There is a group of about 4 guys that met in the dorms at Hershey Hall our first year at UCLA. Since graduation, our lives have taken us in many different directions career wise, a most have begun families. About 5 years ago, while tailgating at the Rose Bowl we decided to try and make one game a year for a sort of yearly reunion tailgate. The basic rule of thumb is: 1st home game of the year, we tailgate. Sometimes, when we have big name school coming into town we'll amend that so we end up going to that one instead. That was the story, IIRC, when Tennessee came to town.

We started planning this about 6 months ago, about the time tickets went on sale. A couple of weeks ago scottyciotta put up a post about our plans for the Nebraska game. In that thread, Dallas-Bruin put out the word he need to join a tailgate, so I invited him to ours.

The good stuff after the jump.

Every year we meet up at the Ralph's on Colorado, so we can buy any last minute food items or plates, or forks; then head over to the Rose Bowl in a Caravan. This year while waiting for everyone to arrive, I met Brett Hundley's dad in the parking lot!

Hundley (via Hec Miranda)

I promised him we would be loud. It took another hour or so for everyone to arrive. But by the time they did, we had a caravan of about 7 cars.

caravan (via Hec Miranda)

We headed over to the RB and promptly found out they have completely changed their parking areas and practices. Short rant: Years ago, we used to drive down this semi secret little street to the area south of the Rose Bowl and tailgate near the soft ball fields. Then years later we showed up one gameday to find out that area had now become 'pass only' parking. We were forced to adjust, and began parking northwest of the stadium around Lot 6. This year, we get there and they're telling us Lot 6 is 'pass only' and they tried to force us to park south of the stadium. but in those cement parking lot areas. If I wanted to tailgate on asphalt, I would go to South Central.

We kept keeping on and got in at Lot 7. before the caravan, we had established rules to keep the caravan together, and rather than allow stadium staff to direct where we were going to park. So, when we got there, I bogarted a beautiful spot under some trees, and bribed the guy into letting us stay. We set up 4 canopies, 3 grilling stations and 2 serving tables.

grills (via Hec Miranda)

That's Pete Kang, class of '00. My homie! This is the box of Kalbi short ribs he brought.

kalbi (via Hec Miranda)

I'm not tooting my own horn when I say we tailgate like champions. And, this is where I realize I didn't get a picture of David (Dallas-Bruin), his wife or buddy. But in their own words, we throw a mean party. So there. It's not just me.

After everyone had eaten their fill and lounging around a bit, Petey asked me to get the party started right. So (with apologies to Fox) I challenged a nearby party of Huskers to a game of Flippy Cup.

You can see David (Dallas-Bruin) and his wife (in the Huskers shirt) at the end of the table as the game starts off. We won this game, but we lost the great majority of the games. Game started off as best of 3 but we lost count, and even hosted a tailgate party of current students.

crowd (via Hec Miranda)

Like I said, we throw a mean party. And with that, we were off to the game! Hope you enjoyed this installment of Hector's tailgating adventures. Now I'm off to clean my grill and put stuff away.

UPDATE: more photos

Thanks to Dallas-Bruin for his kind words. Great people! That is a great story about how you and Diane met. I am so glad I was able to help you out that way. I just figured you guy were coming from out of town and wanted to hang with a large group. Mi casa es tu casa, David!

Diane is the second from the right (via Hec Miranda)

Here is another little side story since you guys don't mind being bored by them. My best friend and roommate is Crystal, and she is an absolute nut about Hello Kitty. Recently, the UCLA Store has produced some UCLA gear licensed by Sanrio to use the Hello Kitty image. When we were entering the stadium, I found out that Crystal was trying to trade the jersey I lent her for the game for a T-Shirt a woman was wearing with the Hello Kitty logo. Now, at this time, I had two jerseys: my old Russell brand jersey I bought at the end of my first quarter at UCLA after I had aced all my finals. It was a sort of self reward. The other was the throwback jersey they released a couple of years ago for the Washington game.

Now there is no way in hell I was about to let my 15 year old (and still in great shape) reward jersey go.

Jerseys (via Hec Miranda)

Here are two happy ladies. And, the last time I saw my throwback jersey.