Saturday, December 19, 2009

on ice. almost.

fenway park will be the sight of this year's winter classic - the new year's day hockey game played outdoors. not only will the bruins play, but boston university is set to take the ice on the 2nd of january. i was hoping to be one of the lucky 3,000 that got to skate on the ice on the 3rd or 10th.

earlier this week the city of boston announced they would be giving away 3,000 tickets on saturday morning at 13 locations. the only catch was that you needed to be a resident of boston (and show proof of such). also you need to bring your own skates if you receive a ticket. unfortunately, living in brookline doesn't qualify me as a boston resident even though boston completely surrounds my town. brookline never got on that boston train. but thankfully, my girlfriend's recent move into the city allowed us the privilege to wait in line this morning.

armed with our starbucks coffee and gloves and hats, we made it to the community center in the south end where they were distributing tickets 20 minutes before 9, which is when this process was to begin. my best guestimate was that we were between 60 or 70th in line, but the fact that each resident was allowed up to 4 tickets should have deterred us from waiting. but with a friendly "line family," as one person in front of us put it, we waited. and waited. and waited some more. and we got cold. then colder. then froze.

over an hour into the wait, w/ the worst part being the boston police not allowing the entire line inside due to space restrictions, murmurs of no more tickets started to rise. still 25 people deep, the police announced tickets were gone, but we could sign a waiting list. we had already invested so much time and hope that it would have been foolish leave so we waited a while longer to sign the waiting list. This now seems ironic.

the city of boston, the redsox, the bruins, and sun life financial corporation have put so much into this winter classic. it'll be a treat to watch the games on tv (i didn't even attempt to purchase tickets for the games) and a once in a lifetime opportunity for those who did get tickets today to skate inside historic fenway. hopefully those that made this happen see the interest in the public from today and announce another day or evening skate is available. i'd be happy to wait again for a chance at those tickets.

2 comments:

Jen said...

Still recovering from the cold! Happy to do it again with ya...maybe our line family will show too ;-)

dap said...

my apartment hasn't been as warm as i'd hope it'd be. i don't think i'll be warm again until tomorrow morning! thanks again for giving it the old college try this morning.