Real vs. Real

On Saturday, Deidra and I drove to Salt Lake City, where we were volunteering to work at the biggest Real soccer game of the year, Real Salt Lake vs. Real Madrid. On our way down, Deidra submitted to my desire to stop at the Guitar Center in Roy. I have this dream of building my own recording studio, so I love to go there and check out speakers, amps, mixers, software, keyboards, percussion instruments, microphones, and so on. Even though I know I can't afford anything there, it gives me ideas of what I could do in that always off in the distance "someday" - you know, the one where somehow you have all the money you need to do anything you want.

After that, we proceeded to Salt Lake, arriving a couple of hours before we were scheduled to start working. So Deidra suggested visiting the new Salt Lake City Public Library, which was awarded the honor of the Library Journal's Best Library for 2006, a title that I think is well-deserved. The architecture is really cool - kind of a sleek/modern feel to it. They have shops lining the outside of the library, amazing art, sculptures, waterfalls, and quotes almost everywhere you turn, and the actual library itself it huge. Deidra and I like to go to the Logan Public Library and check out DVDs. It's free and convenient, but the drawback is that there are a limited number of titles to choose from. The Salt Lake library, on the other hand, has shelves full of tons of DVDs. I don't know why anyone would go to a video store in Salt Lake. I think you could find almost any movie you were looking for right there at the public library ... except maybe the newest releases, and that's what RedBox is for.

Finally, we made our way to the Olympic stadium (aka University of Utah stadium - aka Salt Lake Real stadium) and found a place to park about two blocks away. We walked to the stadium and arrived about 30 minutes before we were even scheduled to be there. But they put us to work right away. The first thing that we did was blow up these inflatable play areas for the kids. One was a bouncy house and the other was a huge soccer goal where the kids could kick balls and tray to get it into one of the holes at the end of the goal. Then we were stationed with two others at gate D (the main entry into the stadium) to hand out free "souvenir" tickets to the crowd as they came in the door. We had a whole box full of them, and I thought they would take forever to give out. But we actually completed the box within about 30-45 minutes, whereupon we returned to the workers' base station, thinking that we were done. Unfortunately, since it was still about an hour until game time, our supervisor made us go back to the gate with a small number of additional souvenir tickets to hand out. When those were done, she showed up at the gate with even more tickets that she had taken from the volunteers manning the other gates, since they were not as busy as our gate was. We made quick work of those and returned to the base station, thankfully seeing other volunteers that were also done.

They had dinner waiting for us - burritos and chips from Bajio, and cake from Sams Club. The burritos were huge and surpisingly good, considering that they had been sitting out for a while and were only slightly warm. We took our dinner down to tables behind glass panels that looked out onto the field. We were directly behind the south goal of the stadium, right between both lockers rooms. So we saw the players up close and personal, both on the field and as they entered and exited their locker rooms. This included arguably the most famous soccer player in the world, David Beckham, who plays for Real Madrid.

We got to watch most of the game, only having to spend one 20-minute shift overseeing the inflatable play areas at the beginning of the second half. David Beckham did not get into the game until the second half and it was so awesome to watch a million camera flashes in the crowd go off every time he kicked the ball, especially corner kicks. I guess he's quite the celebrity. We also found out after the game that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were in attendance, as they are good friends of Beckham's. Of course, that fact that they were there at all was kept under wraps until after they had left the stadium.

After the game, we took down all of the inflatable play areas and went onto the field to take down all of the advertisements that surround the field. Finally, we left the stadium at about midnight and drove back to Logan. Deidra didn't last too long before falling asleep and I just listened to the final disk of The Silver Chair (one of the Chronicles of Narnia) on CD on the drive home. We arrived home and got to bed at about 2am. Luckily, we don't have church until 1pm, so we got a good night's rest despite our late retirement.

All in all, it was a really fun experience and I am glad Deidra was there to share it with me. She made it even more fun and enjoyable. You can check out her blog for more information about the game, as well as pictures (including Beckham with his shirt off), when she gets her post completed.