(Written by kencraw)

As a pre-cursor to the trip report, for those of you who’ve never gone on a Cal game road-trip, I highly recommend doing it some time. It’s probably wise to start with a conference game like ASU, Oregon or UW and then build up to a cross-country trip. With all of that said…

I left Sacramento International Airport on Friday around 1 PM with a direct flight to Chicago where I’d be meeting my brother (who lives in Massachusetts) to go to the game.

As I put my carry-on in the overhead bin I noticed what looked like a violin case in there and as the only person sitting in the area was right next to me I took a shot as I sat down and said “Is that your violin?” To which he replied, “Oh that’s no violin… that’s a Tiple.” Thus started my half-flight educational session by this quirky yet jovial elderly gentleman about the nuances of various Ukelele adjacent instruments.

I arrived at O’Hare airport at 7:30 PM local time after the 4ish hour flight and made my way to the “L” to catch the blue-line train to downtown. As with all things O’Hare it was quite a long walk from the gate to the train. Once on the train it was a 50 minute ride to downtown, followed by a 10 minute walk to the hotel.

When I was coming out of the subway (the blue-line is one of the few “L” routes that isn’t elevated… it’s an actual subway, at least in the downtown region) I heard what sounded like a series of car accidents in quick succession on the street above. In fact, it was an “unauthorized festival” for Mexican Independence day (some might call it a protest, but there didn’t seem to be any point other than to celebrate). What I had heard were fireworks and M80’s.

With a bemused smile on my face I arrived at the Congress Plaza hotel and proceeded to convince the front desk that I was indeed the brother of the soon-to-be arriving booker of the hotel reservation and got a key for the room. The Congress Plaza hotel is a nice 3+ star hotel that apparently outgrew itself and now has an extra wing… one that no 3+ star hotel should have bought. It was a dump!

But tired after the flight I didn’t worry too much about it and prepared for the game the next day.

We took the South Shore Line train to the South Bend airport (more on this in a separate post) and then an Uber from there to the stadium, arriving about an hour before game time. According to our driver our timing was impeccable as most people had already arrived and we were able to get within a couple blocks of the stadium without too much traffic.

Speaking of time… one of the quirks of this trip is that while Chicago is in Central Time, South Bend is one of the western most counties in Indiana that is in Eastern Time. We found ourselves constantly translating times between central and eastern. Thank the good Lord I live in a place far from any timezone boundaries!

We walked from the southern edge of campus to the stadium. People were friendly albeit not that talkative. In past trips against national powerhouse teams the fans *LOVE* to talk to visiting fans. “Thanks for coming out!” or “How are you enjoying our little town?” or similar. Perhaps it was because Notre Dame is in a bit of a funk, but people were less talkative than I was used to. However, the few we did talk to were nice and welcoming.

Notre Dame stadium externally doesn’t at all like it’s historic self. They basically built a stadium around the old stadium when they expanded it. As such, the approach doesn’t feel very historic. Minus the new brickwork, it looks like most modern stadiums from the outside.

However, once one enters the bowl (OK, it’s too rectangular to properly be called a bowl, but you know what I mean), the historic nature of the stadium is fully intact. The addition, although visible, melds right into the original stadium. Additionally, it feels very democratic, with almost no “premium” seating in the bowl itself. There are the two press-boxes with the premium seats/suites in them. But because the are separate from and above the bowl, the stadium itself keeps that very unified/democratic feel.

Touchdown Jesus is still very visible although apparently the locals who remember the old stadium feel like it is seriously abridged. And while I can see how that may be true, without the comparison point, it’s still pretty dang visible.

The Notre Dame band was very good and one couldn’t help but be roused when they played the fight song… even if it was for the wrong team!

I’ll cover the game in a separate post… it ended around 6 PM local time and we had a few hours to kill before the train back to Chicago (again, more on that in a separate post). As such, we stayed in the stadium while everyone was filing out… or so we thought. The percentage of Notre Dame fans who stayed for a post-game band performance of the equivalent of ‘Hail to California’ was remarkable… perhaps has much as 75% of the crowd.

Once outside the stadium, we started walking around the campus. I had forgotten my phone charging cable so a trip to the campus bookstore (which was PACKED) to get a cable was part of how we killed time.

As we were sitting on a bench talking about what to do while waiting for the train, a group of 20-something Cal fans walked by and overheard us. They said to us “Hey, we have a bus with some extra seats headed back to Chicago… want a ride?” Without a moments notice we said “Yes please!”

We started following them on a walk across campus and past the main parking lots. They were a bit confused and had to pause a couple times to orient themselves. Then, as we crossed a street we saw a Cal band member, all by himself on a corner nearly in tears. The rest of our new friends must not have noticed, as they continued on their way.

We asked him if he was OK and he shook his head ‘no’ while further breaking down into tears. My brother and I stopped and asked him if he’d like us to help him. He asked if we could stay with him while he composed himself. Turns out he had been in a pedestrian vs. car accident earlier in the week and was somewhat immobilized. He probably should have just stayed home but he *REALLY* wanted to go to the game and so went anyway. Somehow he had gotten separated from the rest of the band and was now both worried about being left behind and somewhat lost.

We stayed with him while he called some fellow band members and they came back for him. They were a bit confused about what to do as his ability to walk was seriously hampered. We helped them come up with a plan (go to a close big hotel parking lot and call the bus to have them pick them up there on the way out of town). And then we tried to catch up to our ride… Too late! We saw their bus leaving from a distance. So it was back to the ‘wait for the train plan’.

Again, I’ll cover that debacle in another post, but to get to the point, we weren’t back at the hotel until after 1 AM central time (which is 2 AM ‘South Bend’ time).

In the morning I woke up early to go to Mass at the oldest Church in Chicago… Old Saint Patrick’s. It’s one of the only structures downtown that survived the Chicago fire in the 19th century. As it turned out it was the ever important feast of “halfway to St. Patrick’s day” and they had special Irish music, including bag pipes.

After I got back to the hotel, my brother and I toured downtown including seeing “The Bean” which while cool, disgusted me because of all the Instagram morons who were working oh so hard to take their perfect Instagram “look at how special I am” pictures. When are we as a society going to find a way to get beyond this ridiculousness? We also took the architectural river tour, saw the “Begin Highway 66” sign, toured Millennium park (which had a bit of a NY Central Park feel to it… albeit much smaller) and sat on the shores of Lake Michigan.

The next morning (Monday) I took the Blue-Line train back to O’Hare for the 9:45 AM direct flight back to Sacramento, arriving at Noon local time into a very rare September storm.

So that’s the trip in a nutshell. More to come…