New blog - The First Game & Muir Woods

Hey again!

Another entry from lands far away - this time, we'll be touching on the big football game last week, and my trip to Muir woods and Sausalito.

First thing's first, then - the first game of the season.

A bit of background: American Colleges are crazy about their American football. And I mean it when I say crazy. For a bit of context, consider the fact that the football coach here at Cal, Jeff Tedford, is the highest paid employee in the whole UC system. Dude makes 1.8 Million dollars a year. Consider, also, that these guys have a stadium that will seat 80,000 people. And every season, at least one game (The Big Game, against traditional rivals Stanford) is sold out. I can't even imagine an Australian university getting 80,000 people together, at the same time, for any type of event. So football is kind of a big thing here.

But Colleges here do have one big advantage over those elsewhere - a little thing called school spirit. I might've mentioned the preponderance of Berkeley T-Shirts, Hoodies, Caps, Track Pants, Socks and Underwear (not to mention the Berkeley Key Rings, Shot Glasses, Cufflinks, Towels, Sheets and Doonas) that you can get in the numerous official and unofficial on and around campus. You literally can't walk down the street here without seeing someone wearing their school pride, quite literally, on their sleeves.

So, as you might guess, when it comes time for a bunch of guys from from UC to step onto a field with a bunch of guys from another university (In this case, Michigan State University)  and spend 4 hours running into each other, the student population goes ape. The night before the game, last Friday, I attended my first Marching-Band Pre-game night rally. And boy, is this thing spectacular. A whole marching band does the rounds of the fraternity row and the high-rise dorms, trailed around by cheerleaders, giant flag-wavers, and some kind of Blue-and-Yellow wearing squadron whose job appears to be yelling slogans about how awesome the football team is, and how they're gonna beat everyone else. Additionally, wherever they go, they attract hundreds of students to follow them around and cheer. And when I say hundreds, I -do- mean hundreds - see below.

The whole thing is of such a scale, and so surreal that, in the spotlight haze of the stadium (being tested for the next day's evening game), it seems almost like something out of Close Encounters.

So, the big day comes, and everyone is enthused. Roads are blocked off, University facilities are closed down (you can't go swimming on game day, apparently), and everyone heads off to watch the proceedings. The streets around the stadium are locked down, and entrepreneurial fraternities combine barbecues with a prime money-making opportunity.

Even the tree-sitters get into the spirit of the day (the message being - and I'm quoting here - "Trees and football can coexist - it's 2008, if we can't realise that we're in big trouble!").

So, it came time for the game to start - but I didn't have a ticket. So, what do you do at Cal, on game day, if you don't have a ticket to the football? There's only one option - tightwad hill.

As the Memorial Stadium is built into the side of a hill, it only makes sense that, by climbing up the hill, you can get a free view of the action. Sure, your view might be obstructed by the occasional pine tree or head of some dude in front of you, but hey, that's all part of the experience, right?

Especially if you get to see a marching band spell out your team's name in 50 foot high letters.

Not much else to report from game day - the actual football part of it didn't really capture me - as far as I can tell, it's pretty much a slow, padded up form of Rugby League - lots of stopping and not a great deal of play. To give you an idea, games are 4 quarters of 15 minutes each, and routinely last for 4 hours. that's a 4 to 1 'stand around doing nothing to play football' ratio. All that aside, however, Cal did manage to pull out a good start to the season with a win - 38 to 31.

After all the football excitement, I needed something a bit more calming - and that came in the form of a trip to Muir Woods and Sausalito this monday (labour day public holiday over here). Muir woods are home to a rather rare stand of remaining Californian Redwood. The Redwood, of course, is the tallest species of tree in the world (just topping our own Victorian Mountain Ash in height) - and while Muir Woods doesn't lay claim to the tallest tree in the world, it's still home to some 100+ metre giants.

It really is difficult to convey the sheer size of these trees in a photograph, but rest assured that they are bloody tall (though, incidentally, not as large in diameter as another, related Californian tree, the Giant Sequoia). But that didn't stop me from snapping away - here's a couple of examples.

In addition, it's worth noting that there's a lot going on at the base of these trees - they support a whole forest-floor ecosystem, and create some beautiful patterns at ground level.

Once we had had some time at Muir Woods (though not enough time - I definitely plan on paying another visit in the future), we headed out to the little town on the North side of the bay - Sausalito. I'd been once before (on my previous trip to San Francisco), but it was nice to get back to such a pretty place.

So, all in all, a very nice excursion - and it's good to get out of the city a little bit - a bit of time amongst the trees, so to speak (not literally though - I won't be taking up tree-sitting any time soon, I think).

So, other than big sporting events and excursions, what have I been up to over the last week or so? Mostly ordinary, regular uni stuff. I'm getting well and truly back into the swing of uni life, and an unending sequence of readings, notes and summaries. But I'm really enjoying the subjects I'm in, and I reckon it's gonna be an incredibly constructive semester, as far as uni work is concerned.

Other than that, I've just been hanging out in Berkeley, engaging in the student life and enjoying the view out of my window.

Anyway, I'll leave it there - 'til next time!

Jono

PS. As you might've guessed, I took a -lot- of photos last weekend - Flickr is proving very useful as a location to backup all of my shots, but if you're interested in running your eye over a few, you can browse through 200+ photos here.