We woke up and got prepared to drive to around the Fort
Lauderdale area. Today was the day for the Bruins hockey game at the BB&T
Arena in Sunrise, FL but also Daniela had a friend from her high school now
living around the Sunrise area so we were going to meet her for a little while
at the Sawgrass Mills Mall near where she lived. She had to pick up her husband
airport so it would be maybe an hour or so. Not long enough to have lunch but
at least a snack. Her name is Pamela. I
met her and they started to talk about old times in Spanish so I wandered the
mall for a little while, mostly looking in the bookstore near the food court. After maybe an hour or so I came back and
Pamela was ready to leave so we said goodbye and Daniela and I went in search
of lunch. I didn’t want to eat food
court food so we found the Cheesecake Factory and ate there. I had chicken and
biscuits and Daniela had a fish dish.
The food was decent but not spectacular and I felt like I had a huge
bubble in my stomach for the rest of the afternoon. I did have 2 Sam Adams
Octoberfest beers but I don’t think that is enough to cause that.
When we were done eating we did some actual shopping through
the mall which is quite large. We did buy a couple things at the outlet stores
they have. At the Nautica store we found out the Arena was literally across the
street from the mall. Pamela said it was close but not that close. It turns out when I checked that the distance
was about 10 minutes by walking. The guy said a lot of people park at the mall
to go there and security doesn’t do anything about it. We did a bit more
shopping until it was getting close to the time to go to the game. When we were
done we went to the car and I put on my Bruins jersey and Daniela changed to
warmer clothes.
The walk really was only about 10 minutes, but the first
road leading out of the mall had a lot of trees that had spiders that were
black and yellow striped and no word of a lie at least 4 inches and probably
more like 6 inches on the leg spread. I
was horrified and so was Daniela. Not willing to get too close and the light
starting to fail we took some pictures from a distance away that I am not sure
will do them justice. Still we had to
press forward and get through to the arena. It was not a pleasant part of the
day but we did make it uninjured somehow. I suppose the spiders took pity on us.
We got to the arena and they had a bunch of kids’ activities
out front that you would rarely see at an everyday game in Boston. I suspect
that they are trying to drum up more interest in the sport with the youngsters
because they don’t have the already decades long history that the Boston area
has. We got inside and found the seats really quickly. Daniela went for food
while I watched the warm up skate. We
got popcorn and a hot dog and a couple of cokes for the game.
The bruins scored first on the power play and again on the
power play both were goals by Brad Marchand.
They got one more goal by Zdeno Chara and then the Panthers scored one
goal and that was it. The Bruins had a couple of 5 on 3 penalty kills and
failed on the first one but that was it for the rest of their PK time. They ejected
Marchand from the game for a boarding penalty with 2 minutes to go. 5 minute
major and game misconduct. I didn’t
really get to see the play. The Bruins
killed those penalties too but even with the free icings did not manage to
score an empty netter. But they did win 3 to 1.
The fans overall were quiet in comparison to Boston fans. We had some
folks near us in section 324 that had cowbells and did small chants but there
appeared to be more Bs fans than there were Panthers fans. There was one obnoxious guy in the back but
as it became apparent the Panthers were going to lose he sort of quieted down.
We walked back through a similar area that had the spiders
we walked out of but this one appeared to not have any or at least as
many. We got back to the car and drove
back with a limited amount of traffic trying to get on to 95 south that
probably took us an extra 10 minutes beyond what it should have. We got in an pretty much crashed soon after.
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