Don't Back Down

Early Saturday morning, the phone rang and one of our neighbors said that they had two extra tickets to the Monster Jam for later that night, and asked if we wanted to go. Normally this would be an issue, as with two kids, two tickets doesn't normally lend itself to making things easy. But since one of them was grounded (for some reason or another), it actually made things a bit easier than normal.

In fact, if anything, it worked out better than normal. I mean who could have asked for better circumstances than that? One kid grounded, and then he finds out that he misses out on the Monster Jam? That's just awesome. And yes, I'm a horrible parent. But there are just times that I subscribe to the old-school theory of parenting, whereby there should be a bit of suffering involved. So with everything settled, we headed out to an evening of entertainment. Free entertainment, even. The best kind.

First up was getting into the event. It was held at the Bobcats Arena, and this was the first time I had attended an event in the new arena. I could say that this was because I didn't care for the way the whole building was constructed, but frankly I just hadn't had any reason to go. I don't really like basketball all that much, and now that hockey is held there, it's just too far out of the way. It made for a good reason to check it out.

Not wanting to pay the ridiculous prices for uptown parking, which are cranked even higher, we made it to the parking deck of the Holiday Inn just before they changed the sign from the $5 fee to the $10 fee. After a bit of haggling with the guy collecting money, who didn't want to accept $5 like the sign said, we finally managed to track down a manager and get our spot for the $5 (and they frantically put up the $10 sign).

After a quick trek across the street and into the mob of people trying to get into the arena, we made our way to the will call window, and picked up the pit passes, and strangely enough, no one checked to see if we actually had tickets. At all. I guess they just assumed that we were there for the show. Odd, since it was advertised as being sold out.

We then browsed around in the pit area for a while, and decided that there are way too many people with time on their hands. Nothing wrong with monster trucks or anything, but the lines to get autographs was just too much. Even the no-name trucks were too long for our tastes, so we took a few pictures and headed to our seats.

The odd thing here is that the people who gave us the tickets had box seats, so they took off. We didn't see them again. Not that there's anything wrong with that or anything. I mean I can appreciate getting box seats and all. But it's just strange that you invite someone along and then ditch them.

In the end, it wasn't really bad, because we watched some warm-up lawn mower races, and some jumping over cars, and then decided that it was just a little too loud in the confines of the arena. It was also a little too small. While the lawn mowers had room to maneuver around, the trucks really didn't. They could get the engine going, pop over over the cars, and that was it. Monster trucks really need a bit more room to get things going. I think we'll wait for an outdoor event next time around.