Rise all loyal cougars...

"...and take your challenge to the foe. We will fight, day or night, rain or snow...Oh Rise and Shout, the cougars are out.." So I sang the cougar fight song a few times, but no one else really joined in with me! On Saturday, a group of us went to watch the UCLA Bruins take on the BYU Cougars at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. We all gathered at my house to divide up and carpool up to the big game. We were all excited to go and cheer on our cougs! Well, little did we know, the drive would take us almost 4 HOURS! Two accidents on I-5 backed us up, then once we got onto I-210, we hit game traffic. What a crazy drive. I like short road trips, but 4 hours was almost my max. So we finally get there, then see that we are parking on the green of a golf course! I wonder what the golf course owners do while UCLA football season is going on, guess not golf.
But there we were, game time, we were a few minutes late, but thanks to Maren and Bryan, we got some great seats in the North End Zone.

I had brought along some SPF 70 sun screen, yes they make it that high, everyone was shocked! But it's a good thing, we were in the sun for most of the game. But the view of the field was great, we had a pretty good perspective on what was happening on the field. Some fun comments being thrown at the BYU fans from the UCLA fans, were "Go back to Utah," "Go back on your missions." I love those. But, BYU fans have their phrases as well. Pam heard, "Come on refs, use the power of discernment!" Fun times.

Now a little about the game, BYU started off really rocky during the first half. They threw an interception, fumbled, just couldn't get in a rhythm. So at the end of the first half we were down 20-3. Seemed like we were headed for a blowout. But when the 2nd half started, the cougars were out in force. We drove for 2 straight touchdowns, bringing the score to 20-17. We held UCLA through the whole second half, until the last 2 minutes, when our Quarterback fumbled when he was hit(or some may have called it an incomplete pass, it looked like it was going forward, but make your own call), and UCLA scored their last touchdown (the clock was at 0 after there 25 seconds to get the play started, so I think there should have been some call there, but there wasn't) winning the game 27-17. We were so close, yet little things tripped us up. I like to parallel that to our lives...j/k.
So some pics:


So we all headed out of the stadium, bummed that we lost, but feeling good about our future conference prospects, to see the incredibly long line of cars lined up to get out of the golf course-turned-parking lot. When we had arrived, they had parking attendants telling you where to park. While we were trying to leave, I saw there were no more parking attendants to help you get out, so it was a free for all! Make your own lines to get out. Notice all the red tail lights, each car was it's own line!

After a stop at In-n-Out, another stop to switch drivers (I was sooo tired), we got home 3 hours after leaving. What a day, it was fun but so long. I can't wait until BYU comes to SDSU, closer to home, another fun game with fun people, and maybe someone will sing the fight song with me.
"...Ra Ra, Ra-ra-ra, Ra Ra, Ra-ra-ra, Goooooo Cougars!"