if I had my tripod with me):

From there the 3 of us went to dinner and then back to our hotel room. In the morning we got up at a leasurely pace and got on the road around 10:00 AM. We stopped in Medford to go to the original Harry and David store (my brother is a big fan of their pears) and then to get lunch. We went to the Black Bear Diner in Medford just across the freeway from Harry and Davids which was a big mistake. We literally waited 45 minutes for our food.

We got back on the road around 2 PM and made it back to Roseville around 7 PM for congratulatory high fives with my boys who were too small to make this trip, but I’m sure will be accompanying me on future trips when they get older.