I actually like the Minnesota Wild. They’re a good team, they have a snazzy logo, and Minnesota feels like it should have a professional ice hockey team in a way that Florida and Texas really shouldn’t. Plus at this point in American history I confess I have a deep fondness for anything connected to the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, as they have been at the forefront of resistance to the current tyranny and should be supported by all patriotic Americans for this. So I do like the Wild.
Just not as much as the Flyers.
A while ago Kim and I discovered that my hometown Philadelphia Flyers would be traveling to St. Paul for a game in March and we agreed that this would be a fun thing to go see. For me that probably would have been the end of it but Kim is a planner and actually makes things happen, and surprisingly quickly we had tickets and a hotel reservation.
And then we realized that by midwestern standards St. Paul is not all that far from the campus where I teach my remote class, so perhaps we could head there the following morning so I could teach it in person for the first time since I started doing this course in 2012. It would be nice to see the students, for one thing, and it would also be good to see all the people up there who make this class work – any remote class is a group effort, after all. Plus the Campus Director up there is a friend of ours and an old chemistry colleague of Kim’s from a previous institutional structure, so there was a lot to recommend this visit.
We therefore had Plans.
We drove up to St. Paul on Thursday – a relatively uneventful ride for the first part, though once we got past Eau Claire the snow closed in and the High Wind Warning became a genuine thing. It wasn’t much snow, to be honest – just enough that no windshield wiper setting was quite right – but the winds were fierce and remained so through much of the next day.
The Saint Paul Hotel is a much nicer place than I’m used to staying. It’s one of those big old-fashioned places with lobbies that were designed to convey more than simply utilitarian processing, and as someone used to staying in hotels that have numbers in their name it was a bit of a shift, though a pleasant one. They also have valet parking, which meant we just pulled up, handed the keys to a dapper man in black tails and a top hat who did, in fact, work for the hotel (we checked), and then didn’t have to think about it again until the next morning. This worked out very well since the arena where the game would be played was just a three-block walk away.
It was raining when we walked over, which was actually kind of nice. Rain melts ICE, after all, and we were not confronted by any jackbooted government thugs while we were in St. Paul. They haven’t left the city, despite the news reports – they’ve just decided that publicly executing American citizens was bad PR so they’re not as overt as they were a couple of months ago. Still no justice for the dead, of course, but one lives in hope and fury.
We got to the arena fairly early, bought one of the souvenir programs (“Only $5! Benefits youth hockey!” – how could we say no to that?) and found dinner at the first big concession stand that we came to. The arena has a row of Standing Room Only spaces just behind of the last row in the first tier of seats and these come with a little counter that you can lean on and was also absolutely perfect for resting trays of Buffalo Chicken Fries and cups of house cider upon, and we enjoyed a tasty if nutritionally void dinner.
Just not as much as the Flyers.
A while ago Kim and I discovered that my hometown Philadelphia Flyers would be traveling to St. Paul for a game in March and we agreed that this would be a fun thing to go see. For me that probably would have been the end of it but Kim is a planner and actually makes things happen, and surprisingly quickly we had tickets and a hotel reservation.
And then we realized that by midwestern standards St. Paul is not all that far from the campus where I teach my remote class, so perhaps we could head there the following morning so I could teach it in person for the first time since I started doing this course in 2012. It would be nice to see the students, for one thing, and it would also be good to see all the people up there who make this class work – any remote class is a group effort, after all. Plus the Campus Director up there is a friend of ours and an old chemistry colleague of Kim’s from a previous institutional structure, so there was a lot to recommend this visit.
We therefore had Plans.
We drove up to St. Paul on Thursday – a relatively uneventful ride for the first part, though once we got past Eau Claire the snow closed in and the High Wind Warning became a genuine thing. It wasn’t much snow, to be honest – just enough that no windshield wiper setting was quite right – but the winds were fierce and remained so through much of the next day.
The Saint Paul Hotel is a much nicer place than I’m used to staying. It’s one of those big old-fashioned places with lobbies that were designed to convey more than simply utilitarian processing, and as someone used to staying in hotels that have numbers in their name it was a bit of a shift, though a pleasant one. They also have valet parking, which meant we just pulled up, handed the keys to a dapper man in black tails and a top hat who did, in fact, work for the hotel (we checked), and then didn’t have to think about it again until the next morning. This worked out very well since the arena where the game would be played was just a three-block walk away.
It was raining when we walked over, which was actually kind of nice. Rain melts ICE, after all, and we were not confronted by any jackbooted government thugs while we were in St. Paul. They haven’t left the city, despite the news reports – they’ve just decided that publicly executing American citizens was bad PR so they’re not as overt as they were a couple of months ago. Still no justice for the dead, of course, but one lives in hope and fury.
We got to the arena fairly early, bought one of the souvenir programs (“Only $5! Benefits youth hockey!” – how could we say no to that?) and found dinner at the first big concession stand that we came to. The arena has a row of Standing Room Only spaces just behind of the last row in the first tier of seats and these come with a little counter that you can lean on and was also absolutely perfect for resting trays of Buffalo Chicken Fries and cups of house cider upon, and we enjoyed a tasty if nutritionally void dinner.
From there we wandered counterclockwise around the concourse until we got to our designated spots on the Standing Room Only section further up the ice. For those who actually watch hockey, we were about level with the face-off dots on the Wild’s end of the ice, across from the team benches. We were a bit worried about the very tall people in front of us who did not sit down during the entire extended warm-up skate, but they did once the game started and we had a great view of the game during regulation time. It turned out that they were most of the neighborhood where Alex Bump grew up and they were here to cheer for him in his first professional trip to St. Paul as a hockey player, even if he was playing for the Flyers. They dutifully wore Flyers gear with his number on it, despite confessing to be Wild fans in general, and you have to appreciate that kind of support. I chatted a bit with the guys standing next to us at our counter, one of whom was also a university instructor so we had that in common.
There were a lot of Flyers fans in attendance, to judge from the jerseys and sweatshirts, and everyone seemed happy to be there. I like going to sporting events where everyone is clued into the fact that it’s a game and you’re there to have a good time. Three cheers to the Wild fans for being good about that.
It turned out to be a very entertaining game, even from a neutral perspective. The Flyers went up 1-0 toward the end of the first period, found themselves down 2-1 after the second period, and then tied it on a short-handed goal in the third.
The game went to overtime, which the NHL now does as a 3-on-3 five-minute sudden death period, and everyone stood up at that point so we couldn’t see anything. Fortunately there were two seats open a couple of rows down by that point, so Kim and I went there and stood by them, so we did get to see the end of the game. When overtime didn’t solve anything they went to a shootout, which the Flyers won 1-0, and it was a good night for the orange and black.
Every single goal of the game was scored on our end of the ice.
We walked back to the hotel, collapsed into heaps on the various chairs, and spent a lovely time not doing much of anything at all before calling it a night.
The next morning we got up way too early, retrieved the minivan from the top-hatted man (who was either still there or had somehow returned before we woke up), and headed off toward Far Away Campus. We made it there with plenty of time to spare despite a) the High Wind Warning still being a thing, which is an experience in a tall vehicle on a high bridge, let me tell you, b) somehow managing to get behind every sightseer in northern Wisconsin, which in mid-March is not that many people so this was something of an achievement, and at least one turkey delivery truck, and c) stopping for breakfast at one of the several million Kwik-Trip gas stations that permeate Wisconsin like pubs in Britain. IYKYK.
Kim found a table just outside the classroom so she could get some work done and I wandered into the room and met Simon, the guy who sets up all the Zoom stuff for the class, and we got things ready. My students filtered in – according to Abbey, the Campus Director, they were happy that I was coming up to see them, and we had a good time together. It was a pretty full house for being the Friday before their spring break, and there was even a former student from last year who sat in for a while. We covered WWII, one of the gateway drugs of history and always a popular subject despite the casualty figures. And then I wandered around the trying to catch up to other folks who I’ve worked with, eventually finding Sue and Angela but missing Sonya and Troy. It was good to see them!
I also bought a campus sweatshirt so I can actually represent when I’m teaching. I have a lot of Home Campus gear, but this is my first for this campus.
After that we went to lunch with our friend Abbey at a very good Mexican restaurant, where we hung out for a pleasingly long while and had good food in the process. One of my students showed up with his parents and it was nice to meet them.
All in all, a good day.
The drive back was uneventful as you always hope they will be, and eventually we came home and were confronted by a deeply annoyed cat who was, nevertheless, not too proud to sit on my lap for a while.
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