Day 80 – Scalper Lessons

Flight wasn’t too early today (departs 10:15) so that was nice for a change. Made the trip in 2 short spurts as the flight went to CLE and then onto MIL. Got into Milwaukee around 1:00 and caught a bus downtown and then caught another bus that took me west to where I was staying in Wauwatosa about 7 miles from downtown.

I got settled into the hotel and then headed to the ballpark. This is not my 1st visit to Milwaukee nor Miller Park. Along w/Minnesota this is where we often came during our summer vacations to see baseball. Most of those trips were to County Stadium. However, Miller Park opened in 2001 which happened to be the year I was moving to Ontario to start university. My parents drove me down w/all my stuff so we made our way through the states and caught a couple ball games (2 in Minnesota, 1 in Milwaukee). Luckily they weren’t selling out Miller Park every game so there were tickets available, but we bought ones from a scalper anyway. However, let this be a lesson for those of you who buy tickets from scalpers. Make sure all the tickets are together if that is what you want. We ended up w/2 tickets together on the 3rd base side, about 5 rows up from the Astros dugout but the 3rd ticket was on the 1st base side about the same distance up. My dad negotiated the deal, but I was there to and could have checked the tickets.

Miller Park is ok, it has a retractable roof, which is nice, but it doesn’t have that retro feel that a lot of the other new stadiums have. They do have a slide setup in the OF where their mascot Bernie slides down every time MIL hits a HR (which happened way too often tonight).



After the game I made my way by all the sports bars looking for a place to eat that wasn’t filled w/smoke. Clearly they haven’t banned smoking in all indoor places in Milwaukee yet. I managed to find an Italian restaurant and I went in but it was empty. However, a waitress came and said they were still open so I ended up eating my whole meal as the only one in the restaurant. Although, I heard several people come in and pick up orders to go.

After eating I went back to the hotel expecting my parents to now have arrived. My parents were driving to ON for my cousins wedding so the timing worked out that they could stop over in MIL. They indeed had arrived sometime that evening but were asleep by the time I got back, although my Dad woke up when I came in.