A Two-Hour Tour

The thing that made me so mad is that I made what I thought was a perfectly reasonable decision, and I wound up being unequivocally and totally wrong. That, and I lost two hours that could have been spent doing something more productive than sitting in traffic.

A little explanation is in order. The Fire and Revolution kicked off at 6pm last night at Soldier Field, in order to accomodate the exhibition match between Mexico and Poland that was the second game of the doubleheader. I had a rehearsal around 8pm, so the plan was to go to the Fire game and split before the friendly. To expidite the process of getting to rehearsal, I'd drive to the game. I've got parking passes on account of the column, so there was no real incremental cost to speak of.

Since the bulk of the crowd would be going to the second match and not the first, I figured I'd just double my expected travel time from about twenty minutes to maybe forty or forty-five. After all, it was only about two, two and a half miles.

Again, I couldn't possibly have been more wrong. I ended up finally turning onto Columbus Drive around 7pm, and still might have taken in the second half of the game, but I followed up my monumental tactical error with one more that just put me over the edge. Rather than go down to the 18th Street exit off of Lake Shore Drive, I opted to cut across McFetridge and come around to the Waldron Deck from the other side. Except that they had it blocked off. My only recourse at that point, after screaming at the parking guy and immediately explaining that I wasn't yelling at him, really, was to go back north on Columbus, right on Roosevelt, right on Lake Shore, exit at 18th and try my luck that way.

This would be the very defition of last straw, so as I was starting to head north on Columbus, I just kept going. I already knew the team was down two goals at halftime, so it's not like the game would make me feel any better.

The upside is that this gives me a perfect excuse to avoid BigSoccer.com completely today, which is fine because I know exactly what's going to be said there, and by whom. What the heck was coach Sarachan thinking in starting the same lineup that won two matches in a row? Clearly, he should be fired.

When we were getting the results, the lack of goals wasn't much of an issue. Now, it's growing in importance, but we've also got the potential for immediate relief with the return of a healthy Andy Herron and the arrival of Lubos Reiter. Throw Tony Sanneh into the lineup, bench Justin Mapp, give it a game or two, and then we'll talk.

More on the game when I've actually watched the game. And I don't know if it's because I called in to suggest it, but ESPN 1000 gave score updates on their SportsCenter breaks, so that's something. And the Fire's website is not conducive to loading on a cellphone, so I couldn't even try to stream the audio via mobile.