When we last left our adventurers, they were in Austin for a wedding. Having known that this wedding would be the Saturday before the NCAA basketball championship, they made plans to be in Arlington that Monday for the big game...
Ok, I can't use third person the entire post. We did go to Arlington on Monday, theoretically to go to the championship game. We kept perusing stub hub for tickets, but the available tickets were fairly expensive (for obvious reasons) and far away from the court. The game was in Cowboys Stadium (officially AT&T stadium) which is a gigantic arena and one could end up miles from the court at the highest points. Plus, the game was Connecticut-Kentucky, and not one that I cared to see that much. S's beloved badgers had lost in a heartbreaker on Saturday, in the same fashion as UVA and UNC had lost that year. This basketball season took years off of my life, I do believe. Spoiler alert: we did not go to the game. But we didn't know that until just a few minutes before tip off.
We headed to the stadium area, which of course I had never seen before. The stadium where the Rangers play is right next to AT&T so we got to see both of those (from the outside). They had a booming pre-game party, which I wish we had gotten to earlier, but we were (unsuccessfully) trying to meet up with my sister in Fort Worth (see upcoming part 3). We never did figure out if you had to have tickets to enter the actual party, but we heard the band playing as we were standing to the side of the stage. At first, I thought it was just a band playing covers, but eventually S asks, "wait, is that actually Kid Rock?" Yes, it was. The pre-party featured live concerts by Kid Rock and the Killers, so note to future NCAA goers, go to the pregame party, it's worth it.
We watched fans go into the stadium area for a while and checked stubhub to see if any enticing offers arose. We noticed that many fans were not wearing UConn or UK gear, and some weren't even wearing basketball gear! What a funny situation to just wear any type of sports gear to the biggest college basketball game (well, maybe a three-way tie between the two UNC-dook games) of the year.
The sky began to ominously darken and clouds were rolling in right before tip off so we began to look for sports bars nearby. When the temperature suddenly dropped and it looked like a tornado might hit any minute, we ran for the closest establishment, a random Mexican place. It was practically empty, save for a few employees from other restaurants who seemed to be visiting their friends at this one. We enjoyed the game there, and luckily Kentucky lost. I am glad we saved the money we would have spent on the game and just enjoyed ourselves with some enchiladas instead. Stay tuned to see what our adventurers will do next!
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