ChampionshipHistory.com

Ahhh, it’s a beautiful thing… football season begins.

This seasons first home game is on a Thursday and I obviously made sure I’d have the day off work.  The game started at 7pm, which made it pretty nice to be able to sleep in and relax a bit before heading out of town for the drive to Oakland.  Lauren and I also were going to make this a bit of an extended weekend and following the game were heading to Los Osos to go camping with Aaron and Alissa.  So that Thursday morning, we spent a bunch of time getting all the camping and Raider gear all piled into the car and didn’t get out of town until around 2pm.

Not sure how I always forget this, but heading to the bay area for an evening game on a weekday… well… sucks.  Traffic.  So that delayed us about an hour and made getting into the parking lot a bit harder than it should have been.  Why?  Well, because Chris had our season parking passes on him and he was already in the parking lot.  And the more time you give anyone in the lot, the less likely they are going to be sober enough to hear the phone ring and be willing to walk out and drop off the passes to you.  So, I somehow managed to get an officer to allow me to park up on the sidewalk just outside the main gate and Lauren ran in to use the bathroom (her main priority) and find Chris with the passes (my main priority for her).

Anyway, finally got in, saw all the old buddies, KB, Hashem, Mike, Meeker and others as well.  Beer Pong was rolling, Chris added some new paint/designs to his car and the season was under way!

I made a point of going in early, since it was preseason and all, I wanted to make sure to see the opening drives where the starters would be playing.  The first drive or two was not all that bad and it included a field goal.  And… amazingly… things improved as the game went on.  Everything looked clean.  We were playing as a team.  A mix of short and long plays and we were moving the ball.  I don’t want to make too much of a preseason game, especially the first one, but it really looked like an improved team.  Dallas didn’t really do anything to impress.  Final score, Oakland 31 Dallas 10.  Awesome!

A few of the guys left the stadium right at the start of the 4th quarter to get the tailgate party rocking again.  And Lauren and I left just a bit before the end of the game (yes, sacrilegious, I know), but instead of joining the party, we headed out to drive 4 hours south to Los Osos.  And now the camping part of the weekend began…

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