It is Hour 26. Already it has rained, and the sprinklers have come on before they were supposed to. Now the sun is baking the concrete in front of the Delta Center.
And there are still 19 hours left before Penny Collins can buy her ticket to see country singer Reba McEntire.But Collins has come prepared. She is sitting comfortably on a futon under a tarp lean-to. She has a cooler full of food.
After 15 years of camping out to get concert tickets - including the time, while waiting to buy tickets to the country group Alabama, when she woke up with several inches of snow on her sleeping bag - Collins has figured out the fine points of waiting in line.
And like a lot of Utahns recently, she has had plenty of chances to practice.
In the past six weeks, Utahns have camped out for Garth Brooks, Metallica, the Cure and Neil Diamond, as well as McEntire.
While one-night ticket vigils have been common for years, fans have now upped the
ante. All the big-name acts this spring and summer have inspired two- and three-night sleepovers.
For Karen, second in the McEntire line, this was her second line in three days. The night before she had slept outside so she could buy a Neil Diamond ticket.
She brought not only her sleeping bag and her stationery but also her cellular phone, so she could call in sick to work. She is not the only person in line to suddenly be taken ill.
The thing about waiting in line is that you can't let a little thing like a job get in your way. At the Delta Center and at all Smith'sTix outlets, security people take roll every two hours. If you're not in line when they call your name you forfeit your chance to buy a ticket.
"They pulled someone off the list who was in the bathroom," explains 13-year-old Jaralynn Edwards. "But they let someone back in who was changing her baby's diaper."
Jaralynn is sitting/sleeping in line with her sisters Meredith, 15, and Shauna, 20. The Edwards girls are planning to buy tickets for their mom and dad, too, as a surprise. Each person in line is allowed to buy six tickets.
Six weeks ago, the sisters slept out two nights to get good tickets for Garth Brooks. Despite their valiant waiting, however, the girls got "really bad seats" behind the lights and the amplifiers.
"It was section 13, portal N, row 29," reminisces Meredith.
See WAITING on W3
That's the other thing about waiting in line. Even if you've slept out in the rain and endured unspeakable boredom, you still probably won't get front-row tickets and you might not even get row 29.
At the hour that tickets officially go on sale, 55 computers light up at 26 sites, so tickets sell quickly. Within 90 minutes after the Garth Brooks ticket windows opened, all 18,000 seats were sold. More than 800 people were turned away.
Some of the thousands of people in the various Garth Brooks lines drank alcohol and started fist fights, says Datatix general manager Lee Walker.
Since that wait-in in early May, the Delta Center and Smith'sTix have begun their new wristband policy. Now, as soon as 50 people queue up, security at the Delta Center and Smith'sTix begin taking down names and issuing wristbands. Every two hours they call roll.
This keeps things orderly. It keeps people from signing up early and then going home for two days. It keeps friends from inserting themselves into the line at the last minute.
The Delta Center no longer allows tents, says Brad Freckleton, the arena's director of security. Officials worried that they couldn't effectively police what was going on under the rainproof nylon.
Besides, adds Freckleton, "once you have tents, then you might get campers, and then motor homes and open fires."
Despite the occasional rowdy fan, however, most of the people who wait in the lines are well-mannered, he says. Most seem to enjoy the wait as much as they do the eventual concert.
"You must really like Reba McEntire," the journalist asks Tobie Solberg, who is waiting in line between Penny Collins and the Edwards sisters. Tobie nods her head, but not as enthusiastically as you might expect for someone who is spending nearly 48 hours in a line.
"I like good tickets," she explains.
Freckleton, who has watched over lots of lines, isn't surprised. "I think for some of them, it just becomes a conquest."