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My Brother’s Dying Wish is to See Bruce Springsteen in St. Paul
Bruce Springsteen sold out St. Paul Xcel in about 5 minutes. © Big Stock Photo
The oncologist at the University of Minnesota said most people diagnosed with soft cell sarcoma don’t live longer than a year, so it’s cutting it close to try to get my dying brother tickets to see Bruce Springsteen in St. Paul this February. He was diagnosed last February and is presently in clinical trials but it won’t save him. The tumors have traveled to his lungs. He’s been valiant about the whole process and refuses to sell his car, although I hear his wife gave away his snowblower.
He asked about the Bruce Springsteen show coming to Xcel Center in St. Paul in February 2016. The Boss is his favorite all time band, and he has never been to a show, if you can believe that. I figured if there is one thing I could do for him is to buy him front row tickets with wheelchair access.
I considered trying to find the promotor of the show, but I don’t know if we want to call attention to my brother’s condition to Bruce himself. I mean, how happy could he be playing to a guy in the front row who, for all practical purposes here, could die right there in the middle of the concert. Fall out of his wheelchair and never get back up. That’s not a warm fuzzy feeling for the audience. Hey, is that a dead guy on the floor?
My first attempt to get tickets was to set my alarm where I am on my wor-cation in Hawaii for 5:30 AM, just so I could be up and at my computer when they went on sale at 10 AM central standard time. I could not sign in. Ticketmaster was blocked from my server. Ack. What to do what do to?? Aha, turn off my VPN, that did the trick! When I got to the site, it said I was a day early, and they went on sale on the 11th, not the 10th. Saved!
Bright and early on the 11th, signed in to Ticketmaster, and it began the countdown to 30 seconds to sale. Then it redirected me to Excel Center, and I lost time. I tried wheelchair access. No such luck. Tried limited mobility, nope. Tried main floor general admittance, no seats. Tried best available, and then every single combination I could think of, and there were no tickets at all.
On top of that, the site had a warning that if I bought tickets with my credit card, I might not be able to transfer the tickets to my brother. What? I waited until all the hoopla died down and tried Stub Hub. Seats with wheelchair access were $1800 each! Ouch. I don’t even know if my brother will still be alive by February. I’ve never in my life not been able to buy tickets online for a concert. It doesn’t feel good to let down my dying brother.
P.S. This is a footnote because I didn’t want this blog sitting all by itself in cyberspace without its conclusion because my brother did end up going to see Bruce Springsteen, thanks to Jon Bream.
How We Quickly Forget About Old Technology
Twins Logo at Target Field in downtown Minneapolis
You get used to new technology so quickly that you forget how things used to be. I noticed this phenomenon when I ran across my old 2009 blog about a unicyclist in Land Park. I had included a photograph of this unicyclist in the blog and posted it on my Land Park Blog where a bunch of people made comments about how darned lucky was I to have had my camera with me that day. What were the odds? Remember, there were no cellphone cameras in 2009. The blog before that talked about how I might have been the only agent in Sacramento without a national calling plan on my phone, which is completely incomprehensible today.
Even so, even being surrounded by all of this technology, sometimes we have to rely on doing things the old-fashioned way, or what I call always having a Plan B.
I landed at the Minneapolis airport last night, in town to visit my niece and sister and to spend a little bit of time with my dying brother for a few days. I remember when it used to be the Lindbergh airfield, but today everybody includes St. Paul in the title so that poor city won’t feel left out, and they tossed in international, like they did in Sacramento to add that cosmopolitan flavor, even if you can only fly to Mexico, but it is still just the Minneapolis airport to me.
After much discussion with my sister about her vehicle situation, in light of the fact she owns a SMART car that holds only 2 people and doesn’t always go into reverse, it seemed like a good idea to rent a car at the airport. How hard could it be to find the hotel, which was only a few miles away?
Hertz asked if I wanted GPS. Well, first, I used to live in Minneapolis, even if it was 13 years ago. Second, I had printed out directions from the Hertz rental spot at the airport to the hotel from Google. Third, I had Siri and, because sometimes Siri is unavailable, there is also my own GPS map app. How could I get lost driving to the hotel?
Well, first, the GPS in the rental car was not activated. Second, it was too dark to read the directions. My map function would not work. The arrow just sat there and refused to move. Siri could not hear me and at one point she flashed a message on the screen that she was not working for some reason. Wake up, Siri, wake up!! Still, cars were moving along in the exit lane and I had to quickly choose from an assortment of electronic billboard signs, which offered a variety of freeways and roads at my disposal.
Quickly I eliminated all of the ways I knew for certain I did not want to go and then chose 494 toward Bloomington. All the while I continued to scream at Siri to take me to the hotel, but she could not hear me. Every so often, I poked the arrow button to no avail on my GPS app. Then I spotted the 24th Avenue exit, which sounded familiar so I took it, and way off in the distance I could make out the Ikea store, which is near the hotel. Do I turn left or right or go straight? I chose straight, made a right and turned directly into the hotel parking lot and spotted my sister at the entrance.
How lucky was that? It was like magic. I got there on my own accord, and I still don’t know how I managed this without technology. But I do know that I had packed my bluetooth into my luggage and had not turned it off, which is why Siri could not hear me.
