Sometimes going to a football game is so much more

by James Norton

Last Thursday, I was sitting at my desk – which was covered in paperwork, beeping someone on my Nextel, a regular phone in my other ear, with two people on hold and both fax machines ringing at the same time. It was a hectic day – they have become commonplace.

I typically sit in an office on the second floor of the building where three of our businesses are – and my father is usually found in his private office in the basement of the same building, which doesn’t allow much “face time” – which works out pretty well for us in a normal working day.

We manage to keep in touch for important stuff throughout the day via AOL Instant Messenger, so when he strolled into the second floor office at 1:30 p.m. without announcing through the AOL thing that he was on the way up, I figured it was important.

I hung up the phones and asked if anything was wrong. “I have two tickets to the Patriots game tonight, do you want to go?” he asked.

Of course I said yes and then immediately wondered how I was going to finish everything I needed to finish in time to go to the game. Then I wondered if the tickets were in the luxury box the Boston Globe owns – he had gone downstairs, but a quick phone call answered that question for me.

For a number reasons I don’t need to get into, my father every once in a while gets tickets to the Patriots and to the Red Sox – very hard to come by seats usually.

We took my kids to their first baseball game several weeks back and had roof seats over the first base line, and I remembered the Patriots game we went to last year in the Globe’s box, and they were very nice seats indeed. We both knew there was a little opening day thing going on before the game – but had no idea of all the hoopla and the traffic nightmare that would precede it.

We left at 6:30 PM – plenty of time for a 9:00 PM game. Wrong. Traffic the whole way there and it was jammed so bad around the stadium, that by the time we got to the Club Parking, it was at full tilt inside. That’s when we learned that just because you have a premium seat, you don’t have premium parking – you need a special, separate premium parking pass for that. Great.

So off we went – in search of a parking spot. About ½ mile down the south side of the stadium, we asked a Trooper where he would suggest we go. He told us anywhere we could find a spot and good luck, because he had never seen it this bad – ever.

We kept driving, and looking, and looking, and looking. Every possible spot to park was rented for the game. A mile came and went. For those of you who might know the area – there is a Dunkin’ Donuts about two miles South on Route 1 from the stadium – we were across the street.

We parked just past the last place that was charging to park (it was full), so while we saved $40 bucks to park, there was also no guarantee the car would be there when we got back. We didn’t care – we wanted to get into the game.

We saw the ESPN guys doing their TV show out front and the ABC trucks everywhere. It wasn’t too hard to figure out driving by that it was a big thing this opening game of the defending Super Bowl Champs.

For those of you who don’t know me personally, my days of thin are long gone and I don’t have the time to work out (what an excuse) anymore. Walking over a mile and a half to the stadium – we knew it was that far because down the road from where we parked was a sign stating this fact – was not something I had planned on.

I thought that longest day of my life flying out to Colorado to pick up my kids and fly back the same day was long – this walk was going to seem longer.

We were making good time, but at a cost. My back and ankles were toast and I could barely stand when we made the front gate. Sweat pouring down off my head, we made it to the seats in time for a waitress to get me a Diet Pepsi while Mary J. Blige sang the National Anthem.

Finally I could rest and enjoy the game – that walk was lousy. About ten minutes into the third quarter, it started to creep up on me – we have to walk all the way back to the car again. I also hoped the car wasn’t towed.

The Patriots just barely won, the walk was indeed lousy again and the car was there.