Oh, how we love to travel! :-) Throughout the season we're looking
at making a number of treks to different MLS (and A-League!) stadia
to support the Black & Gold - as details are put together,
they'll be announced here on one of the various message
boards.
By way of a preview, I'm personally expecting to get to 5 road
games this season:
April
15th, @ MetroStars (details)
July 8th, @ Chicago Fire (details TBA)
July 19th, @ Pittsburgh Riverhounds
July 22nd, @ Kansas City Wizards
August 12th, @ Chicago Fire
To give you an idea of how these deals usually work, this is
how we handled two different trips last year - one for Game 1
of the DC series with a contingent of around a dozen people, the
other for Game 3 of the same DC series that had over a hundred
people on it.
Caravan Option (DC Game 1 in '99)
Total cost: around $40-50 per person (less than $20 for
a game ticket, we split gas costs, and whatever food you wanted)
Schedule: with the game at 1 PM on a Sunday, we met at
Crew Stadium at around 3 in the morning, piled everybody into
3 cars, and set off. With CBs and portable radios we were able
to keep in constant contact with all the cars and keep the group
together, and we took stretch-the-legs breaks every few hours.
Once at DC we parked the cars at the first subway stop we could
find and rode the DC metro to the stadium (to avoid horrendous
traffic due to 2 NFL games that day). After the game, we rode
back to the cars, piled in and took off back for home - arriving
back at Hunt Park around 2 AM. A great cheap trip, but not very
high on the amenities scale.
Arrangements: Everybody called DC United on their own for
tickets (although we set up a contact person in United's office
that put us all together in one section), and we made sure we
had enough cars and drivers to carry everybody safely and without
too much crowding. Everything was pretty free-form since there
weren't a whole lot of people making the trip. We also met up
with a few more fans at the game who had made their own way to
DC.
Charter Bus Option (DC Game 3 in '99)
Total cost: around $100-120 per person ($40 for a seat
on the bus, $60 for a hotel room, less than $20 for a game ticket,
and any food/souvenirs you want)
Schedule: with this game at 4 PM on a Saturday, we met
at Crew Stadium at 4:30 AM. Taking one or two restroom breaks,
we got to the hotel at 2 PM, and again rode the Metro through
the city to the stadium (something only possible in a few select
cities throughout the league). After the game we headed back to
the hotel and from there had a free evening in DC - some of us
met up with the Screaming Eagles (DC's fan group) for an evening
out, while others stayed at the hotel. We pulled out of the hotel
on Sunday morning at 8 AM, and arrived back in Columbus around
4 PM.
Arrangements: This was still largely an a la carte road
trip - the Crew handled tickets for everyone (fans called the
Crew individually to reserve tickets in our block), we handled
the bus and made sure everybody had a hotel room (with payment
made directly to the hotel), and anything else was on an as-you-want-it
basis. We had close to 50 people on the bus, and another 70 or
so met us at the game (some flew, others were coming from other
cities or on their own schedule, etc).
|