Image via WikipediaEven though you can tailgate all year-round, we all know that football season, college or pro, is when the major tailgating takes place. Yesterday was the first pre-season game for the San Diego Chargers and of course you know I was at Qualcomm Stadium. A valuable lesson was learned yesterday and it is worth sharing.
The lesson learned? Make sure to have some jumper cables in your car or in your garage before you go tailgating. I learned that lesson the hard way yesterday after packing my SUV to the gills with all my tailgating gear. I had left the doors open and the lift gate up for quite some time and failed to turn off the the interior dome lights. Our friends met us at the house, we all piled in, ready to head to the game for some serious tailgating and the engine would not turn over! You have got to be kidding me!
I jump out and scour the garage for some jumper cables while my wife and friends unpack everything to get to the spare tire compartment to see if there are jumper cables in there. No such luck. So I start going door to door to my neighbors asking them if I can borrow their jumper cables. It’s a Saturday so most people are not home. Finally, the fifth house I tried, my neighbor’s 19 year-old son had a pair of heavy duty jumper cables in his work truck. I run them back to the house, my friends fire up their car and give us a jump. The SUV starts right up and we are on our way. Our neighbor’s son suggested we take the jumper cables with us just in case we had a bad battery and it was not just me being forgetful and leaving the doors open for an extended period of time.
Traffic heading down Interstate 5 was a complete joke and it took us 2 hours to travel a distance that normally takes 45. We cut over to Interstate 15 via highway 78 and that was full freeway speeds the whole way in. We were shooting to be at Qualcomm Stadium right at 3 PM when the gates opened but that was not in the cards. A drained battery and So Cal traffic was the thorn in my side and was determined to cut into my tailgating time beyond what the San Diego Police Department has determined is a fair and reasonable amount of time to tailgate. As you can see I had to do a Flabongo just to take the edge off of a long and stressful drive.
Once we were parking and unloaded we had a great tailgate. Great food, great friends and I got to try out a great new tailgating game. (Come back later this week for a product review of this tailgating game that is a new twist on those old school washer toss games.) We even made two new friends and invited over two guys that were hanging out across the way. Speaking of great food, I will also be sharing the recipe for Noelle’s hummus dip. So easy to make and everyone at the tailgate party could not get enough of it.
So what have we learned today class? Close your vehicle doors after packing your tailgating gear to save your battery. Also, make sure to have some jumper cables on hand just in case. The next opportunity for me to tailgate prior to a Chargers game is Monday, August 25th when they take on the Seattle Seahawks. Hopefully my post-tailgate report will have tales of maximum tailgating, zero car problems and no traffic hassles.
If you have recently tailgated and have some sound advice to share, drop me an email or leave a comment below and share it with tailgating nation.