PCSPounder
Stadium Groupie
This thread is about OUR road trips, or even our teams’ road trips. This post is about one of mine 7 years ago (sort of by request), and you’ll note that it doesn’t even include teams at this level.
Thing is, I don’t see a thread like it elsewhere, The Lounge seems to be a place where they deliberately don’t mention hockey, and NHL and similar arenas are designed to pack as many people as possible into limited space and generally rely on simply being NHL arenas. The economics of that are understandable. Plus I usually go to at least one NHL game on each of my designated hockey trips. But part of the reason I place it here is because, at this level, being there is often more fun.
So, year 2001 or so, the Soccer America message board, we have a poster from North Dakota who posts a little snapshot of The Ralph. Partly due to the old digital cameras of the time, it looked like Oz. I had to go. Flying from Boise to Grand Forks was more than I was willing to spend, so I waited. Divorced, re-established ties to Portland, found someone, moved back to Portland, get to late 2013, and at some point I was able to express to my wife that this ought to happen (she’s comfortable with me going on these things, not at all comfortable accompanying me, so she doesn’t do hockey trips). Had enough flight miles to almost add further whimsy to the idea before she objected to going anywhere else fun (other than Chicago, as we’d gone the previous June), but I ended up on Amtrak to Everett (v the Winterhawks), fly from Sea-Tac to MSP, Amtrak to Grand Forks and back, Wild v Avalanche the following night.
A week before I fly out is when Illinois freezes over and closes their roads, Lake Michigan’s icy exterior popped up over Chicago, and train traffic isn’t going anywhere. This shouldn’t matter except that the train to Grand Forks has to first leave Chicago. Things supposedly opened up the Monday night prior to my departure, but being on the phone 90 minutes with Amtrak was fruitless, not even able to get an explanation for the “service disruption” message on the app for previous trains.
Took off to Everett on the second Wednesday in January, stayed in a motel whose bathroom was an inch too short for my health. Winterhawks won a tight one. The beer concession at the “open end” of their arena was more than handy.
Afternoon takeoff Thursday to Minneapolis, landing after circling around a while watching tiny dots skating on big ponds, lingering in a pub near the old Metrodome (in process of being prepped for demolition at that point), taking in a period of Wild at Arizona before trudging off downtown to get cash in 9° Fahrenheit and see if I’m going to have a train to catch. For some silly reason, I allowed a guy to borrow my phone at the bus stop toward Midway Station. When he gave it back on the bus, “Service Disruption” finally became “left Chicago 10 minutes ago,” and damn right I considered myself lucky.
I think I spent 7.5 hours in the station (maybe 45 minutes of it sleep) before the train was present and ready to board. Had to sit in a view car (no naps allowed). Remember by Fargo (9 hours late at that point) someone boarding and asking if they could speed up the train because she had a ticket to the Seahawks playoff game 24 hours later. 3 hours after that, finally in Grand Forks, check into my room, set the alarm for an hour of snooze, and wake up 2 hours later than that at 6:53 or so for a 7:30 game. A 2-minute shower later, walk a mile in snow (did well for a native Oregonian, 15° at that point) to the arena, the granite floor in the concourse, in an actual leather seat with cherry wood armrests (thought I’d bought a corner ticket, but no, mere seats from the center line 7 rows up). It was too much. Lot of pics and some video. Phil Knight has tried to out-do this in Eugene, but he couldn’t out-class this.
The 1:30 am train was known at this point to be 2 hours late; it caught up from 3, but lost it as two freight trains forced it to siding in view of our station. By the way, if I had tried the original idea of taking Amtrak’s Empire Builder all the way from Portland, whether I’d left Tuesday or Wednesday, I’d be late and on this train and angry because of delays out of Spokane. Slept back to Minneapolis, farted around as the temps rose well over 32°, was kind of impressed by the arena in St. Paul, Colorado showed some skill, the Wild not so much, lucky I wasn’t late flying home the next day.
Thing is, I don’t see a thread like it elsewhere, The Lounge seems to be a place where they deliberately don’t mention hockey, and NHL and similar arenas are designed to pack as many people as possible into limited space and generally rely on simply being NHL arenas. The economics of that are understandable. Plus I usually go to at least one NHL game on each of my designated hockey trips. But part of the reason I place it here is because, at this level, being there is often more fun.
So, year 2001 or so, the Soccer America message board, we have a poster from North Dakota who posts a little snapshot of The Ralph. Partly due to the old digital cameras of the time, it looked like Oz. I had to go. Flying from Boise to Grand Forks was more than I was willing to spend, so I waited. Divorced, re-established ties to Portland, found someone, moved back to Portland, get to late 2013, and at some point I was able to express to my wife that this ought to happen (she’s comfortable with me going on these things, not at all comfortable accompanying me, so she doesn’t do hockey trips). Had enough flight miles to almost add further whimsy to the idea before she objected to going anywhere else fun (other than Chicago, as we’d gone the previous June), but I ended up on Amtrak to Everett (v the Winterhawks), fly from Sea-Tac to MSP, Amtrak to Grand Forks and back, Wild v Avalanche the following night.
A week before I fly out is when Illinois freezes over and closes their roads, Lake Michigan’s icy exterior popped up over Chicago, and train traffic isn’t going anywhere. This shouldn’t matter except that the train to Grand Forks has to first leave Chicago. Things supposedly opened up the Monday night prior to my departure, but being on the phone 90 minutes with Amtrak was fruitless, not even able to get an explanation for the “service disruption” message on the app for previous trains.
Took off to Everett on the second Wednesday in January, stayed in a motel whose bathroom was an inch too short for my health. Winterhawks won a tight one. The beer concession at the “open end” of their arena was more than handy.
Afternoon takeoff Thursday to Minneapolis, landing after circling around a while watching tiny dots skating on big ponds, lingering in a pub near the old Metrodome (in process of being prepped for demolition at that point), taking in a period of Wild at Arizona before trudging off downtown to get cash in 9° Fahrenheit and see if I’m going to have a train to catch. For some silly reason, I allowed a guy to borrow my phone at the bus stop toward Midway Station. When he gave it back on the bus, “Service Disruption” finally became “left Chicago 10 minutes ago,” and damn right I considered myself lucky.
I think I spent 7.5 hours in the station (maybe 45 minutes of it sleep) before the train was present and ready to board. Had to sit in a view car (no naps allowed). Remember by Fargo (9 hours late at that point) someone boarding and asking if they could speed up the train because she had a ticket to the Seahawks playoff game 24 hours later. 3 hours after that, finally in Grand Forks, check into my room, set the alarm for an hour of snooze, and wake up 2 hours later than that at 6:53 or so for a 7:30 game. A 2-minute shower later, walk a mile in snow (did well for a native Oregonian, 15° at that point) to the arena, the granite floor in the concourse, in an actual leather seat with cherry wood armrests (thought I’d bought a corner ticket, but no, mere seats from the center line 7 rows up). It was too much. Lot of pics and some video. Phil Knight has tried to out-do this in Eugene, but he couldn’t out-class this.
The 1:30 am train was known at this point to be 2 hours late; it caught up from 3, but lost it as two freight trains forced it to siding in view of our station. By the way, if I had tried the original idea of taking Amtrak’s Empire Builder all the way from Portland, whether I’d left Tuesday or Wednesday, I’d be late and on this train and angry because of delays out of Spokane. Slept back to Minneapolis, farted around as the temps rose well over 32°, was kind of impressed by the arena in St. Paul, Colorado showed some skill, the Wild not so much, lucky I wasn’t late flying home the next day.