Flew to Chicago for a guys trip to the BYU-Notre Dame football game. I was applying to grad schools at the time, so I flew in a day before the rest of my family so I could drive up to UW-Madison for my application interview and to tour the campus, etc.

I had stuff there all morning and the plan was to drive back down to Chicago to pick everyone up from the airport. I had a good day meeting the students and touring the campus, but before I drove down to Chicago I wanted to make one more quick trip to check out Camp Randall. I love walking around college stadiums.

I pulled up front and there was street parking. I saw a tow truck about 50 feet behind me, so I carefully read the signs. I was good. Open parking except for 3 hours in the afternoon, but I checked my watch and I had just over an hour before that would be enforced. I figured I had 20 minutes, max, before I had to be on the road anyway.

Camp Randall was pretty cool. Everything was open so I just walked around like I knew what was doing and got to walk out on the field and even give myself a tour of the press boxes. I went to take a picture on my cell phone but realized that I had left it in the car along with my wallet. They were in the dress slacks I had changed out of following my campus visit.

15 minutes later I leave and see a police car out front, and a car getting loaded onto the back of a tow truck. Wait a second, that’s my rental car!!!

I ran down to the street as fast as I could just as the tow driver was closing his door. I knocked on his window and he rolled it down. I confirmed if was my rental and he gruffly said he’d drop the car for me. I then had to deal with getting a ticket from the police officer, as well as the cost of a tow. I explained how I was there applying to the school and didn’t understand why I was being ticketed because the sign said 3pm but it was only 2:10pm - and realized I had forgotten to change my watch since I was in a new time zone. I could tell the police officer thought I was the biggest idiot and I’m sure she didn’t have high hopes for me getting accepted there for grad school.

I still think about how lucky I wasn’t in the stadium for 2 more minutes. If so I would have come out to my rental car gone (“is it stolen?”), and would have had no phone or wallet. My family would have been stuck at the airport wondering where I was and would have become even more of a laughing stock to my siblings, cousins, and uncles. And we never could have seen BYU lose because of a stupid throw.