A Couple Things...(Rant)

first off, what is with the "this is your speed" trailer hitch thingies that the police leave on the side of the road? as far as i know, it doesn't take a picture of your license plate and then you get a ticket in the mail. if they DO do that, then i should have received a few in my day.

there is one of these retarded machines at the beginning of front street. my issue is this. can they be anymore condescending? i know how fast i am going. i don't need some machine to tell me. the only reason i slow down is because now everyone around me knows that i am going 34 in a 25, but when that thing moves, i am right back up to 34. i don't really see the point unless they assume that people can't read their speedometer. it is a step above a regular speed sign but much less than when you see a cop sitting around the corner.

item number 2. i like that the sounders have a huge following of people that know soccer and people that don't. however, if you don't know the game you do not get to yell retarded comments to the official or other team. example, girl next to Kovac at last nights game felt the need to yell at everything. an instance that turned sounders fan (me) on sounders fan (her) occurred when the referee blew his whistle to give an offsides call. i understand that offsides is somewhat difficult to understand. from where we stand it always looks like the player is onside. i am cool with people complaining about the call. that being said, this girl and her "boyfriend' yell "how can you make a call when nothing happened? are you stupid? you are in the middle of the field how can you see anything?" this, i could not let pass. i leaned around Kovac and said exactly this "are you kidding? he didn't make the call, that guy did. the referee on the sideline wearing bright orange with the flag in his hand. they call offsides." this chick was pissing us off all night so she had it coming.

another thing is, if you are going to yell things, wait until something happens to yell about and then make you statement pertinent to the situation at hand. the aforementioned girl liked to yell at random moments during the game, "you guys suck! DC isn't even a state!" granted the first time, it was a little funny, but seriously? what do you want the response to be? "you know what, you are right. it is a district. it is basically it's own country minus it's own currency." i kept thinking to myself, if you went up to 95% of the population in america and said, "where is washington?" and pointed to a map, they would point to DC. one last thing, Kovac and i sit amongst a lot of people that just like to yell random shit that can equate to listening to a song on the radio that has been edited for language. i would say something like "nice tackle you douche!" (although i don't usually say anything, but this is for instance) and the bald annoying guy with his annoying girl friend behind us would say something like, "you should learn to slide tackle from someone in major league baseball that slides into second base when they are stealing. are you a good slide tackler? NO!" good one, short and effective. what a douche.

Am I a Bandwagoner??

As i was walking Lucy, i started thinking about the Sounders game this weekend. ever since i learned that the Sounders were becoming a MLS team, i have been hooked. my buddy Kovac and i decided to buy season tickets and haven't looked back since.

This weekend the Sounders played down in Colorado and i was actually a bit bummed that i wasn't going to be able to watch, let alone possibly listen to the game as i was camping at baker lake with molly and some friends. as game time approached, molly reminded me that it was game time. without hesitation, i jumped out of my camping chair, walked to the truck and turned on the radio. to my delight, the game came in on the radio. i went back to the fire, grabbed my chair, some beers and set up camp in the back of my truck with the game blasting out the back sliding window. i was in heaven. i haven't missed a game this season, whether it be actually going to the game, watching it on tv, or (as of this weekend) listen to it on the radio.

on my walk with Lucy i started to wonder, did i jump on the bandwagon? what made me start to think this was that there was a Sounders team before the Sounders FC. they were a USL team. what i am getting at is that i had never watched the USL Sounders other than when they might have been on the Fox Soccer Channel. of course i was a fan, but i didn't know who was on the team. i new that they were good, they won 3 USL Championships in the last 8 years.

as a Sounders fan though, there is always someone that can trump me. lets just say that 10 years down the road, the Sounders win a few MLS championships and all the sudden they become the Yankees of the MLS, i will be able to say that i was a season ticket holder from the beginning. however, i can be easily trumped by someone that said they were season ticket holders for the USL Sounders. i bet there are people out there that have followed them from the conception of the Sounders in 1977 in the days of the NASL.

the difference is this, the Oklahoma City Thunder fans didn't have to be Sonic fans because they were in Seattle. if you are a fan now, you didn't jump on the bandwagon of the Thunder because there was no Thunder. in the same respect if the MLS Sounders decided to be something other then the Sounders FC, let's say they were called Seattle FC, you couldn't be a band wagoner because there was no Seattle FC. my guess is that regardless of the name, there wouldn't be a USL Sounders. they would be squished out by "Seattle FC."

if the name is the only difference, other than the fact there was no MLS team in Seattle, then i am going with.........no, i am not a bandwagoner. however, i will always tip my hat and give reverence to those who were true fans of the USL Sounders, as they should for the NASL Sounders. maybe if the Tacoma Raineer's become a professional baseball team, i can say "i used to go to games of theirs when the were the Tacoma Tigers, and i saw Jose Canseco play for them." that would be sweet.