It’s going to look and feel a bit different this week.

After writing last week’s gameday diary — an ongoing tale of my first-every gameday experience on The Plains — I got the go ahead to bring the concept out west with me as Auburn takes on Cal Saturday night at 9:30 p.m. CT.

Before we get into it this week, I’ve gotta say last week’s diary was a last-minute idea I came up with as I waited in that really long line at Big Blue Bagel and I hadn’t a clue how it would fare or if there would be any interest at all in how an outsider viewed her first Auburn gameday experience.

Update: Y’all were interested.

The number of kind emails received afterwards and the countless requests to do something similar each week was pleasantly surprising and I’m super grateful.

Fortunately for me, the folks here at ALdotcom give us the creative freedom to experiment with different ideas like this, so they were happy to oblige — as was I since the gameday experience, in my opinion, is what makes college football so fun and special.

And so while it’s going to look different in the Golden State, I’m here to test the California waters and bring it back to those who want to follow along.

Entry No. 1: Saturday; 6:30 a.m. PT, 8:30 a.m. CT

Dear Gameday Diary,

So this is what Hugh Freeze was talking about when discussing the challenges of playing a football game out West like this.

In his on-air appearance on Auburn’s Tiger Talk, Freeze said a game that entails so much traveling like this one is hard on a student-athlete and even harder on “old guys like him”.

And though I’m closer in age to the student-athletes Freeze referenced, as I sit here in my hotel room in Oakland — unsure if I should just be waking up or getting my day ramped up — I’m feeling like I might be experiencing this trip the same way he is.

I boarded my flight in Atlanta on Friday afternoon at about 4:30 in the afternoon — still dealing with the emotions of having to board my dog for the first time ever. I was expecting to see lots of Auburn folks on my flight or at least in the airport, but really that wasn’t the case.

But don’t get it twisted. Based on things I’d seen on social media, I know Auburn fans are going to take up a sizeable part of Memorial Stadium come Saturday night. But I knew that by Thursday, leading me to believe that many folks flew into California at some point on Thursday or earlier in the week.

Unfortunately, that meant I didn’t have an opportunity to hear travel stories or complain about the inconsistent Wi-Fi on our Southwest flight.

After booking it through the Las Vegas airport, sliding into the Starbucks line and getting to my connection’s gate, I finally got to Oakland at about 8:30 p.m. local time.

I picked up the rental car and was preached to by the lady at the counter not to leave anything in the car that I wouldn’t mind getting stolen throughout my time in the Oakland area. As one would imagine, that made me feel awfully comfortable.

Nonetheless, I made a beeline for San Francisco’s Mad Dog in the Fog — a bar said to be hosting an Auburn-themed Happy Hour, courtesy of the NorCal Auburn Club.

However, by the time I got there around 10 p.m. local time — which was right as the Happy Hour was supposed to be ending — the Auburn fans seemed to have dispersed. Whether that meant back to their hotels or to neighboring bars, I couldn’t tell you. And after hearing the warning at the car rental place, I decided it might not be best for me to figure that out on my own.

I ended the night scooping up my beat partner Matt from the San Francisco airport and taking us back to our hotel in Oakland, which fortunately had a nice hotel bar and one of my favorite California-brewed beers on tap.

Matt and I both stuck it out until about midnight local time or 3 a.m. CT, hoping it would help us sleep in. But evidently that did very little for me, meaning today is about to be a long one.

But the plan is to get moving here shortly, find some breakfast and wait for the town to come alive a bit before heading closer to Berkeley to see what Cal’s version of tailgating looks like on a Saturday afternoon.