Roadguy is trying to forget the unfortunate incidents he witnessed inside the Metrodome during the past two afternoons, so he’s focusing instead on the journey to and from the scene of the crimes. If you’re a fellow Twins fan with a traffic-jam tale or a story of how you survived inside an oxygen-depleted light-rail car, or if you have advice for getting to future playoff games (knock on wood), feel free to post a comment below. In the meantime, here are a few highly mediocre photos from Roadguy’s stadium trek.

First, on the trip into downtown, there was a definite moment for the Moron Patrol:

Yes, Mr. White Cadillac decided to make a right turn from the center lane, cutting in front of yours truly in the process. Mr. Caddy may not know it, but in a lot of places around the country, if you’re not in the correct lane to make your turn, you go around the block and try again, or you get a ticket. Here, however, drivers like to get away with letting others pay for their mistake. Gotta love Minnesota Nice.

Once safely downtown, Roadguy had hoped to discover some brilliant game-day parking secrets so he could share them with the six people who read his blog. But the key to parking happiness turned out to be a case of knowing the right person: my friend Doug. Doug used to work downtown, and on Tuesday we snagged a spot at his former workplace. Then yesterday, we made use of this:

I’d never seen a “critical parking area” map before, and its complexity was somewhat daunting. But it was worth figuring out because Doug still had a parking permit for the Elliot Park area, where a lot of on-street spaces are one-hour or permit only. So we scored a decent spot for free about three blocks from the Dome. Of course, who needs a permit…

… when you can just park in front of a driveway? It was apparently my day to have odd encounters with white Cadillacs. There were two ordinary non-driveway parking spaces directly behind this person, too, so it was a true head-scratcher.

Once at the Dome, we spied a different kind of parking challenge:

Yep, there’s actually a bike rack in there somewhere. It was heartening to see the number of people who bicycled, or crammed onto light rail, or took the special “playoff shuttle” buses from places like the State Fairgrounds. Postgame traffic combined with rush hour would’ve been even worse without such efforts, and most of us fans were already frowning enough.

Hope everybody made it home by sunset — and hope we’re all making noise downtown again on Sunday.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 at 6:02 am and is filed under Moron Patrol, Scenes and stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.