A Tale of Two Tickets

True to form, our last minute anti-plan continued. At 4pm, I got a call from my friend, saying she had one ticket for the convention at Pepsi Center Monday. I hesitated only briefly, and accepted it, knowing Praveen still needed to get one. Then, close to 6pm, Praveen received a call from his friend with good news and a ticket. The convention officially started at 3:30pm and here we were at my cousin Brett's house across town at 6pm. Ted Kennedy was speaking at 7:15, Michelle Obama at 8. Praveen pushed our speedy G5 to its limits, and got us downtown in record time. In our rush, we didn't think about logistics. I had picked up my ticket earlier from my friend, but Praveen's friend still had his ticket. As we parked downtown, we realized PK's friend was already in the security line at the arena (apparently REALLY long) and almost in! I had to go through an initial security checkpoint; the second checkpoint was much further away. As I approached, there was this huge mob of people trying to enter through one small door. I somehow caught PK's friend right before he was in and gone forever, and we met at a fence to get Praveen's ticket.

I hiked back to that first checkpoint where I left Praveen. My ticket was orange, said "Guest" and "Arena" on it. Praveen's ticket was purple, said "Special Guest" and "Hall" on it. We asked a half dozen people, and no one really knew the difference between the two. So, we both approached the mob (growing larger by the second) at the second checkpoint, and Praveen's creativity shined again! We bypassed the apparent "end" of the line and walked around close to the entrance itself, where certain Congressmen were entering. Other than not wearing blue pinstripe suits, we blended in just fine, merged with the line on the sidewalk, and voila! In in 15 minutes. (BTW, the Secret Service was handling all of the security, and let's just say they're a tad better than TSA at this kind of thing.)

Once in, we soon realized that my "Guest" orange ticket basically got me into the arena lobby, but did not allow me to actually SEE anything in the arena! Praveen's got him upper deck access. Determined to get in, I just walked up to the people at the portals and flashed my card until one of them let me in. The second one did, and we were able to catch the Ted Kennedy tribute and speech and Michelle Obama! Very neat.