Friday, March 14, 2008

more Duke basketball

I underestimated the zeal with which people root for Duke. I remember one day in late October I was walking to the gym and I saw these guys out in the middle of the grass outside Cameron Gym surfing the internet on their wireless capable laptops. The weather had already gotten very cold and I remember thinking it was way too early in the season for them to be outside waiting in a line. I decided there must be something else going on that day I don't know about. Within the next few days the tents started to go up, just in time for the winter rains. A photo of the tenting scene is below.

The rest of the photos were taken the morning of the Duke/UNC game (3/8/08), 12 hours before its scheduled start. It was drizzling for 2 days in a row, then the morning of the game when the rain had finally stopped the wind started blowing in 40-50mph gusts. You can see the effects of the wind on the tents.

The next photo is the brown burrito. To escape the wind some students got a brown tarp and set up a makeshift shelter. It reminded me of a burrito. You can see one guy inside the burrito holding the tarp, and another in the background dragging garbage cans to anchor it down.

You can see the length of the line in the next photo, 12 hours before the game.

These guys are guaranteed a spot inside due to their tenting diligence, they're just waiting around in the wind and ~35 degree temp to try and get a courtside (versus two to three rows back) seat! They really are crazy. The red line in the photo indicates the path of the waiting line and includes a kink where it wraps around the block. The court is to the left of the news van on the far left.

Of course the last photo is the famous Cameron Indoor Stadium, the setting to some of the country's most famous basketball stories and the current coach of the USA basketball team.

1 comment:

Whitney said...

Hi Josh, I hope you don't mind my popping in on your blog. My step-father was just telling me about the tent city that gets put up to wait in line for the tickets. It IS quite impressive. Thanks for the pictures and the details. NOW I get it. Hope all is going well. What did you get your degree in?
Whitney (come visit anytime)