I didn't get to tell you live about a little adventure I took because I was still working on all those Vietnam posts, but you should know about the little jaunt I took to Phoenix. My college roommate Dale and I had talked our respective significant others into letting us go to the national championship game if by some miracle Auburn managed to get in. We hashed out a plan so that as soon as the SEC championship game was in the bag Dale would get tickets. So while I was out at Rouge watching the game with a large boisterous crowd, dale was at home with 2 laptops, one for airfare, and one for tickets. We bought through stubhub.com which I was immediately a little skeptical of, but keep reading and you'll find out whether that skepticism was warranted. I flew into Phoenix in the early afternoon on Sunday about an hour before Dale got in, so I had some time to grab a beer at the
Bar. When Dale arrived we met at the rental car counter, a long bus ride away from the terminal, but the way is well signed. I couldn't believe the amount of orange and blue at the airport. I Sat next to a few ducks on the plane, and they turned out to be some of the nicest football fans I'd encountered in life. That turned out to be story of almost all the Oregon fans I encountered. The airport started to make it feel like a home game, and you couldn't go anywhere in the greater phoenix area without finding someone who would say War Eagle to you. We checked in to the Hilton Garden Inn North Phoenix, that turned out to be a nice little place to stay, surrounded by restaurants including a red robin, and an ihop. What else could you need? I'll skip ahead to the important stuff; on Monday we arrived at the stadium pretty early, because we weren't sure where we were going to park, and we wanted to to get some food close by, and we wanted to be sure we got our stubhub pickup done without incident. So we get there and immediately find out we can just pay to park in a lot right next to all the restaurants. That was easy, no problem. Next we march up to the Moe's, where we are told we can pick up our tickets. Dale shows ID and we're instantly handed tickets. Parking and ticket pick up take exactly 15 minutes. So we decide to try to find some food next and we spend almost two hours j
ust trying to get in the door at the Shane's Rib Shack. Filled up with food, we wanted to try to see the unofficial Tiger walk that would allegedly take place at gate 3. It didn't happen, and eventually we just tried to get in the gate. by this time you couldn't even get an AT&T signal, so checking twitter for an update on the tiger walk proved impossible. Each person got an upper body pat down and a bag check if necessary, which meant it took a long time to get into the gate. Someplace in the crush of humanity I even bumped into one of the other guys from the Northern California Auburn Alumni. When we got in, we go to get our ticket scanned only to get turned away at the door. The guy says he doesn't know why, but our tickets don't work. He gives us some Vague directions to the desk to get help and we start marching that way, kind of shell-shocked, but assuming someone there will just fix our problem and we'll go in. We come to a really long line that says it's the Auburn team will call booth, where I have dale stand, and i go look for the regular will call booth while he's waiting. That line was Really. Really Long. Eventually I find the regular will call both and find that the line is really short. The guy at the booth takes my ticket, and dissapers for a while, and when he comes back he sort of looks a little lost and has to find my ticket again, because he'd set it down. About this time he comes back and says I'm sorry sir yo
ur ticket was reported as stolen, we can't let you in and we're keeping that ticket. I didn't know whether to lay down on the ground and cry or to try to jump through the window. My worst fear had actually come true. Dale tried to call stub hub and spent about 10 minutes trying to get through their voice answering system. There was junk playing through outdoor speakers, so each time dale would try to give a voice command, it would get garbled by the stuff coming through the speakers. About the time we were resigning ourselves to go back to the hotel to watch the game so that we could actually see it, it finally dawned on me, let's go back out to the stub hub table at Moe's and see if we can plead our case. It's a pretty good sized hike back to the booth, but by the time we got there I was good and fired up. The guy takes a look at Dale's ticket that we're now fortunate we still have, and the looks on our faces and immediately goes about calming us down and ensuring us that we'll be taken care of. Of course the first thing I noticed that they had some rather imposing security packing heat, so there will be no scene created on this day. They check there computers and eventually give us tickets that were an upgrade from what we actually paid for. We were actually on the auburn side in a corner. A few rows closer than we were originally. The take home message, You should use stubhub.com because they stand by their guarantee. I promise to tell everyone I know about it. I don't have to tell you what happened at the game, but what I can tell you is that we had a perfect view of the big goal line stand, and the clinching field goal, as they both happened at our end. After the game we partied a little longer at west gate, and got back for early flights for both of us the next day. I still wake up some days and think guess what, we're still national champions. Since I'm posting this over a month late, it comes at the same time as the announcement that some jerk poisoned the old oaks in Toomer's corner. Those trees are estimated to be 130 years old, so they're part of a shared experience for all living Auburn Alumni. Apparently we had to come back down to earth sometime, it just came a lot sooner than anyone hoped. It just makes me sick to my stomach that someone thought it was ok, and called into the finebaum radio show to brag about it. Wow, this post today contains a double dose of shock and anger. Hopefully to happier things again soon.
ust trying to get in the door at the Shane's Rib Shack. Filled up with food, we wanted to try to see the unofficial Tiger walk that would allegedly take place at gate 3. It didn't happen, and eventually we just tried to get in the gate. by this time you couldn't even get an AT&T signal, so checking twitter for an update on the tiger walk proved impossible. Each person got an upper body pat down and a bag check if necessary, which meant it took a long time to get into the gate. Someplace in the crush of humanity I even bumped into one of the other guys from the Northern California Auburn Alumni. When we got in, we go to get our ticket scanned only to get turned away at the door. The guy says he doesn't know why, but our tickets don't work. He gives us some Vague directions to the desk to get help and we start marching that way, kind of shell-shocked, but assuming someone there will just fix our problem and we'll go in. We come to a really long line that says it's the Auburn team will call booth, where I have dale stand, and i go look for the regular will call booth while he's waiting. That line was Really. Really Long. Eventually I find the regular will call both and find that the line is really short. The guy at the booth takes my ticket, and dissapers for a while, and when he comes back he sort of looks a little lost and has to find my ticket again, because he'd set it down. About this time he comes back and says I'm sorry sir yo
ur ticket was reported as stolen, we can't let you in and we're keeping that ticket. I didn't know whether to lay down on the ground and cry or to try to jump through the window. My worst fear had actually come true. Dale tried to call stub hub and spent about 10 minutes trying to get through their voice answering system. There was junk playing through outdoor speakers, so each time dale would try to give a voice command, it would get garbled by the stuff coming through the speakers. About the time we were resigning ourselves to go back to the hotel to watch the game so that we could actually see it, it finally dawned on me, let's go back out to the stub hub table at Moe's and see if we can plead our case. It's a pretty good sized hike back to the booth, but by the time we got there I was good and fired up. The guy takes a look at Dale's ticket that we're now fortunate we still have, and the looks on our faces and immediately goes about calming us down and ensuring us that we'll be taken care of. Of course the first thing I noticed that they had some rather imposing security packing heat, so there will be no scene created on this day. They check there computers and eventually give us tickets that were an upgrade from what we actually paid for. We were actually on the auburn side in a corner. A few rows closer than we were originally. The take home message, You should use stubhub.com because they stand by their guarantee. I promise to tell everyone I know about it. I don't have to tell you what happened at the game, but what I can tell you is that we had a perfect view of the big goal line stand, and the clinching field goal, as they both happened at our end. After the game we partied a little longer at west gate, and got back for early flights for both of us the next day. I still wake up some days and think guess what, we're still national champions. Since I'm posting this over a month late, it comes at the same time as the announcement that some jerk poisoned the old oaks in Toomer's corner. Those trees are estimated to be 130 years old, so they're part of a shared experience for all living Auburn Alumni. Apparently we had to come back down to earth sometime, it just came a lot sooner than anyone hoped. It just makes me sick to my stomach that someone thought it was ok, and called into the finebaum radio show to brag about it. Wow, this post today contains a double dose of shock and anger. Hopefully to happier things again soon.
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