Category Archives: TIMBERS!

In the tunnel at Merlo Field.

Do you ever see sports on TV and the weather is terrible and you see the fans in the stands and think, “Who would sit and watch sports in horrible weather? I would never do that.”

I used to think that, too.

But last Tuesday night I sat in steady rain for two hours to watch soccer. And I stayed dry-ish thanks to the magic of plastic.

Timbers

A couple of weeks earlier it occurred to me that a day would come where I’d be watching soccer in the rain. I mentioned to my ticket partner that we should go to the Columbia store and get plastic pants. The flagship store is right across the street from the office.

We ran in there and after a few questions (“What sort of activity will you being doing?” “Uh, watching Timbers games.”) a nice man took me right to the plastic pants.

“These look so dorky,” I said. I’m not sure why I expected waterproof pants to be sexy or why I’d waste any time worried about vanity after the axe picture.

He explained that these were made for things like golfing in the rain and they can be folded up and then whipped out over your regular clothes if it rains.

I bought them and brought them to Seattle where it did rain. I put them on and they fit just fine but our seats were protected so no rain fell on me. They did help keep me warm.

Coach Spencer, glad to see me at the game.

One thing about soccer is that in addition to the actual league games, there are also exhibition games and side competitions. I don’t understand it all myself and I don’t feel like doing the homework. I’m sure I’ll understand it all by the end of the season. Tuesday night’s game was for the U.S. Open Cup.

I think there’s a little rain protection when we get into our seats at the stadium but that won’t be ready until later this month so the game was at Merlo Field which is at University of Portland with no cover at all.

It wasn’t terrible. My rain gear kept me dry although the metal seat was cold and damp under my delicate heinie. Only my hands stayed wet and were pruned after two hours.

But we won and it was a fun game. April 14 is first home game.

It took me a long time to decide whether I wanted to write about this or not. I generally don’t mind writing about humiliating things but there are occasionally events that I can’t bear to revisit in public.

My soccer team has this ad campaign where they use fans.

They did a promotion where you could go to their store and they were going to have a professional photographer and you could get your picture taken like the ads. I can’t tell you how excited I was about this.

I wore my team jersey to work and I trotted down there right when the store opened. You could hold either an axe or a chainsaw. I picked axe.

Then I waited for a week, telling everyone that I got my Timbers photo taken and I couldn’t wait to put it on Facebook and my website.

This photo is copyright all rights reserved Portland Timbers which I think technically means I’m not supposed to use it except they said they wanted to see these photos everywhere like on FB or whatever.

Isn’t it adorable? Obviously, not mine.

And then I saw the photo.

I am not one of those people who says, “OMG! What a terrible photo of me” and I generally find unflattering photos of me pretty funny. But this photo is so terrible it put me in an existential funk for almost a week. I look like a cross-dressing caveman who has been going too heavy on whatever the opposite of botox is and just woke up on a park bench after a three day bender.

Now I’m sure you’re dying to say, “Oh come on, it can’t be that bad.”

My dear husband, who thinks I am the most beautiful woman alive, even 5 seconds after I get up in the morning said, “Well, if you look at those photos, a lot of those people look pretty bad.”

And my colleague, who I regularly mock for taking horrible photos, he shook his head and said, “I’d love to kick you when you’re down, but I just can’t.”

I’ve gone back and looked at it a number of times, thinking that I’d get over it or that I’d misjudged and was just disappointed it didn’t come out better. Nope.

I thought about contacting them and asking them to burn it but ultimately decided that I would just pretend it never happened.

Meanwhile, they are using those photos for all kinds of ad campaigns. They’re have a checkerboard with 24 photos in the newspaper or whatever and every time I see one I am overcome with dread.

It seems like they’re picking the good ones so maybe I’ll escape further humiliation.

But now I can’t stand the sight of my jersey. I had to put it in the back of the closet.

A couple of months ago co-worker got a notice from the Timbers telling him that as season ticket holders we were invited to a fashion show debuting the team’s jerseys. The event would take place in an airplane hangar at the airport.

He said, “We don’t want to do this do we?”

I replied: “A soccer fashion show in an airplane hangar? Of course we want to do it. It sounds DORKTASTIC.

For the one of my three loyal readers who isn’t fully with the program I’ll explain a few things.

I’ve never followed a professional sports team in my life.

And last year I shared in a season ticket for the Division 2 soccer team, the Timbers.

We are an expansion team and are joining Major League Soccer next year.

I am a full-fledged season ticket holder for MLS. Right now the team is doing a million things for the fans. We get emails every couple weeks for some exclusive fan event.

Timbers just opened a store downtown about 4 blocks from the office. Co-worker and I are going on Monday to buy each other Christmas presents.

I get really irritated whenever I read articles about how “Americans don’t like soccer.” Sure, some Americans don’t like soccer. But LOTS of them do. Some Americans don’t like football, basketball or baseball. Hello!

Check out the MLS stats page for attendance (scroll down). Seattle Sounders average is 36,173. The next highest average is LA with 21,436. The PACNW loves its soccer.

Our team has partnered with Alaska Airlines, one of the few giant corporations that I am extremely loyal to.

For the event we had to leave our cars in a gravel lot and shuttle to the hangar. Of course today we got about eight feet of rain.

I had no idea what to expect but it’s a work day and not super convenient. I figured there would be maybe 50 fans and a few players running around in the new jerseys.

I was wrong.

It was huge. There were zillions of fans. There was free booze and food.

There was a drum and flag squad.

Then they drove our custom TIMBERS airplane into the hangar. The fashion show models came out of the plane including a bunch of players for our team.

It was freaking awesome. It was the best jersey launch ever. (That’s what they told us and I didn’t know they even scored these things, but I’m glad I was at the best one.)

I can’t wait to buy my gear on Monday.

I went to another soccer game this week. I love soccer. One more year until World Cup.

Check this out. Five minutes before game time and this is the women’s restroom. There’s no one in there.

My favorite co-worker is the one handing me a beer.

Delicious cheese product snack.

Timbers’ Army. This part of the stadium was completely packed. One of these days I’m going to sit in that section because it looks super fun.

The Timbers mascot — is there any other team mascot that runs around with a chainsaw? I tried a bunch of times to get photos but this was the best I could do.

Timbers won 1-0. That annoying guy who sits behind me and talks during every single public arena event I attend was there in full force. He left for the john, which I know because he announced it, and right when he left was the only score of the game. Awesome!

The smoking section during the half. Packed.