Charlotte Checkers

On January 10 we went to a Charlotte Checkers game in downtown Charlotte and it was a ton of fun.  The Checkers are a minor league ice hockey team for the NY Rangers, for more info click here.  It was a spur of the moment decision to go and with tickets and parking it was only $30!  The game was originally a night game but was changed to an afternoon game because the Panthers had a playoff game that night, which they lost.   

Eli's first hockey game!

The Checkers won the game 4 to 3.  The other neat thing was that the intermissions were just like a minor league baseball game.  They had people run an obstacle course in giant hamster balls (on ice), they had sumo wrestling (on ice), the Checkers Mascot... Chubby :-) rode an ATV (on ice), tricycle races (on ice), a truck give-a-way if you threw a puck into the sunroof, the Chick-fil-A blimp dropped coupons, they shot t-shirts into the crowd, and some little girls did a skating show.  It was very entertaining and Chubby can drive the heck out of an ATV!!!  To top it all off one of the guys in a hamster ball was wearing a UMaine jersey!!!!!  We were so excited that we found him in the crowd and tracked him down when the game ended.  It was a let down though because he didn't got to UMaine, his mom did.

Face off in the neutral zone.

How perfect is Chick-fil-A, as a whole?!?!

Eli zonked out!

We were a little worried about the noise with Eli.  He was a little unsure of it all especially when the announcer shouted or the fog horn blew for a goal.  He did however sleep through the third period, with his eyes popping wide open every time the announcer or fog horn blew, but he went right back to sleep!!  

We were also really impressed with that area of Charlotte, it was very clean and modern for a big city.  We hope to go to more games and explore the area.