and the trains go all over the city -- out to the suburbs, up to the airport, down to the Portland State campus now. and there's a major transport hub around downtown, close to the stadium, so basically if you have access to bus or light rail, you can get to the stadium really easy (and it will be easier than trying to park down there).

I *might* get a pre-sale where I can buy some tickets early as a season ticket holder. I did last year (and I think the Sounders tickets vanished before I could even get Ticketmaster to respond, although I did snag some extra opening day ones). dunno about individual games sales besides that. if you're on twitter, I've seen people ask for tickets on the #RCTID tag and have it work out, but their screen names might be recognizable to others (and good luck with Seattle). Stumptown Footy is nice, @timbersinsider (who I think runs that one?) and @geoffreycarnold (the Oregonian beat writer assigned to the Timbers) are definitely the best sources of info on there. @TimbersFC is really well run, too, even if other sources can have news faster.

but yeah, stadium is really close to the heart of downtown, so you can actually hang out a lot of places and mosey over pretty easy. there's even a bar near the river (Kell's) that has a gametime bus that takes patrons to the stadium, and a bunch of bars around that place, too. you could even go to a brewery like Deschutes or Rogue and be able to walk to the stadium in like 10 minutes. I went to Widmer before a game once last year because you can hop the MAX from there, too. it's cool, it's a really great place to see a soccer game.