Anniversaries and Bucket Lists

Tomorrow my wife Tracy and I celebrate 26 years of wedded bliss. Well, for me it has been bliss, but she really merits a trophy, (and not one of those rinky-dinks that every kid gets in soccer.) 35% of marriages make it to 25 years, so, yay for us. It looks like #26 will be a quieter of our anniversaries, probably a couples massage followed by sushi.

We have had some fun anniversaries over the years, but last year I decided to really do it up nice for my better half. It was our 25th Anniversary, and that is something special.

Planning a wonderful event requires some intelligence and really sweating the details. Knowing how over the moon Tracy is for college wrestling, (what woman isn't?) I decided to pull all the stops and get an item checked off her bucket list: The NCAA Wrestling Championships. I needed to get her to New York City so she could enjoy three days of action at iconic Madison Square Garden. It was my mission, I chose to accept it, because hey, I'm a giver. 

When the big day of the event arrived, we showed up early at the arena. Since we had killer seats, we bypassed the throng of belligerent fans to a separate entrance with a cute little unmarked awning on West 31st Street, befitting of VIPs like us. We had our own elevator which exited onto a red carpet. We looked at each other and smiled. 

We followed the carpet through the curtained area where the athletes were warming up, stopping to peek, then went though a maze, and the carpet terminated at a nondescript off-white door. Opening the door put us onto the floor of the most famous sports arena in the world, and the surprised look on Tracy's face was priceless. This is where Ali twice slugged it out with Frazier, and where the Knicks beat the Lakers in the '72 NBA Finals. (I sensed that she started to get misty-eyed.)

Front Row Seats!

To keep some semblance of balance, Tracy made sure the trip was good for me too, taking me to my favorite Italian joint (Carmine's) at Times Square, surprising me with silver jewelry at Tiffany & Co., and setting up a couple musicals on Broadway.

Or maybe things happened the other way around!

We had a ball.  I originally had tickets in the upper bowl in the corner, where the NCAA allocated to my wrestling officials association. The below picture was taken by a friend up in the section where I originally bought, and that just wasn't going to pass muster.

No.thank.you

Determined to not fly 3000 miles and end up in the nosebleeds, I hit up Cornell coach Rob Koll.  He had a floor-level suite on the 40-yard line that he let me sneak in on, for a tidy little tax deductible pile of shekels for his wrestling club. It was cool seeing the fans in their sections in Iowa black and gold, Oklahoma State orange, Penn State blue, etc., creating different color swaths across the arena.  There were eight mats going, so we kept our heads on a swivel as loud cheers erupted all-the-time in various sections throughout The Garden.

One of the Baldwin brothers, Billy, who wrestled in college, announces wrestling for ESPN. He came up from the floor to visit with someone in our section, and the staff guy was immediately on him, "Hey! Movie stah! Outta heyah!" and motioned with his thumb to get out, winking at us as we cracked up. To his credit, Baldwin didn’t try to big-time him, because wrestlers are polite. (Except for coaches, those guys can be hurtful.)  

Tracy has great memories as a high school cheerleader where the wrestlers were perennial state champs, so she not only understands the sport, she digs it. When we saw #15 ranked kid from American hit a head lock on the #10 kid from Stanford to pin him in the quarterfinals, she was on her feet.  And when the #14 kid from Wyoming, (who looked more like a Hunger Games contestant than a wrestler), came from behind and caught the #6 Ohio State kid in a cradle at the end of the match, she was jumping up again.

New York City is the center of the world, so we also managed to fit in some other fun things, like visiting with friends, seeing "Matilda" and "Finding Neverland," and eating way too much food.  There is not a bad meal to be had in NYC.  And the pizza . . . Holy Cow. Kudos to East River water. 

The next item off of Tracy's bucket list? Watching USC play at Notre Dame. South Bend, here we come! Wish us luck in getting tickets!

Actually, now that we have another grandkid, more discretionary time will be spent with them instead of doing our own thing, which is just ducky with me.  Being a grandparent is the second-best gig. 

The first? Being married to Tracy.

Happy anniversary, sweetie!