I started this in hopes it would turn into my entry for my next game, but I had too much to talk about before I actually got there. This is the back story. So read up, and get ready for an awesome next entry.
Brent and I have been talking about going on a road trip
somewhere for almost 4 seasons. Obviously, as 17 year olds, we weren’t ready to
go somewhere alone that was many hours away. We talked about Cleveland,
Minnesota, Cincinnati, and Detroit as the easiest and best possibilities. It
would come up at the start of every season, but we didn’t have much motivation
to actually plan things out.
Our friends Sean and Matt ended up choosing SIUE as their
school. Last fall, Sean graciously invited both me and Brent to come see a
Cardinals game at Busch Stadium in St.Louis once they moved into their
apartment. After all, the city was basically right next to their school, and they had been to the city for numerous things quite a few times. The main plan was to wait until April and find sometime where it
worked for everyone for us to go down. Unfortunately, the Cardinals schedule
didn’t cooperate. We had one weekend to go, and it was the last weekend before
finals. We would have to put it off until next year.
I desperately searched for another possibility, because I was
dying to go. When I looked into tickets
at Busch in 2006 and 2007 when it first opened, the only seats I was offered
were in the wheelchair section and cost $75.Obviously, I wasn’t going to buy
those. Sean said there were plenty of deals and overall cheap seats since he’s
been at school. I was surprised to see an interleague matchup between the
Cardinals and White Sox in June. This really caught my attention since the Sox
were Brent’s team of choice.
Just for kicks, I looked into tickets on eBay and StubHub
for that one Sox series. After looking around for just a little while, I saw
that there were plenty of deals to be had, and tons of tickets under $20.
I started to take this plan more seriously. If I was going
to go that far and tickets were that affordable, I wanted to go to two games.
All three games of the series were night games. That being the case, we would
need an extra night in a hotel since I didn’t want to start a 5 hour drive at
11 PM after two exhausting days.
Somehow I discovered the hotels around Lambert International
Airport were just like O’Hare; plentiful, and of all different price levels.
Eventually I landed on a Ramada for $50 a night. Since there were two of us, we
would split it. That was more than reasonable.
I went back to eBay, and stumbled on some 100 level
bleachers, right behind the Cardinals bullpen for $25. I had a hotel, and
specific tickets for the last two games on the 13th and 14th.
This was coming together more than any other trip I tried to plan so far.
I then confronted two friends at ISU who were huge Cards
fans and lived in the St.Louis area. They told me the hotel was okay and the
seats were decent. The thing that really solidified this plan was when I found
out about the MetroLink, the train that went from the airport to downtown. I
could go to Missouri and STILL take the proverbial El to the game! Sure enough,
when I looked up stations, there was a place to park and ride only 12 minutes
from the hotel. I had every detail outlined in the next couple days.
I pitched this whole thing to Brent, and he jumped right on.
After a couple more weeks of making sure everything was good to go, I ordered
the tickets and booked the hotel. It was official, and I was pumped.
No comments:
Post a Comment