So we thought we would go to the Albquerque Isotopes game last night. We looked for tickets on line. (Ticket master added a nice 20% to the ticket price, but if you claim "senior" they were pretty reasonable.)
"Let me pick the best seats for you!" the software said.
We clicked our assent because some of the pick from the map widgets were not robust.
"Here you go, three nice seats all together."
We looked at the map and it seemed they were pretty close to first base. And clicked Buy them!
"Logon!" cried the code.
We tried to create an account. Seems we already had one.
"What's the password?" we clicked.
"Let me mail it to you," it replied.
We waited for the mail. Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum dum.
"You've got mail!"
We got the reset instructions, clicked back in, reset the password. "How about this?" asked the browser? Sure, why not. We can't remember the easy ones, might as well make up a nice strange one.
The game started at 7. We got to the park at 5:30. We didn't know where we were going and I wanted to drop the folks off close to the park, due to walking issues.
The parking guys were very friendly and with a couple of U-Turns and $5 bucks, the folks were dropped off and I was parked in a handicap spot just across the road. (The road was 6 lanes with a nice zebra stripe so that pedestrians can just walk across whenever they want and the cars will magically stop!)
Well, the gates to the park don't open until 6. So we had 1/2 an hour to hang out by the gate, in the shade. Fun watching the fans wander by.
Have I mentioned the weather? It was, in the vernacular of a friend from Massachusetts, "It was frickin' hot!" yep, close to 100. The sun was strong that day, my friends.
The folks looked a bit melty. Soft like discarded crayons on a hot sidewalk. Age report request? Ok, 91 and 86.
Rules of the park: "No outside beverages allowed." Water for sale inside!
They actually had drinking fountains, a nice touch.
Our seats were not on the first base position. Nor were they close. What we had here was a great view of the right fielder.
Now we need to discuss the sun. We've noted that it was frickin' hot, but it was still up. It's now 6:15. We put dad into a seat to rest. It was in the sun. Doug was the attendant and quite helpful. A nice feature of the park. He got dad some water while mother and I looked for dinner and water.
We got back and ate and drank the water. Then moved to our seats. Section 122, row I (which looked like a 1 to me! Hah!) Seats 3, 4, and 5 put us closer to the right field fence, not closer to the home plate, which one could not see from where we were.
Some of the Reno Aces come out and loosened up. Action!
Only 30 minutes to game time. The sun was still up. I refilled my water. I yelled at the parental units to drink up. I got another sip into them.
Let me skip ahead as the blow by blow wasn't pretty. The folks told me later they felt tortured. Might have been close to the truth!
The sun sets at 8:30. Oh, it gets blocked for a couple of minutes behind a structure of the stadium, but roars back for a few minutes.
We borrowed fan/water sprayers from the kids sitting next to me. Those work pretty well in this dry climate. Recent news report said the relative humidity was 4%. I think that's low. Probably due to global warming.
Now I must also comment on the steepness of the stadium seats rows. If the seats climb aggressive towards heaven, that makes it more difficult for people standing, passing beers, selling cotton candy, to block a lot of folks' views. But this stadium, set on the campus of the U of NM, rises slowly from mother earth, does not threaten the heavens. Thus anyone who stands for any reason across 3 sections and 4 rows will block the view of your reporter towards the home plate, still unseen, laying a long way from our assigned "best" seats.
Until the sun went down, the back light was ferocious and we all developed wonderful squints. The light got better, but it was hard to follow the ball at all.
We left after 7 innings. The Isotopes were down 3 to 1. We ventured out, away from the sun, the heat, the wiggly children, the lack of light, the crappy seats, etc.
If you decide to go, here are some useful hints: 1) wait for a cooler day. 2) Get seats along the 3rd base side, especially if this is an evening game -- if you can't get those seats, stay home! 3) Bring lots of money, food was expensive. 4) Come early for the parking - one of the highlights for the night.
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