Windy City Rollers

I’ve got to hand it to Joe – I mentioned to him on Thursday that I really wanted to go out and do something different this weekend and he rose to the occasion. I’m the one who makes our plans 99% of the time but he sent me an e-mail on Friday with a link to the Windy City Rollers and suggested we attend their season opener. I thought it was a great idea, so we purchased our tickets this morning at the Carson’s so we wouldn’t have to pay to print them or waste time picking them up from Will Call.

I also mentioned our plans to my friend, Jim, who I recently starting talking to again after losing touch for several years, and he said he’d be going too, so we made plans to meet up.

We arrived about a half hour before the first bout and since the tickets are general admission, had our pick of seats. I really like the UIC Pavilion because all the seats have a good view of the track. That didn’t stop us from getting stuck behind some rather annoying people, but that seems par for the course for us. I really can’t understand why people will pay to attend an event yet spend more than 50% of their time walking around, talking, or getting over-priced food and drinks. It boggles my simple frugal mind.

We saved a seat for Jim since he was running late, so we were rather lost for the first two bouts. We were also a little underwhelmed by the two teams. I wanted to see some aggression and it just wasn’t happening. We were extremely entertained by the half-time show, however, which included male cheerleaders.

The second half was when we really got into the action thanks to Jim’s explanations of what was going on and us getting better at following the action. Jim has been to these events before because his sister used to be on a team and a girl he dated is (well, technically now, was, since she’s moving out of state) on The Fury. We were going to meet her after the show, in fact, but he couldn’t find her. It was nice seeing Jim, though. We haven’t seen each other in flesh since 2000!

They started kicking people out less than a half hour after the event ended, so we parted ways. Jim was thinking about meeting up with the teams at another location and we were hungry and looking to get food in our bellies. We slept in this morning and stuffed ourselves with gyros around noon which meant we hadn’t eaten for quite awhile. We were too full before we left for the event and too cheap to buy their crappy food while there. :)

I think it’s cool that a lot of the girls from the teams come out after the event to meet with fans. And even though cameras are technically banned, no one made a big stink about people having them anyway. I left mine at home and the iPhone camera positively sucks ass, but the videos I took actually came out pretty decent. Next time I’ll just bring my P&S Canon and perhaps sit a bit closer so I can see the girls’ expressions.

We had a great time and I hope to do it again, if not this year, next year for sure. We learned it’s much cheaper to buy tickets at the box office than through Ticketbastard. It was only $21 total per ticket instead of the $52.50 we ended up paying for our two tickets. Not that I’d want to stand outside in the cold – the lines were quite long – but when the weather is warmer it won’t be such a big deal to save $10.50. That almost covers parking right there.

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