Jon and I headed out to the Chargers' Rally out at their complex off Murphy Canyon Road.
There were thousands and thousands of Charger fans out there. They really should have set up the rally at Qualcomm stadium, so that people could have a place to park and so that they could park the buses and the players could get their cars and head home.
The radio station was telling people to get down there at about 5pm. Jon and I waited until 7pm, but the Chargers didn't show up until close to 10pm. I guess they had to remove ice from the plane.
Maybe I'm just spoiled by Padres Rallies but they are organized so much better. Last night's rally had the right spirit but there was complete chaos.
After about 2 hours police finally blocked off traffic to the street in front of the complex and thousands crowded in. The police didn't seem to have a real good idea what they were trying to do since they kept moving us to different places.
The radio station didn't have a stage or any kind of focal point and they didn't even have speakers so that we could hear their broadcast, though maybe that was a good thing since the analysis was so banal.
Hand it to Charger Fan though they were so psyched and even the always hyper Jonny Dub seemed quite subdued compared to the rest of the fans.
We tried to find a good place to watch the buses come in to the complex and ended up with a crowd pushed up next to somebody's SUV. Fans stood on it's bumper, it's hood and a few people took turns sitting on the roof. Needless to say the car was trashed. The mob mentality really sucks considering they probably did thousands of dollars of damage to somebody's car.
At least when Jon stood on somebody's car he just stood on the tire. He just had to get a peek of Merriman and he got it.
Overall the energy of the fans made the rally fun, but it sucked in just about every other way. Standing in the bitter cold sucked. Waiting forever sucked. The players getting off the buses and ignoring the thousands of fans and hurrying into the complex was the final insult. They couldn't at least wave or acknowledge the support we were giving them? Oh well.
As soon as we saw a few of the star players we literally ran the length of the road to get to our car to beat the traffic.