Here are the first two – timelapses of Toby’s journey from SF to LA.  To protect the location of the top-secret Toby Cave, the first video doesn’t kick off until Gilroy.  In-N-Out Gilroy, to be exact

• We don’t know where we’ll be parked yet, and may not until game day.  Rest assured we’ll post plenty of detail on Facebook for you to find us!
• The group is growing – we’d love to have 50 or more people come out and join us, and we think we’re getting close!  Don’t forget to invite your friends and RSVP!
• We’re hearing that the lots might open as early as 4am!  We probably won’t be out there that early, but you can count on us being set up no later than 9.  We’ll update further as we know more.
• We really want to make it in the stadium in time for kick-off!  That means we’ll be shutting down by around 1:15pm.
• We also want to make sure we feed everyone, especially those of you that have RSVP’d!  Please arrive no later than 11:30am to guarantee that we’ve got food for you.  The grills will be shut off no later than 12:30pm, since they need time to cool off before we can pack them up again!
• If you want to park near Toby, please contact us via Facebook!  We’d love to plan to meet people before we all head in to park, so we can get as many cars next to each other as possible.  We’ll be at the Rose Bowl no later than 8am!

We don’t know for sure yet how early we’ll be able to get in and start our tailgate, so we’ll continue to update both the blog and the Facebook event as we get more information.  What can you do to help?  RSVP! And invite your friends!  Please forward the Facebook event link to as many Stanford fans as you want – we’re looking forward to throwing a huge tailgate!

For the Toby crew, this will be our second Stanford Rose Bowl (’99-’00 was our freshman year at Stanford), and our first, of course, with Toby.  Come on out and support Stanford Football with us on January 1st!

Indian food and tailgating may not be the first things you associate with each other.  Call it a bold experiment.  Blame it on 1/8 of the Toby crew being Indian.  Either way, we’re stoked about this and hope you’ll love it.  TAVA Indian Kitchen is a cool new place in the Palo Alto Town & Country, right off campus.  They’ve taken the ultimate form of Mexican food, aka the burrito, and re-invented it with an Indian twist.  Use a roti instead of a tortilla, throw some chicken or paneer in it, add tikka or daal sauce, some chutney for a little kick, and you’ve got something delicious!

Bring your friends and come on out to tailgate with Toby, because we’ll have two kegs and an unlimited supply of burroti and we’re going to need your help consuming them!

Our first tailgate is coming up fast – RSVP here!

A few weeks ago, the Crew met up and talked about Season 3.  We made some important decisions, which will affect how we run our tailgates and how you participate in them, so please read on!  The Toby journey has been awesome for us, and hopefully for you as well, and we’ve put a ton of time and energy into this project.  We’ve been having a blast and yet, at the same time, it’s been exhausting and even more work than it needs to be.  We decided that we want to cut back slightly on the craziness that has at times prevented the Crew from enjoying the tailgates because we’ve been overwhelmed with so much to do.  Here’s how we plan to do it:

1. RSVP Required – as before, everyone and anyone is welcome at our tailgates.  Now you just need to let us know in advance – preferably by the Monday of game week.  If your plans change at the last minute and you’re able to show up, we’ll try to accommodate you, but we’re only going shopping for those that RSVP.  Once a year or so, we plan to throw a big “open” tailgate where RSVPs aren’t needed but for the most part we’ll be expecting them.
2. Early Arrivals – part of the stress comes from the majority of guests showing up very close to kick-0ff.  We encourage you to come out earlier and relax with us.  We may even have special food or beverages available only for those that show up 2 hours or more before kick-off…
3. Clean-up schedule – we will follow the schedule below when we clean up the tailgate before every game.  Make sure to arrive early enough to get food & beer before kick-off!

Schedule:

• 1 hour before kick-off:  Grill shut off
• 30 min before kick-off: TV put away
• 20 min before kick-off: Tap shut off

Keep reading if you want to know more about why we’re taking these steps.  Otherwise, we’ll see you on the 31st and throughout the season!

There are three main things that have added a ton of unnecessary stress & work to throwing Toby’s tailgates.  First, not knowing how many people are coming.  For the last two years, we’ve been simply guessing how many people we think might show up and then buying that much food and beer.  When we underestimated we ran out, and when we overestimated we did our best to save things for the next tailgate, but we often had to throw out left-over food.  We hate throwing away food since it’s a waste of perfectly good edibles and our money as well, and we don’t like turning people away from our tailgates much either!  Asking our guests to RSVP should help alleviate this problem.

The second source of stress is that tons of people drop by our tailgate right around 1 or 1.5 hours before kick-off.  This causes two problems – one, we have to rush to cook enough food for everyone and make sure that everyone gets something to drink etc.  Two, we end up feeding and beering people up until the last possible second, then haphazardly throwing everything into the van and running to our seats to make the kick-off.  Then, after the game, we have to take everything back out of Toby and re-load it properly into the van when we really just want to head home after a long day of tailgating.  This is why we’re asking everyone to show up early and publishing our clean-up schedule.  By coming early and spreading out your arrivals, you’ll make it much easier for us to ensure that everyone gets taken care of and that we have a chance to mingle with everyone.  And by publishing our clean-up schedule, everyone will know that they have to arrive before certain times if they want any hot food or cold beer.

Come on out and support Stanford Football and the awesomeness that is tailgating with Toby!

We also want to extend special thanks to Glendale 11, who came out and spent a great deal of time with us, and posted this awesome Toby-heavy Stanford tailgating video, even if they did spell Wade’s name wrong.

In other news, 2012 is off to a really, really busy start for all four of the Toby crew.  As a result, we weren’t able to make any basketball tailgating happen this year, and we won’t be able to throw a tailgate at the Spring Game on Saturday either.  Some of the Toby crew will still be at the game, however, so if you’re there and see us, stop by and say hi!

We want to thank everyone who has RSVP’d to the event! We’ve now reached capacity, so even though Facebook won’t let us stop more people from joining the event (at least as far as we can tell), if you haven’t already signed up it’s too late!

We’re really looking forward to hosting everyone on Monday, and with a fresh $100 of gas in the tank we’re ready to head out and finish the drive to Arizona   See you all there!