When I was planning my return from Australia, besides legal reasons, I had another reason to pick my return date on April Fool’s Day.
Under the Aussie visitor visa rules, my stays are limited to 90 days (the visa lasts a year). If you want to stay longer than 90 consecutive days, you have to leave the country and re-enter, and for me, that would entail a round-trip flight to New Zealand. New Zealand is beautiful–and I met my wife there–but a back-and-forth to stay legal is not at the top of my list of things to do (I’d stay long enough to at least go out dressed, to add another country to my list, of course).
In the back (front) of my mind, while booking the flights a couple of months before our early January departure from the US, was the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four was going to be in Indianapolis the first weekend in April–and my school had a decent chance of being there. Plus, I run a NCAA Basketball pool (year 38), and I needed to be home to determine who sent me checks in the mail (this year about 90% of the amounts paid to me were electronic, via PayPal or Venmo; times have definitely changed since I first ran the pool in 1988). So, April 1st it was.
The weekend before, my planning paid off. With two wins in Houston, my school, Illinois, qualified for the Final Four. Having seen the prior two Final Fours Illinois has played in during my lifetime (1989 and 2005), and Indianapolis being only a four-hour drive away, I bought my tickets for both sessions (more on that later) and made hotel reservations for Satur-Dee through Tues-Dee. My Easter weekend was set, hopefully with bookends of wins on Satur-Dee and Mon-Dee nights, and an elusive national championship.
This might be a spoiler alert, but that did not happen. In the Satur-Dee semi-final game, the ball simply would not go in the hoop–repeatedly. Lots of effort, lots of quality shots, but no rewards. Unfortunately, that happens.
When I packed my orange and blue, I also packed my knickers, makeup, and wig, because I had free time between games to do some Dee things. And after the Satur-Dee loss (where about half the crowd–at least–were fellow Illini fans) I didn’t have to worry about meeting with friends who stayed over the weekend. I was free to glam it up. That was a very minor consolation to the loss.
The Sun-Dee in between was Easter, so most stores were closed, so visiting a mall was not an option. Knowing this is advance, I took my bike to Indy and found a suitable bike trail to ride Sun-Dee afternoon. It was sunny, but a bit chilly, but lots of people on the trails. Having a nice ride on a busy trail was a salve for the loss.
I also did my research and found a casino about 40 minutes from my hotel. I assumed–correctly–the casino would be open for Easter. I was still suffering from jet lag–and In-Dee being on Eastern time made it an hour worse–so I planned an evening visit to the casino.
I am NOT a big gambler, but as I have written before, casinos are always open, have a variety of dressing styles, adult beverages (and often free soft drinks), and distractions. My preferred distraction is video poker, because the machines will accept sometimes usually a minimal bet (5 cents in In-Dee, 25 cents around where I live). I can get cute, get out, kill some time, and keep my losses to a minimum (my max loss is $20, and I usually lose no more than half of that).
My chosen dress was a red sparkly number I found at Akira in mid-December. During my twelve weeks in Australia, through the combination of exercise and trying to avoid overeating, I managed to drop about ten of the pounds I put on from Thanksgiving to New Year’s. The dress fit a bit better and I liked the look. I stayed for a couple of hours, sat at a bar and played video poker, drank a hard cider and lost $3. My type of night.
As I wrote above, I bought tickets for both sessions, Satur-Dee and Mon-Dee. However, even though their emails clearly said both dates, the ticket vendor (one of the popular third-party sites) did not send the Monday ticket. I figured maybe it would be sent after the Satur-Dee games, but when I woke up fairly late on Sun-Dee morning (jet lag again) I texted their support. The staffer was sympathetic but said I would get a response in 72 hours. Given the championship game was 36 hours later (which, according to my math, is less than 72), I was not optimistic.
Monday came and no answer from the ticket provider, so I decided I would have a Dee morning and afternoon, and then head home, forfeiting my last night at the hotel. I didn’t really want to watch the favorite, Michigan–who I had already seen win a national championship once in 1989, and who did end up winning in 2026–win again. At that point, I just wanted some of my money back for the ticket I didn’t get. The ticker provider promised a safe transaction, so the best I could do is make my case for the biggest retund, but I didn’t need to be in In-Dee to do that.
My target for the day was a shopping mall south of the city, but along the way I spotted a Plato’s Closet–and accidentally another for profit called Style Encore in the same shopping plaza. I wore a colorful top I had recently bought at Dangerfield in Australia, along with a black skater skirt. I found some fun things at Style Encore, an orange-colored summer dress and another sparkly dress, this one more of a goldish color. With both totaling under $20, I bought both. Plato’s didn’t have anything of interest, and by the time I reached the mall (another mall that is more ghost town than a thriving marketplace) my motivation was lagging, and I decided to head home, following a Costco stop for gas, a late lunch, and some non-perishables.
To finish the ticket story, the next day the ticket agency called me. After providing more details–and pointing out their own records showed they didn’t send the second ticket–the service rep agreed they didn’t send the second ticket. Building my case, I said “this is a recorded line, right?” and he agreed. He said it would be escalated and would be five to eight days before a resolution. Fortunately, it didn’t take that long, and I got a better answer than I expected–a FULL refund for my ticket, which meant I saw the two games on Satur-Dee for free.
So, my weekend didn’t turn out as well as I hoped, but I got to see the game I wanted to see for free, got some Dee time in, bought some new clothes, so at least half a loaf–and had the rest of the week to get my girl on.
