3rd Degree

November 30th, 2007 . By: Buzz Carrick

It’s been a little while since I done one of those and some of you may not be familiar with them.  In case your not a do a travel log type bit with lots of stuff I am seeing and doing with soccer mixed in.  I will also do some game reports, but they won’t be like traditional newspaper stories.  That I’ll leave to official PR types.  Instead I’ll do some thoughts and notes on the games, basically the same thing I do in the Monday Morning Gaffer series.

Unfortunately you’re going to get less team interaction than in the old days.  The current FO doesn’t allow me to get all chummy with the team like in the Clarke and Jeffries era.  Or really the Swift and Elliott eras, since it’s not Morrow that is less accommodating. 

Anyway this travel log is for the trip I am making to Trinidad to watch FCD play a couple games against CAP and some T&T All-Star Teams.  So off we go.

Day One: Thursday, November 29th, 2007

2:00 PM - This trip starts as they all do these days with a drive to the airport.  

I know, riveting narrative eh?

2:30 PM - Waiting for the bus in the remote lot at DFW.  Hey it’s my dime, I’m parking far away.

3:00 PM - Check in at the gate, which is easier than you would think cause I have to lay over in Miami over night.

3:30 PM - Board the plane, seat 6J. Yup, I upgraded.  Miles rule.  Back of the bus stinks.

4:00 PM - Take off.  I have no good team stories because they left earlier in the week.  I read the Newsweek and Wired magazines I brought.  Dinner is tortellini and a salad with a tasty apple cheesecake. No complaints there I can tell you.

7:30 PM - We land in Miami and wait about 20 minutes for the alley to open up so we can get to the gate. MIA has a dumb design in my opinion, I travel quite a bit and it’s one of the worst airports I go to.

8:00 PM - At the gate.

8:30 PM - I feel very ZZTop cause I’m waiting for the bus all day (night?).

8:50 PM - StayBridge Hotel, Rm 702.  I have some ice cream.  What can I say, I’m on vacation.

10:00 PM - Lights out and I try to go to sleep.  Good luck with that.

Day Two: Friday, November 30th, 2007

6:30 AM  - After sleeping maybe 5 hours and waking up like 15 times, I get up and get ready to hit the road. 

6:50 AM - Free breakfast.  What? I like waffles.

7:00 AM - Shuttle to the airport.

7:25 AM - In the ticket line for international business class. Did I mention I love miles?

7:45 AM - Security, and I got VIP’d.  It’s not what you think it is, it sucks.  Getting VIP’s is when you are in going through the metal detector and four VIPs show up and start putting their crap in front of yours on the belt.  You gotta stand there for 10 minutes while they get ushered though and block all your stuff from getting screened.  I hate this airport. 

At least I didn’t get the rubber glove treatment the Canadian in front of me did.

9:20 AM - Board the plane.  My window seat gets ganked by a couple wanting to sit together.  I hate the isle, but what are you gonna do. The guy sitting next to me keeps the shades closed the entire trip so I can’t see any of the Caribbean.  Dagnabit I hate the isle seat.

10:00 AM - Here’s how I know I’m living right and Karma is in my corner.  Goal 2 is the in-flight movie. I saw Goal on the flight over to Gatwick last year in the preseason.  It’s like they know I’m on a soccer watching voyage. 

You won’t believe this, but my boy Múñez is good.  His finance in the movie is the love interest on pushing daises.  It’s weird watching her speak in a Geordie accent for this movie after seeing her without one in Pushing Daisies. 

I now expect to see Goal 3 on the next soccer trip I take, perhaps to Brazil this spring?

11:00 AM - Lunch, chicken and rice.  Not bad.  The chocolate chip cookie is better. 

2:00 PM (T&T time) - As we make our way down to land I finally get the guy in the window seat to open the window (the screen, he doesn’t actually open the window) and enjoy the view coming into land.  Hey mountains.  T&T has mountains? Who knew?  Wow, it’s beautiful from the air.  port of Spain is squashed between the mountains and the water.  Sorta like LA but 10 times smaller.  And it’s tropical instead of desert.

T&T is one hour ahead of Miami, two ahead of Dallas.  Unless I am a dufus, which is possible.

2:15 PM - We land and hit the brakes hard, short runway I guess.  Hey look my phone works.  It even says BMobile TSTT which is a local cel phone company, obviously the one that has an AT&T deal.

2:20 PM - At the gate.  Now that’s my kind of taxi time.

2:30 PM - Immigration.  I’m 4th in line.  Hurray, business class.

3:00 PM - After customs and duty free (where every store is giving away free scotch samples… read shots… I can’t believe I got through there sober) I catch a cab.  Great cabby, he’s chock full of info.  The ride to the hotel should take 30 minutes normally, but since it’s almost rush hour it takes an hour. 

By the way Trinidad has some of the worst traffic I have every seen.  No where in the US is even close to this.  No highways first of all, so it’s just endless urban street. Imagine trying to cross Dallas at 5 pm on surface streets and no freeways and you only begin to get the picture.  Lots of small foreign cars and strangely quite a few compact 4×4s crammed into tiny roads and parkways with roundabouts.  And all driving on the left, it’s like England you see.

My cabby tells me there are 1.3 million people here in 18,000 square miles (or did he say Kilometers, I forget which).  He’s got a newspaper that has a story on the 7.3 earthquake that hit here.  Strongest in the Caribbean in a century and a half. Epicenter near Martinique apparently.

One of the most American sites I see on the way, aside from KFC and Church’s fried chicken, is a couple of Mormon missionaries walking down the middle of the street.

Cab ride form the airport costs me $167. 

Relax, that’s in T&T dollars.  At 6 to 1, that’s roughly $30 after I tip him.

4:00 PM - Check in to my awesome hotel, the Hilton Trinidad.  It’s built upside down, which means you check in and take an elevator down to your floor.  The lobby is at the top, it’s built on a hill you see near the Queen’s Park.  Lobby (1), Restaurant level (2), Floor 6 on down to Floor 12.  Don’t ask me where floors 3 through 5 are.  I’m on executive level 7 (love that Hilton Gold card).

I’m not in the same hotel as the team.  I was when I booked, but the team hotel was changed, which FCD didn’t find out about until late.  No biggy, my hotel is nicer.

5:00 PM - Cab to the stadium, again traffic is nuts.  This cab costs TT$40, which isn’t quite $10 US after tip.

5:30 PM - I pick up my tickets that FCD set aside for me at the VIP window… which is really just a plastic table and two women with a legal pad.  This isn’t Kansas anymore, Toto. 

I grab a Coke Lite (that’s a Diet Coke to Americans) and head to my seat.  On the way I bump into Hitch, Bobby Hammond, PR man German, and marketing dude Jeff Busch.  I see Dan Hunt as well, he’s sitting on the bench on the sideline watching FCD warm up.

6:00 PM - Hensley Crawford Stadium. FC Dallas vs TT Pro League Foreign All-Stars.  I’ll save the notes, but FCD ties it up 2-2 in the 90+ minute. One might think it was rigged cause FCD literally scored in the last second.  As soon as TT kicked off the ref blew full time.  Morrow is running the FCD bench with some help from Chris Clark, the guy who runs the FCD camps.  Marco Ferruzzi is in Argentina scouting.

At halftime I enjoy some popcorn and a Stag beer.   Like I said, I’m on vacation.  I enjoy beer about as much as the guy next to me enjoys his cold chicken feet soup.  Yes Seriously.

Halftime is also when the drum group starts up and they don’t stop till the second game ends.  There are actually two of them, both playing at the same time on opposite sides of the stadium.  It’s fun at first but three hours later it’s really annoying.

Biggest cheer of the day came during the PKs when Denilson did a salsa dance on the side line.  The DJ was playing music when someone would scored a PK and Denilson, who wasn’t in the game, did a gig.  Place went nuts.  I think everyone in the building but me got a picture taken with him.

By the way if you ever want to come here to a game, there’s a Courtyard Marriott right across the street from the stadium next to a mall with a TGI Friday’s and a movieplex. Seriously it’s just like America.  At least that part is.

Also next door to the stadium are some stadium tennis courts, one of which is hosting a boxing match between some woman from the US and a local.

I didn’t go.

One really interesting note, at least for me, the PR guys says something about FCD and TT Pro league agreeing do make this same kind of All-Star event yearly with some player scouting, league business idea swapping, and instructional meetings of various kinds.  Sounds like a nice deal I suppose.

Anyway, I bet you can get a cheap ticket this week for next year.

8:30 PM - Game 2: CAP vs TT Pro League Local Stars.  Both these teams look a little better than the fist two. But here’s not as much scoring.

At halftime I spot Shaka Hislop pressing the flesh in the stands.  Apparently he’s a big deal here.

10:20 PM - I head out to find a taxi and I ask the guy who sold me popcorn. Turns out he’s a taxi driver too.  He’s also a retired cop who served 30 years on the force.

And his name is Bunny.  Bunny the Cop.  Bunny the taxi driving, popcorn selling, retired cop.

Seriously.  You just can’t make up that kind of comic gold.

10:45 PM - Back at the hotel, TT$40 lighter.

10:55 PM - I sneak one under the gun and get a sandwich order into the bar 5 minutes before the kitchen closes.  Not the greatest club sandwich of my life, which is what I get for trying to sneak it under the bar.

Next year I’m bringing Brian Haynes with me so I don’t have to eat hotel club sandwiches.

11:30 PM - Back to the room and I start to write.

12:30 AM - Lights out.  Game report will be up some time tomorrow.

Categories: Travel Log .

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