I like pain.
Just kidding, sort of. Growing up in Portland, Oregon, USA as a die-hard Portland Trail Blazers (NBA) fan, it's the same kind of club as NUFC really -- rarely terrible, typically decent, occasionally great, never quite getting to the mountaintop of actually winning something in my lifetime at least. (I was born a few months after they won their one and only championship in 1977.) Like NUFC, they've got magnificent fans -- the support is better than the team, usually, and the decades of suffering and delayed gratification will surely make it all worth it when/if we finally win something? (For both clubs?)
So when I got to spend a couple years living in the UK in the late 90s, right after the Keegan glory years, of course NUFC were the club I gravitated towards. Loved Shearer, loved the black and white stripes, loved the Brown Ale on the shirts, instinctively hated Man Utd as the obvious team of lame American glory hunters... and if that all wasn't enough, I think losing the glorious heartbreak of losing the FA Cup final twice in a row probably is what hooked me for life.
Later came to know and love some Geordie expats and fell in love with the city and the North East, too.
But my god most of the last 15 years of waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning Pacific Time to watch Mike Ashley's diabolical football has been a test... loving the last year though, already slightly annoyed thinking about the new army of Yank plastic fans who will be joining us at dawn in the pub in the future... for now it's pure joy though.