139. WRIGLEY FIELD

Chicago, Illinois

7/24/2015

Our last day in Chicago, and my conference ended at 1 o’clock – a perfect time for Laura and I to swing over to see the Chicago Cubs play at Wrigley Field, America’s second-oldest ballpark and one of the most beloved among baseball aficionados. Laura came to pick me up again [Seriously took me 45 minutes to get there for a 10 minute trip!] and we headed over to the field. There’s no parking at the field itself, so I pre-bought a parking spot through a site called ParkWhiz (sounds legit). The directions included “turn left down the alley behind the brick building.” (What could possibly go wrong?) Before you judge me too harshly, parking lots can charge up to $45 around the field (more than a ticket), so I was willing to check out the alley since it was only $10. It was actually a fairly high-tech affair, since I bought a spot from the hours of 2pm – 6pm, printed out a paper that had one of those barcode scanner things on it and stuck it in the window. They were very emphatic that you would be towed if you overstayed your time, so I figured that gave us enough time to see the majority of the game and get on the road and home at a reasonable time. Like I said before, what could possibly go wrong?

The alley was about a fifteen-minute walk to the field, so we saw a nice chunk of “Wrigleyville”, the nickname for the area around the park where vendors are desperately trying to sell you baseball caps and bottles of water. We made it to the park, and boy, was it packed. On the way to our seats I was slightly behind Laura. A man stepped in front of me for a moment, and I lost her. It took us about ten minutes to find each other again. As mentioned above, Wrigley Field is older (it celebrated its centennial last year) and although it has been updated over the years, part of the charm is supposed to be its intimacy in comparison to some of the more modern ballparks. Still, I can’t imagine how we could have gotten the kids around here.

We did make it to our seats, or so we thought. About halfway through the game a large group arrived, and apparently we were in two of their seats. I’ll admit we were kind of confused by the layout of the seats. We moved.

The game was fun. As we’ve said before, we’re not big sports people, but the ambience of the park made for a nice, relaxing time.

We didn’t stay until the end of the game, since we had a long drive ahead of us, and I was intensely paranoid about getting back to the car before our parking expired.

We walked down to the correct street, but the alley was nowhere to be found. It dawned on me soon enough that this was another one of those crazy Chicago streets that you can’t just walk down, following the numbers until you get to the one you want. We kept going back to the ballpark to start over, but it has multiple entrances, so after a few tries we were so disoriented we couldn’t tell which way to go anymore. All the streets looked the same to us, and they all had kiosks with guys selling the hats and waters and were lined with all-similarly-named sports bars. We wandered around for about 45 minutes. By then, the game had ended and people were exiting the park. Now, I started to get really worried, because 6 o’clock was approaching. We only had 15 more minutes and I had no clue where to go. And Laura couldn’t just flag down one of her firemen and say, “I’m looking for some random alley.”

Desperate, I went up to a trio of cool-looking dudes outside one of the sports bars. One of them had a Smartphone (I’ve resisted getting one, but this experience is making me see the benefits) and with his help we were able to figure out how to get back. His two buddies were mad he was helping us and kept making snide comments, but the guy who helped was a true Good Samaritan. Of course, now we had less than 15 minutes. I decided to run on ahead to get to the car. Laura was unimpressed.  [It was more like a slow jog than a run, but okay.]

I made it to the alley! When I got in there, there was a parking attendant sitting in a truck. I got in the car and turned on the engine. The dashboard clock read exactly 6:00. “You’re not going to tow me today, parking lot alley guy!” I said to no one in particular. Yeah, I sort of left my wife on the streets of Chicago right outside these bars with drunken baseball fans stumbling about. I’m not sure if I’m getting an anniversary card this year. [You are not.]

I thought I would make a desperate attempt at chivalry and go pick Laura up, so she didn’t have to walk all the way to the alley. This was a bad idea. Just going around the corner in Chicago at 6 o’clock takes about 10 minutes. Plus, people honk at you a lot and you nearly run over every pedestrian you see. Well, that was my experience anyway. I cut my losses and made it back to the alley. By the time I got back, apparently Laura had already been there and discovered that the car and I were nowhere to be seen. She left to find me. I decided it was best to stop moving, and just waited in the alley entrance, hoping no one would try to get in or out. Before long I saw Laura appear over the horizon – and by “horizon” I mean “dirty L-train station.” With that, she hopped in the car and we drove off into the sunset. And by “sunset” I mean “rush-hour Chicago traffic,” which is a story best left unwritten. [We will not speak of this incident ever again.] 

Oh, yeah, I forgot. The Cubs won.