one of my life goals completed

easily the most exhausting day of my entire summer, but definitely worth it. on monday, i took a day trip to los angeles to see the recently claimed "richest" and easily most star-studded soccer team in the world, Real Madrid of Spain. i left san diego at 1 p.m. for a 7:30 game. with LA traffic, you can never be too careful. i got there about 4 hours before the game started, so i goofed around in the parking lot until 5:30 when they opened the gates. i had nice chats with a local Malibu mom and her 12 year old son. nice people, but a huge culture clash. i had never seen so many diamonds on one woman before. so the gates open and i immediately go over to the player tunnel to get a good spot for when the stars come out. i wait about a good hour and a half or so for the players to come out for warmups, and eventually, zinedine zidane, raul, luis figo, roberto carlos, ikker cassilas, guti, michael owen, and david beckham are no more than 15 feet away from me. it was amazing, yet a slight let down at the same time. it made me realize how human they are. they were just feet away from me, but they didn't have any orange glow around them or anything, it helped me further realize that they aren't the gods that some people make them out to be, but regular people. the game itself was awesome, lots of action and by far the best teamwork i've ever seen live (from Madrid) and the most dazzling footwork i've ever seen live, courtesy of zidane. madrid won 2-0, and the LA galaxy really had no business even being in the game. i got back to san diego by 11:30, and my day was finally over. four hours of driving, four hours of standing/waiting, and two hours of "star gazing" and one of my life goals had been completed. i had seen david beckham play live.