A Canadian in America...

Take me out to the ballgame.....

So yesterday Eric and I went to the Cubs game. I never knew that going to a baseball game could be an all-day event, but when you live a long ways away from the ball diamond, I guess it sort of becomes just that. We left at about 9:45 in the morning and headed to the train station. After taking the train we took two buses and arrived at Wrigley Field. I'm sure glad that Eric and I are seasoned travellers, because we didn't exactly know what we were doing, but we made it there and back just fine! I couldn't even believe how many people were at the game. I think the attendance was between 38-39,000 people. I don't think I've ever been anywhere where there's been that many people all in one place. It was quite the sight...and by the way, it took about 2.5 hours to get there from the time we left the house. The game started at 1:20, and was about 2.5 hours long, which in my opinion is a pretty short baseball game. The Cubs won 5-1 against the Pittsburg Pirates, in case anybody is interested. We had pretty cool seats-all the way down the left field foul line, far enough back that we didn't have much of a chance to catch a foul ball (or a homerun) but also far enough back so that we were out of the sun for almost the whole game. I only got a little bit of sunburn on my leg. We could see the whole field and diamond, so that was pretty cool. Now, getting home is the fun part. On the way there, on our second bus that we had to take, after it passed a certain part, the bus could no long hold anymore people, so it stopped letting people on. Now, you can only imagine how it was on the way back. We didn't really know what we were going to do yet, as we thought it might be a good idea to walk around a bit, so we walked towards the buses, and then decided to stop in at Taco Bell to use the facilities. Then we crossed back over to the field where an exuberant amount of buses were waiting to load people up. We managed to actually get onto the second bus, but we had to stand, and we were standing on that bus for probably an hour. It was rush hour, and the traffic was awful, so the bus was just crawling along. Some people got off the bus and walked beside it instead. Eventually enough people got off the bus that we got a seat, but standing on a crowded bus that's barely moving for an hour is not exactly fun. We made our other connections uneventfully, and got home around 7:00. Basically, it took us almost 3.5 hours to get home. It's crazy, but it was fun and it was definitely cool to watch a professional baseball game. Thanks Mary! (She got us the tickets, and for those of you who don't know who she is, she's the Mother of the Three adorable little boys that I used to babysit for).
Now I'm contemplating going over to Barnes and Noble bookstore to get my wristband for tonight's midnight release there....I'm contemplating just going and picking it up tomorrow because tonight is going to be crazy, but we'll see what I actually do. I'm anxious to have the book, but really, how much reading am I going to do between tonight and tomorrow.....anyhow, that's about it from me! I miss everybody, and I hope to talk to you all soon!!!!

posted by Jo @ Friday, July 15, 2005