It is approximately two inches wide and five a half inches tall.
It is green and yellow. It has a picture of the Duck mascot riding a motorcycle. Most importantly, it has those words written on it — those most heavenly words:
“Ducks vs. Oregon St.
Dec. 1, 2001.
Price: Student.”
I waited six hours and 16 minutes at the Casanova Center for this piece of paper. I stood the entire time. It rained and howled wind.
I’m not complaining. I know people camped out for more than two days. These people are slightly wrong in the head, but nonetheless, I take my hat off to them.
Still, I waited six hours and 16 minutes for a piece of paper.
Without further ado, here is one student’s ticket odyssey.
6:45 a.m.: We arrive at the EMU, naively thinking that we can get a place in line and get tickets right when the ticket office opens at 9 a.m. We find out that the EMU has been open since 5:50 a.m., and the line snakes up into oblivion already. Panic begins to set in.
Noon: After class, we head to the Casanova Center, knowing that there are seven open ticket windows. We also know that students have camped out there, and we see the carnage immediately when we step out of the car. Garbage litters the Autzen parking lot. Empty pizza boxes. Half-full Starbuck’s coffees from the morning, dumped out onto the tarmac. Boxes of cookies left open to face the weather. We get in line. My prediction: two hours. My companion’s prediction: three. Ha ha. Ha ha. Oh man, that’s a good one.
1 p.m.: We begin to get the sense that something’s fishy in Duck land. We call a friend who camped out overnight, and she still hasn’t gotten tickets. This can’t be. We’ve moved maybe 200 feet since joining the line. We find a friend further up in line, and we don’t cut because of nasty looks from other line members.
1:15 p.m.: The guy in front of us, we’ll call him “Adidas” because of his sweatshirt, speaks for the first time. He’s all alone and has had his nose buried in old copies of Sports Illustrated since joining the line. We start talking about how much the situation sucked, we haven’t moved, etc. Eventually, we’ve conversed with about six people around us in hearty conversation. This is only the beginning of the good times to come.
1:30 p.m.: We start getting reports from the front of the line. The computers are slow. It’s taking 10 minutes per person. There is a mob of people at the front of the line. We begin to wonder if we’ll make it by 5 p.m., when the office closes.
2 p.m.: My girlfriend arrives and joins us in line. We thank God that she wasn’t beaten to death with umbrellas. Adidas, who is ultra-friendly at this point, offers to run to his car and grab some snacks that his mother sent down with him. We love Adidas.
2:30 p.m.: We’re notified that the ticket office won’t close until everyone in line gets their stubs. We laugh. We cry. We cheer. We’re getting tickets. At this point, there is no turning around. We know that tickets will be available Tuesday, but we’re now on a mission. Someone in front of us leaves the line. He must be a Beaver fan.
4 p.m.: The rain starts.
4:30 p.m.: The rain gets harder.
5 p.m.: Torrential downpour.
5:15 p.m.: We enter “the pit,” a mass of people near the ticket booth windows. We’ve heard it could take an hour or more from this point. This is also where it starts to get cozy. The six of us — my party of three, Adidas and two other newfound friends — enter as a group and promptly split up, headed for different windows.
5:30 p.m.: It’s getting dark, but we now get our first glimpse of the ticket windows. They shimmer with white light, and we can see that inside it is warm. And they have tickets. Warmth and tickets are the only two things we care about at this point.
6 p.m.: We’re inching toward heaven.
6:12 p.m.: Bingo. I get to the ticket counter and slap down my ID with a huge, goofy, loopy grin on my face. The ticket-counter lady doesn’t even notice. It takes four minutes to process my request. She hands back my ID and the beautiful ticket. I stand there and stare at it with the same goofy grin until the guy behind me tells me to move or get killed.
6:16 p.m.: It’s official. We’ve waited in line for more than six hours to see a game that could be three hours long. But at least we did it: We battled the elements and the clock.
The irony of the whole thing is that at 10:50 a.m. Tuesday morning, the wait for tickets at the EMU was 16 minutes.
But hey, I think that I’ll enjoy the game more than someone who waited in that line. After all, I already have six hours of time invested in the Civil War. What do I have to show for it?
A piece of paper.
Peter Hockaday is a sports reporter
for the Oregon Daily Emerald.
He can be reached at
[email protected].