Alouettes

On the health, wealth and harmony front things are looking grand. I can still do more each day to ensure greater success in all three areas and believe I will.

Last week Thursday, Jean and I went to the Montreal Alouettes game using tickets I had won at a BNI meeting; it was my lucky week for winning things at BNI. The game itself was great but what a nightmare the seating and everything else was; not that it was a disaster, but so much trouble to see one little game.

First of all, I had to meet Jean there at the stadium because she works downtown and I don't. When I got there, I grabbed a spot in the first available lot. Before parking, I had asked the guy where the stadium was and he told me it was up the hill and around the corner- I figured I was pretty lucky to get that last spot in the parking lot. Just before pulling into the spot, I also asked him if parking where he asked me to park- a handicap zone- was allowed, and he replied yup, it was allowed after 5pm. Besides, I paid $15 for the privilege and figured if he were lying to me, I would get that money back and have his company pay the fine for misleading me.

Anyways, back to my story. I park and start the walk up the hill and around the corner. First off, if you know nothing about Peel street going up the mountain, know this, it's damn steep! A fact which had eluded me when I was safely ensconced in the metal cocoon of my car motoring up and about as if there are no hills. My two little feet on the other hand felt the full effect of gravity telling me that the incline was never meant to be conquered by the grossly out of shape- but I did it.

Once at the top, I figured ok, I made it, barely, but I made it so where is the stadium around the corner? I could not see one so I just started to follow people, .5km, 1km, WHERE THE F%#K is the stadium?! At 1.5km, I come to a light where scalpers have congregated and are actively selling tickets no more than 3-4 meters away from the police directing traffic. For one brief second I thought, hmmm, sell the tickets....naw, I want to watch some FOOTBALL! So I make the left turn since everyone else was too, figured the stadium must be in that direction.

A few hundred metres (sorry America, the rest of the world is metric- time to catch on to the whole centimeter, meter, kilometer- they are all like parsecs but a hell of a lot less :) ) up the road. As I made my way up yet another hill, I saw the Energie van, people handing out pamphlets, and I started to hear stadium noise- drums, talking, horns, etc. I had finally arrived, or so I thought.

Our tickets were for the Ouest end zone, row 3, seat 8. Of course, there is no easy way to figure out where the heck that is once you have entered and being a man, I was loathed to ask, but I did anyways. Turns out that the only way to arrive at Ouest end zone, row 3 seat 8 is to walk the entire circumfrence of the stadium...another km- my feet are hurting again just thinking about it. Got there though and that's when it got even more interesting.

Before describing my seats, I thought about Jean and how annoyed she was going to be finding parking, walking 3 km, and arriving to see the sight of where we had to sit. The reason...as I scanned the rows, 1,2, ahh there's row 3, what the f%#k is that in row 4?! There was a couple there with a combined weight of 272 kilos (600 pounds-ok, maybe 550 pounds) sitting there taking up not only the seats next to them, but spilling over to our row. Now imagine, I am one row down and I pretty much have to ask permission to take my seat. Once seated, I wait for Jean to arrive while watching the pre game festivities.

That's pretty much where the story ends other than Jean not being able to sit comfortably because the woman behind her had her stubby little knees against her back for most of the game. Despite it all, we still had a lot of fun. We got up hoping to catch the football whenever there was a point after. Jean did her fan dance. We cheered and jeered for 3 hours. Without my binocs, I was still able to tell her and everyone else around me what the penalties on the field were before the ref announced them and so on and so on and so on.

Anyways, it's Monday at 9:21...time to do something.