June 12th - USA v. England

I've had to work to get to some sporting events before in my life, but this day was to take the cake.

We woke up at 6AM to get to Cape Town Airport. From Cape Town, we caught a 10:55 flight to Johannesburg. This is where the real fun began. As Joe and Lars took a taxi over to our apartment in the Parktown North area of Johannesburg, Fawzi and I stayed behind to rent the car. Budget rentals at OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg was a mess, as apparently we weren't the only people who were renting a car to make the 2 hour drive north to Rustenburg for the USA v. England match. When we finally got the car, we were told that Budget had no more GPS units. After scouring the rest of the airport for a GPS, we gave up and made our way old-school style over to the apartment with, wait for it.... maps!

It's been a while since I've used a map to navigate. Using the map, we did what seemed best: we made our way into downtown Johannesburg, from where I had a vague idea of how to get to Parktown North. With Fawzi and I getting remarkably close to our destination with our heads and a map, we enlisted the help of a friendly South African to get us the last bit of the way to our apartment.

At the apartment, which is fortified like a maximum security prison (more on that in later blog posts), we met the owner, Graham. Graham was kind enough to write out directions from our location to Rustenburg. In addition to his hand-written directions, we had a map of South Africa and a book of detailed maps of the Gauteng Province, where Johannesburg is located.

The problem with Graham's directions is that he failed to include street names at most of his turn locations. The directions read like this:

Take a left out of the driveway
Take the next left
Go five robots and then veer left
Take the next right
Go through two robots and take a right at the third robot

If you can't work it out on your own, South Africans call traffic lights robots. When we tried to follow Graham's directions, if he was even one "robot" off, we would be making the wrong turn and have a hard time knowing it. This is why we were lucky to have the book of detailed maps of the Gauteng Province. With Joe manning the navigational duties and me trying to stay on the correct side of the road, we hacked through the many turns on our way to Rustenburg using a combination of Graham's directions and a big book of maps that Joe was flipping through violently as he tried to stay with our progress.

A few things stood out on our drive to Rustenburg:

1. Highways in South Africa sometimes have stop signs.
2. We saw a sign that said "highjack point" on the way.
3. When you get to the middle of nowhere in Africa, it is vastly different from being in the middle of nowhere in the US. I can't fully describe it, but you can feel it.

In any case, we actually made it to Rustenburg, but it was really sort of against the odds that we did. When we finally made it around 6PM, we still had to park our car and make our way to the stadium. I don't know how big of a city Rustenburg is, but getting to it felt like trying to get to Woodstock or trying to get to a Superbowl that was being played in a sleepy small town. After about an hour and forty-five minutes in crawling traffic, we were able to park the car and boarded a bus to the Royal Bafokeng Stadium. Aboard the bus, we started running into some pockets of USA and England fans. There was some good friendly banter and when we got off, we had the opportunity to grab some USA flags for our march in.

On the way in, there were tons of flag-waving and singing USA and England fans. I myself was waving a USA flag for probably the first time in my life to support the team. The atmosphere was equally fantastic inside the stadium, as there were tons of flags, chanting, and vuvuzela blowing as the match got underway.

I won't say too much about the match except that it was a good result for the USA, as they were able to draw with the more fancied England side. England led, but the USA were able to equalize on an absolutely shocking piece of goalkeeping by England's Robert Green: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxspfInbLV8. After the match, we soaked up the atmosphere for a bit and began the long journey to our apartment in Johannesburg.

When we finally got out of the parking lot and on to the freeway, we saw tail lights for miles. We decided to stop at a spot right off the freeway called "Sizzlers," which bears no relation to the USA-based franchise. The poor people at Sizzlers were dealing with a huge crowd and a surly Englishman (disappointed at the match result I'm sure) complaining loudly about how long his order was taking. I ordered a hamburger and I ate it, even though the patty tasted like nothing I've ever eaten before. I'm honestly just glad to be alive and writing this blog now.

After we left Sizzlers, we got on a different road to go home (we weren't to stoked about passing the "highjack point" again in the middle of the night). It was a toll road, and even after stopping to eat, waiting in the line of cars to pay our toll made the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza at rush hour look like a walk in the park. When we finally got back to the apartment, it was 4:15 AM, and we crashed as hard as ever, but with the satisfaction that the USA had gotten a vital point against England.

the boys and I after the draw v. England