"Late Night in the Phog"---Pre-game

We left for this event quite early on Friday (well, early for us) and arrived in Larry town around noon. We checked into our hotel early and drove out to the Fieldhouse. Already at 12:30PM there was a crowd lining up in the front of the Booth Family Hall of Athletics. We found a place, bringing our lawn chairs and set up "camp" for the next 5 hours. Yes, 5 hours!!

People there brought food from Micky D's, pop, water, and their own kind of entertainment. People also brought their blankets to play board games, a radio, and card games. Everyone brought their "ticket, " a donation of canned food to get into the game for free.

We brought our own entertainment: our MP3 player (with a dead battery!), books, personal PS player, books, puzzle books, playing cards and Uno. J and I played Uno throughout the afternoon and we got up to visit the KU gift shop; also we walked around to the north side of Allen Fieldhouse to check their line. Other people brought footballs to play out on the soggy grass in front of Allen. It was a fun atmosphere. Everyone had their blue sweatshirts, and shirts on in support of the NCAA champions of 2008.

As the sun went down behind Allen, the crowd stretch down by the baseball field and over to the tennis courts. We watched the crowd gathering as some stood up. I was getting nervous thinking that we would NOT get such a good seat while waiting in our lawn chairs. So we took them back and had S and J hold our places in line. We came back and S would inch ever so closer toward the front of the line. We saw people in front of us who we didn't see camping out in front of us before. Hmmm. Adults had cutted in the line. Not a good thing!

There was some trouble within the line before the doors opened. Someone had turned another person for smoking. I guess that you can get in trouble for that (?). I don't know. Now, like in our Christian Colleges you can be in trouble if you smoke on campus, but at KU, I'm not so sure. So this person turned in smoker and said some interesting (?) choice cuss words. A woman in line yelled back, "HEY! IF YOU SAY THAT AGAIN, I'LL CALL THE COPS ON YOU!" I was "scared."

With an hour before doors were to be open and the crowd getting "closer" feeling like sardines in a can, my stupid feet started cramping on me. Oh...let me tell you I just HATE that feeling. So I get down and can't straighten out my feet and start rubbing them furiously. Last time I was at KU in the winter, it had happened there too. (I'm going to have to find out why this happens all the time to me).

Each time security would go through the crowd and open the doors everyone got really close. In this situation you better NOT have claustrophobia. If You do you just have to put it out of your mind. All I could think about was when people were trying to get off the Titanic and it was a mad panic. Then you wonder if you are going to get squished. A human stampede, if you would picture, this is all what it felt like as we proceeded to go inside. Thankfully security issued tickets and the women had to open their purses to make sure we didn't have anything weird. As
I was pushed into another line S came into my line and I followed her.
(to be continued!)