Grandma's Travels and Thoughts

In Iowa there are no large national sports franchises, so we are passionate about our college sports. This year our University of Iowa Hawkeyes played in the Holiday Bowl last night and thoroughly trounced the opposing team USC, 49 to 24, which made for a fun and exciting evening! Way to go, Hawkeyes!!!!

However, our afternoon was a prime example of how easily we jump to conclusions. I already knew the danger of this, from my past experiences of thinking only one Las Vegas exists in the US, only one botanical garden exists in New York City, etc., etc. However, as we grow older and visit different countries and cultures, both Terry and I seem to be more prone to the problem.

Not that we didn’t carefully prepare for our football watching evening! There is a large Canadian population living in the area around our hotel, so there are several sports bars which carry games in English and we decided it would be fun to watch the game at one of them, hopefully also booing any fans of our Hawks’ opponents, USC. Friends is about a mile walk in one direction and La Cantina is about a mile walk in the other direction. We headed out about 2:30PM to walk to Friends, wanting to give ourselves plenty of time if the Canadians were all watching ice hockey and didn’t have any TVs showing the Holiday Bowl football game!

Arriving at Friends, there were several TVs showing ice hockey of course, but it’s a huge bar, mostly empty at that time, so we plopped down at a table right in front of a TV nobody was watching. While I hadn’t expected a lot of Iowa fans would be in Mazatlan, I had thought maybe some California people would be there to cheer on the opposing team. We asked the bartender, who speaks excellent English, if they could put the Holiday Bowl on the TV at 4PM on Fox Sports. He said certainly and headed to the back room to set our TV up.

We watched several different TVs around us as menus popped up on various ones and we could see lists of football games on Fox Sports. However, we couldn’t see the Holiday Bowl or our Hawkeyes on any of them. As the man in the back room kept searching, we began to fear the game was not going to be shown in Mexico! Terry checked internet again and confirmed that the game was 6:00 Eastern Time on Fox. We ran through our calculations that 6:00 eastern would be 4:00 in Mazatlan time and both agreed that was correct.

About 30 minutes later the waitress said maybe she should check on the man in the back room – we agreed it might be a good idea. They had an Apple TV, so she was positive he would be able to find the game, but there was no sign of it on the TV. With a mile walk back to the hotel and only 30 minutes until game time, we decided we’d just head back to the hotel to watch it and told her Gracias and Adios!

Debate ensued as to whether we should try La Cantina, now 2 miles away, go to the hotel bar, or just watch the game in our room. We decided to watch in our room and order room service for snacks, so walked back to the hotel. Once there, however, we found various football games, but the Holiday Bowl was still missing. I pulled out the computer to see if I could find it online and it was definitely there, scheduled for 6:00pm Mazatlan time!!

So the poor bartender at Friends, who probably was in that back room until 6pm when he finally found the game, came out to discover us long gone and no tips. Maybe I should walk down there today and buy a couple beers in apology.

We could laugh at ourselves still at this point, so went ahead and ordered chicken tacos, tortilla chips and salsa and prepared to watch the game at 6pm. I had noticed the schedule on the computer said 6pm on Fox One and wondered if that was the same as Fox Sports. Terry had seen the game advertised on the Fox station we received, so was positive we had the channel. Another assumption proved wrong as 6pm arrived and there was football on, but no Hawkeyes or Holiday Bowl. So, at least in Mexico for Fox, advertisements on a channel don’t mean the show is on that channel.

Yes, we did finally find an internet radio broadcast of the game and were able to listen to the game and cheer our Hawkeyes on to victory! Just not in quite the way all of our plans had pictured it – still wish we’d been able to subject some USC fans to our celebration!!