Standing in line because we're awesome!

So Melanie and I are soooo cool sometimes I can’t even stand it!! The Washington National’s just got a brand new stadium built for them and the season opener was promised to be super good times. I thought all tickets were going to be sold out, but my legislative director told me on Friday that they were selling 500 tickets at 3:00 for $5.00. What a bargain!!! I really wanted to go for several reasons: 1) It’s baseball in a new stadium 2) The President was throwing out the first pitch 3) Opera singer and DC native Denyce Graves was singing the National Anthem and 7th Inning Stretch 4) I had nothing else planned for Sunday.

Mel said she would come with. Since the rest of the seats were practically sold out, we thought that these $5 tickets would probably be in high demand, especially since it was the season opener in a brand new stadium. Pretty much, this was the place to be on this particular Sunday. Our game plan was to leave our house at 10:00, grab some coffee/hot cocoa at the Starbucks on the way, walk on over to the stadium, which is about a 25 minute walk towards the Anacostia River, and stand in line for 4 hours to ensure we had tickets to this super cool game.

We got a bit of a late start, but managed to leave the homestead at 10:30-ish. Side story really quick. I learn quite a bit at work. One day, I was informed that dinosaurs were found in DC (no not Robert Byrd), and F St. SE has since been dubbed Capitolsaurus Court. I told Melanie and she didn’t believe me. On the way to the stadium, I proved to her that it does exist.

We made it to the stadium to find that there really weren’t that many people there. We didn’t pop in line right away because we were unsure if it was really the line we needed, but we soon figured it out and secured our spots. We stood for awhile. Then a lady came out and said we would need to reform the line at the opposite end of the wall because secret service had security issues with the location. They handed us numbers so we wouldn’t lose our places and reformed the line. I was number 46 and Mel was 47.

We had a lot of time to kill. Our new buddies behind us busted out the playing cards. I brought out my mp3 player and got the tunes rolling. Mel’s not much of a country fan and I found opera a little inappropriate for the occasion so my options were slightly limited. Mel walked to Five Guys to get some fries. While she was gone, this guy came around with a pad of paper asking everyone to sign. He just wanted to document all the people who stood in line for the tickets as a little memento for the awesome occasion. I got a picture with him.

I was amazed at how fast the time actually passed. Mel went up to the front of the line to see what time those folks got here. The first guy and his son arrived at 6:30, the next guy came at 7:00, and they said everybody else started arriving around 10:00. The line really started to increase around 2:00 and soon it had wrapped back around to where it initially started and past the entrance to the garage. We packed up camp and bought two tickets – section 402, row C, seats 17 and 18. Not too shabby.

Mel and I trekked back home to unwind for a little bit and grab dinner before the 8:10 game. We bundled up and left the house at 6:30.


Up next: The Big Game!!!