Queuing Pros

Sometime last Saturday evening we discovered that a very famous event was starting the on Monday.  We mapped it out and were delighted to discover that it was relatively close to our home base.  To our dismay, however, the ticket ballot(draw) is back in December meaning we had no chance of buying admission online.  What are we trying go to? A historic event steeped in tradition, dominated by currently two sisters and a longtime veteran.  What is it?  Wimbledon, of course!  We are only recently tennis fans, but most likely never have the chance to go again, so why not?  Since it is a tournament, the early rounds have 19 courts playing at once.  Like I said before, we were not able to buy online, but if you get there early you are able to get "Ground Passes" that allow you to wander around to watch courts 3-19, the smaller games.  With a little more digging we found out that 500 tickets are available each day for Centre Court and Courts 1&2, but you have to queue(line up) early for them.  As in overnight early.  We joked about camping for a bit, and then went back to our activities.  Later that night we talked about it more seriously, and on Sunday we inquired around about a tent.  Just before we left we found a brother who had a small two man and we asked to use it.  He said it was fine if we wanted it, and that spurred us on to make plans.  Sunday evening we gathered a few supplies and decided to go for sure.  In the morning we woke up in decent time and went into town to buy food, other supplies, and the tent.  We went to brunch with some sisters who wanted to show us proper English breakfast. It consisted of bacon(ham), an egg, fried mushroom, baked beans, grilled tomato, a really good sausage, hash browns, toast, and tea.  (They accidentally gave us an extra plate of food. They were going to take it back but i said it was fine for them to leave it. An extra plate of food never hurt anyone right? -Eric)  After that we went back and finished packing.  Around 3:30 we left for the train station.

The journey took about an hour total,  we arrived at Wimbledon about 4:30.  What a sight it was! We thought we were early, but walked in to see two rows of tents already up.  Each row took 2 minutes to walk down, at least two football fields long.  The event was extremely organized-rows clearly marked, orange-vested stewards everywhere, trash bags every ten feet, temporary sidewalks and barricades installed, and food vendors at both ends.  (We read in a blog before we left that if queuing were a sport, the English would be champions at it. The blog was right. -Eric)  Immediately we were give a handy "Guide to Queuing" and told to set up our things but not to stake down.  We were in the back half of the second row, and the row gradually compressed until there were no gaps, then we were allowed to stake in.  Shortly afterwards a steward came around with the "Queue cards", a guarantee of our place in line.  With all the people ahead we were worried we weren't in the first 500, but to our delight the number at the bottom was 335!  After the tent was up there was not much to do, other than be attacked by fliers from about 10 different area restaurants trying to persuade us to eat with them.  After some reading and catch we gave in to one of the offers and ordered a pizza.  We talked to our neighbors until it came, and found out they had been coming every year since 1976.  They also informed us that the ticket we get are not the leftovers, as we suspected, but premium positions, that's why people put for all the effort.  The pizza came, we ate, and then back to complete boredom until bedtime.  (The pizza was surprisingly um... not large. -Eric)  Fortunately the brother who lent us the tent also gave us us thin foam pads as well, but that's where the comfort ended.  We slept in jeans and sweatshirts, no pillow, my blanket was an old towel from the house and Eric's was a thin blanket stolen from some airplane.  (I at least had sweatpants instead of jeans but still. -Eric)  The tent was small, our fellow campers noisy, and the night chilly.  We slept ok for the circumstances, but not good by any means.  By around 4:30 there was movement as people awoke, by around 5:30 the place was alive.  At 6 we broke down our camp and took everything to the left luggage facility.  By 7 the line was once again compressed, and 10 minutes later we, and 2,000 other people were on the move.  We tromped through the park where we had queued, into the golf course next door, and then the line ground to a halt.  There was a Evian sponsor tent nearby that kept us supplied with water, but once again we were stuck with nothing to do.  The steward came by and gave us wristbands for the court of our choice, we chose centre of course.  Finally by about 9:00 the queue started to move slowly, we went through security, across the bridge, and bought our tickets.  The grounds don't really open until 10:30, so for another hour we got to wait in the entrance area.  When the time eventually came we explored the grounds until 12:00, when the matches on the outer courts started.  We watched until about 12:40, and then moved to find our seats in centre court.  We were in row J, just 10 rows up, just to the right of center.

The first game we saw Serena Williams, number one women's seed.  She is one big lady!  (Not like fat or anything.. just huge. She was probably at least a foot or a foot and a half taller than the other girl she was playing. -Eric)  The other girl fought hard, but it was clear to everyone that it was a lost cause.  Serena was serving around 120, higher than some of the men we saw.  She went on to win 6-0,6-4.  Next was Rafael Nadal, the number two seeded man.  His opponent was a 20 year old from Japan who gave him a very good challenge, they were both serving in the 120-130s.  Rafa prevailed in the end though, winning 6-2,6-4.  Forgot to mention we were getting baked the entire time, so by the third match we were tired and sunburned.  We watched the first set and called it a day.  The atmosphere was fun, definitely worth going once.  We walked back to the queue area to pick up our bags, and started the long walk to the train station, meeting loads of people just arriving to queue for the next day.  We took the two trains back, walking the 15 minutes home, and dragged in around 6:30, tired, sunburned, dehydrated, undernourished, but happy from a neat experience.  We ran to the shower to hose off 36 hours worth of grime, and shoveled down a large dinner.  Exhausted only begins to describe how we felt, sleep came easy this night.

I could make today's blog separate, but we were so tired that we have done absolutely nothing so far.  The only things to report are that the water is not working for some unknown reason and I'm going to play the European brand of football with the brothers again tonight.  Tomorrow will be a more interesting read, more big things planned! (Centre Court is the main stadium in the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. But surprisingly its not very large. Only 15,000 seating capacity. And during play the crowd is required to be completely silent. I am used to being at Notre Dame for American football games with 80,000 crazy screaming, and at times half drunk fans. There was classical music being played by a live string quartet, and people sipping wine in their seats watching the match. Just totally different. During the match i found it hard to get into it because the energy seemed so low, because cheering only occurred between volleys and only for a few seconds. But it was still very fun, and i am glad we were able to go. -Eric)

Make sure to look for our new Wimbledon slideshow, located HERE .