N is for Nosebleed

I’ve heard that one thing that keeps you young is if you are always learning.

Well go ahead and take a few months off my ticking clock because I learned something very important this week: when you get tickets to a sporting event in a three-tiered stadium and your section number starts with “3”, you should expect quite a climb to your seat.

Tuesday found us climbing the stairs at the beautiful Arthur Ashe stadium near Flushing Meadows, New York for a day at the U.S. Open. We’d spent part of the morning in the Grand Stand watching doubles play and got a little spoiled because we were a mere five or six rows from the court.

As we proceeded into the main stadium for the singles matches, I started to think our view might not be as great when we went up . . . and up . . . and up, all the way to the third level . . . then up again to section 319, where our seats were located.

Whew! All the way up to section 319, I turned around and, if I squinted just right, I could see some folks on the court below, not unlike seeing cars from the airplane. Thank goodness for the television monitor, mounted at the very top of the stadium (in other words, directly in our line of vision).

I grabbed my bag, eager to find my seat when Mark pointed out that while we were, indeed, standing in our assigned section 319, our seats were actually in row N, another 14 rows up.

The good news is the view up another 14 rows was not all that different from the view at the bottom of section 319.

The bad news is as soon as we sat down to watch the match, it started to rain . . . . Tournament play for the day: cancelled.