30 posts tagged “road trip”
This last Monday, Emily and I had tickets to see Sigur Ros in Portland. We decided to head down a day early and spend the night in the lovely city to the south to get away from the regular pace of life, if only for a short while. Thus, it only made sense to have a Portland theme for this week’s ‘five things’, in honor of all the things that brought us joy over our short 40 hour vacation.
1. Kennedy School - “McMenamins” is a household word throughout Oregon and Washington, signifying a vast array of great places to enjoy with family and friends — a dream that began humbly more than 20 years ago in the hearts of brothers Mike and Brian McMenamin. The siblings are now rightfully considered two of the pioneers of the Northwest microbrew and historic hotels industries.”
That’s from the press room at McMenamins.com. I wasn’t sure how to define it myself, so I figured I would let them do the work instead. For those of you who are unfamiliar with McMenamins, you simply need to do whatever it takes to encounter them here in the Pacific Northwest at some point in your life.
They have great pubs and restaurants filled with a delightful atmosphere and ambiance. They make really tasty beer, like their Terminator Stout. And they also have amazing hotels, hotels so great that one played a large role in our decision to head to Portland early in the first place. If our prospect of heading down early would have meant staying at a Holiday Inn Express somewhere, we would have passed, but when heading down early meant spending the night at the Kennedy School… that was an entirely different story.
Kennedy School is a McMenamins hotel which was a public elementary school from 1915 until 1975 (you can check out the full history here). It is hands down the best hotel I’ve ever stayed in. Some of its many features include classrooms converted into hotel rooms, chalkboards and all, a heated soaking pool, a movie theater (featuring free admission to paid guests), a full McMenamins restaurant, two medium size bars which serve a full menu of food, and two tiny bars which are cozy and charming.
We loved our evening there, and we look forward to heading back. In fact, Emily and I have already started the preliminary planning for our next McMenamins trips, both back to Kennedy School again, and to their other hotels here in Oregon and Washington.
2. Powell’s Books - Much like McMenamins, if you live in the Pacific Northwest the existence of Powell’s Books is already well known to you. It’s the world largest independent new and used book store, and while that might sound like too many qualifiers to be impressive, have no fear. Powell’s is overwhelming huge. It’s filled with wonderful booky goodness.
Powell’s has an impressive selection of books. Regardless of what sort of book you’re looking for, Powell’s is a great place to browse. Although, you will probably only be able to browse a few sections if you have limited time because the store is literally a city block. Emily and I spent Sunday afternoon there and bought some lovely used books cheap. Between the two of us, I finally found a tshirt there in my size, and beyond that we got Watership Down, Ender’s Game, For Whom The Bell Tolls, A Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, The Catcher In The Rye, A Widow For One Year and Until I Find You. That will lead to some lovely, leisurely reading in between school work over the next few months.
As is the case with everything here on this Portland list (with the obvious exception of the Sigur Ros concert), you need to be sure to get to Powell’s if ever you’re in Portland.
3. Horse Brass Pub - I’m not the only one who says that The Horse Brass Pub is great. Don Miller mentions it at length in Blue Like Jazz, it has been featured on Food Network and the Travel Channel as having the most authentic fish & chips in the US, and I don’t personally know anyone who has visited it without referring to it with affection later. However, this is my blog, so the fact that I love it is enough.
The fish & chips really is fantastic, easily my favorite anywhere, the beer selection is top notch, featuring plenty of beers on tap, including season guest brews, you can top those off with a delicious serving of their bread pudding (again, easily my favorite anywhere), and the atmosphere is more authentic and homey than you’re typical ‘English’ pub in the states. I actually need to stop writing about it now because the mere idea of it is filling me with the desire to head out to my car and drive down tonight!
4. Black Butte Porter - One of the beer’s on tap at Horse Brass, along with any other bar that knows what’s good for them, comes courtesy of Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon. It’s a little brew known as Black Butte Porter and it’s a tasty companion to those Horse Brass fish & chips. My encounter with it this weekend was brief, but it was a highlight nonetheless.
5. Sigur Ros Concert - The concert, and the actual reason for heading to Portland, didn’t disappoint either. At first the concert was simply satisfyingly entertaining. Yet, as the show progressed the band showed us a variety of the proverbial tricks up their sleeves. Visually the show had much to offer, even without the use of any impressive video footage to accompany the show.
Once the band got to the second to last song in their initial, pre-encore set, my enjoyment needle pushed past content and into euphoric. The last two songs of said set were celeberatory and uplifting. Whereas most concerts tend to allow the act to grow larger while the audience at times shrinks away into becoming a mere cheering track, during the last song before the encore, it was as if everyone in the room got bigger somehow. It was marvelous. =)
So anyway, I forgot to mention that while we were in Vegas we got our window fixed at the local VW dealership. This made another drive through the desert far more enjoyable as we didn't both have pounding headaches thanks to the rushing air.
While there were more mishaps still waiting for us on the trip as a whole, the drive to L.A. went by without incident and we were able to get in and spend some time that evening with Waldo and his girlfriend Josephine Ofins.
Here is the trip progress as of our arrival in the LOs if there is still anyone out there reading it.
Trip Mileage so far: 5553
States
driven thru: 17
(New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, plus the
District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, Ohio (x2), Indiana (x2), Illinois
(x3), Wisconsin, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico,
Arizona, Nevada, California)
License
Plate Game Progress: 50 of 50,
plus DC, 5 Provinces and Special
Diplomat Plates.
So, in the end, we made through our whole Grand Canyon experience without losing anything from the car. After spending all the time we could spare basking in the remarkable beauty of the Grand Canyon it was time to make the trip through the desert to make our planned nighttime arrival in Las Vegas. The trip was obviously partially influenced by the fact that we had to make said trip with the driver's side window missing. The heat of the desert wasn't so bad, because even though it was over 100 degrees at night, we could still use the air conditioning if we were willing to sacrifice gas mileage. The part that sucked was the fact that with the window all the way down it isn't too fun to drive the 70-80 mph required to arrive in Las Vegas before 2 in the morning. Yet, alas, we made it in the end, and it wasn't all that bad after all.
We found our way to The Strip in Vegas as visions of Swingers and Ocean's 11 flashed past my mind's eye. We made our way from long red light to long red light until finally we laid eyes on the Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino where we would be spending our two nights in town. We dropped our three windowed car at the Valet Parking Station, gave our luggage to the appropriate hotel employee, and tiredly stumbled into the lobby, covered with the dirt of the Grand Canyon. Personally, being new to the whole Hotwire.com thing, I've paid attention from place to place to see if the Desk Attendant would be rude or condescending when they saw we were paying much less per night than the hotel's other patrons; in no city was I more curious about what our reception would be than Vegas. Little did I know that our experience would be quite the opposite of 'rude' or 'condescending', on the contrary, as we checked in we were informed that since they had a free suite they were upgrading us for free. Keep in mind that we were already paying 150 a night for a room that was supposed to be 300 a night, for a standard room, so the upgrade to a suite on top of all that seemed too good to be true. Even after we were upstairs we thought we were on some hidden camera show or something. The best part, we could see the Bellagio Fountain from our suite window, all that was missing was a background rendition of Clair de Lune. (more blog after the pictures.)
We enjoyed our 40 hour stay, visiting the various casinos, seeing all there was to see, we even took in a ridiculous Pirate show in front of the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino. And while there is something to be said for the appraisal that Vegas is basically Disney World for the depraved, there is also fun to be had by those who aren't looking for gambling, prostitutes, strippers, or the late night club/drug scene.
So, with Vegas officially 'visited' we could finally head to Los Angeles to spend the next two weeks with W. and his girlfriend J.
Sorry everyone. I know it has been a long time since I left everyone hanging about the whole window incident. Sadly, this much time will make the conclusion of the story inevitably disappointing. So, as I was saying...
With the window stuck inside my door I informed my car, the door, and the window that I was very angry with all of them. We were worried as we tried to figure out what we were going to do that this sad development was going to be a damper on our Grand Canyon experience. The greatest fear was that we would have to miss the Grand Canyon altogether. Mind you, we have a tremendous amount of stuff in our car. Two laptops, one of those little personal DVD players, all of our clothes, my ipod, tons of DVDs; basically a large assortment of things that are worth stealing and can be carried quietly away by the handful. It was troubling to consider the prospect of leaving the car unmanned (and unwomanned) for a large period of time with no driver's window. Fortunately, after a few moments, we realized we could just move everything valuable into the trunk and let the car alarm keep everything safely locked away there if someone were to open the door through the window.
However, moving everything valuable to the trunk sounds much simpler than it actually is. We have a ton of crap in our car, being that we are on the road for two months when all is said and done, so it was no small task to prioritize everything in the eyes of a would-be bandit. Most importantly was really just to keep everything out of view that would be enticing, and also keep everything out of easy reach of the window because that would make it possible for someone to take without even the potential of anyone noticing.
So, after finally completing that task and covering ourselves with sufficient sunscreen to protect our skin from the relentless Arizona sun, it was finally time to see what we'd been waiting for.
To set this up a bit more I have (like everyone else) seen loads of pictures of the Grand Canyon, I have seen movies with bits of the Grand Canyon in it. This left me really curious as to what all the fuss was about because, while the pictures were in fact beautiful, I wondered what led to the billing that the Grand Canyon was the one thing that never disappointed and always somehow exceeded one's expectations. I was also given fair reason to be in a bad mood and miss some of the natural splendor due to my own internal pity party. Let me tell you folks, for those who haven't seen it, a glimpse of the Grand Canyon washes away a fair amount of skepticism, doubt, self-pity, and exhaustion immediately; for me it also washed away a fair amount of my fear of heights for a bit and created the strong desire to climb up and down whatever I could find.
The Grand Canyon can really only be described as mindbogglingly beautiful. No string of adjectives can do it justice, no series of pictures can give a clue as to what it feels like to stand at its rim. Even though we visited on June 24th (how freaking behind can I possibly get in this blog?) I still can't really figure out how to describe to you what we saw.
We only visited a portion of the Southern Rim due to our lack of time. It would have taken hours of driving to visit any of the other rims; including the Western Rim which is the home of the new, and already famous, glass walkway thing. Yet even scratching the surface for a few hours was enough to make us feel at once both small and yet significant. It was certainly another experience we feel blessed to have enjoyed on our trip. It even carried us through our drive through the desert heat with the window down.
So, as with many of the awesome stuff we got to see on our tour of the country, I urge you to visit the Grand Canyon should you ever get the chance.
For the pictures the loading process was screwed up so I have them over in the Photos section, they just aren't actually in the blog. So, enjoy them... just not here in this post.
After several legs of the trip passing without incident, I guess we were about due for another adventure. Our plan was to spend the day in Phoenix and then make the short trip up to Flagstaff to sleep. It would help us by getting us closer to the Grand Canyon so it was possible to wake up in the morning and make it into the Park early enough to see the sights and still make the trip to Las Vegas. What we didn't realize was that we had decided to stay in Flagstaff the same weekend as everyone else within a 4 state radius. We tried 8 hotels and not one had a single vacancy available. We would have thought it was poor planning but, alas, the hotel clerks were as baffled as we were at the lack of rooms available. Just one of those things apparently.
So, here we were in Flagstaff, Arizona at 11:00 at night, trying to figure out whether or not we would take a blind chance on staying in Williams (which is by far a more popular place to sleep when visiting the Grand Canyon) or sleep in the Walmart parking lot (which wouldn't have been a particularly comfortable option, but with the cool weather we were enjoying it was in fact an option. We opted for Williams, or perhaps something we saw along the way.
We only passed one hotel between Flagstaff and Williams and it was as devoid of vacancy as the rest. As a side note, to any hotel managers out there, what the hell happened to those signs on a hotel that show whether or not you have vacancy? A sign like this would have helped us save a lot of time running into various hotel lobbys to ask if they had rooms available. Anyway, we dreaded arriving in Williams because even if they did have rooms available the ones posted on the internet were much more expensive than Flagstaff, so we were worried what a good night's sleep was going to do to our already dwindling finances.
As it would turn out, Williams is a pretty cool place. It's one of those little towns that sits on historic Route 66 that has been restored to have the charm of the towns as they existed back before Interstates. Think Radiator Springs from the movie Cars. However, as charming as Williams was the best part was that after two more misses, we found a hotel that had 1 remaining room, and not only was it the last one but it was relatively inexpensive. It turned out to be a good thing that we decided to try Williams. Sadly, this wasn't the end of our adventure.
We awoke the next morning and made the 60 mile trip North to the Grand Canyon. It was a nice, relaxing drive. We stopped just before the entrance to the Park at the National Geographic Welcome Center to take in the Grand Canyon IMAX movie, which was worth the cost of admission. You can also buy your pass to park at the Grand Canyon National Park at the Welcome Center so we got that out of the way as well.
Finally it was time for us to see the Grand Canyon in person for the first time ever, so we drove the last mile or so into the Park.
Upon arriving we saw that there was an empty lane for people who already had their parking pass. As we drove over I put my window down the show the Ranger my pass, but the Ranger ended up being on Emily's side of the car so she showed the Ranger our pass and drove into the Park. No longer needing my window down, I hit the button to roll it up, but upon reaching the top it made an odd sound as if it had hit something in the track. Our curiosity was aroused by this odd noise, so I put the window back down to see if it would make the sound again... this was a mistake.
The window made it about half way down before I started to put the window back up to see if it would repeat the odd sound we had heard moments earlier. The window lurched, made a pathetic attempt to get back up as if it were an animal struck with a tranquilizer dart, and then proceeded to drop off the track and into my door. Hoping I didn't see what I had in fact just seen I hit the up button one more time. The motor tried, but there was no longer a window on the track, just a piece of glass that used to be my window, now trapped in my door.
This turn of events made me unhappy.
I suppose technically the stuff that comes next fits into the Grand Canyon post, and this is just the trip to the Grand Canyon, so to find out what happens with the window you'll just have to tune in for the next post. Until then, have a lovely weekend.
Our time in Phoenix was more time where we could be in the company of great people. We spent the few days we were there with Susan, a friend of my family who I've known since I was around 10. I haven't really seen her at all since she moved back to the West Coast a few years ago, so since she has now settled in Phoenix where her son and grandchildren live we made sure to stop in to see her. It was really great catching up and spending time with an old friend who, like so many of our friends, is more like family. I even got to enjoy some of the meals she makes that I've missed.
For the most part our time in Phoenix was purely social in nature. We did stop in for the Diamondbacks game, but aside from that we spent the rest of the time with Susan and couple Emily knows who retired to Phoenix. We went to lunch with said couple and it was great because they are as New York City as you can get, it was our East Coast moment.
So, while we didn't really get to check out downtown Phoenix, it was still a lovely, uneventful time that confirmed how good I am at talking well into the morning if I'm not careful.
Phoenix meant another ballpark checked off the lifetime progress list. It also marked the first city on the trip where we showed up in the city without any tickets to a game, which worked out fine because the reality that it was an Arizona Diamondbacks game removed any sense of urgency inspired in some other cities by the fear of a sellout. It worked out just fine.
So, here we go:
The Game:
I was pretty excited when I learned that our trip to see the Diamondbacks was going to give us a chance to see a start by Brandon Webb, who is one of the best young pitchers in the game. Sadly, the game didn't live up to its billing. You would have thought that Webb would have been able to make fairly easy work of the Baltimore Orioles, still fairly fresh off the firing of yet another Manager (as if it is somehow not the quality of the team assembled that leads to the perennial horridness that comes to Camden each year). Instead, Webb was almost completely ineffective, helped along quite a bit by the reality that the D-Backs forgot to use those leathery things on their hands often referred to as Gloves or Mitts. The defense was horrible to say the very least. In the end the O's ran away with an easy victory in which they successfully disguised themselves as an offensive juggernaut.
Strengths:
One of the main strengths of the stadium for me personally was simply that it exceeded my expectations. I expected it to be a major lowlight of the trip and it didn't suck nearly as much as I thought it would. A retractable roof is always cool, and the stadium had several nice restaurants or 'clubs.' The tier we were on even had a nice indoor seats to sit in while you ate, although they didn't provide a view of the field so get there early to use them.
Another perk that was unique thus far out of every stadium I visited was directly related to my official visit checklist. At every stadium, among other things, I get one of those little baseball helmets filled with ice cream. Arizona was the first stadium that had not only the home team, but also the visiting team's helmet to enjoy ice cream in. This was of special note because out of the 18 stadiums I've been to, two of them actually didn't have the helmets; one was the Chicago Cubs, the other was the Baltimore Orioles. So I was able to get a Baltimore Orioles helmet in Arizona even though I wasn't able to get one in Baltimore. A lovely bonus. Now I am only missing one helmet from my trip after I had long given up hope of getting an Orioles helmet.
Weaknesses:
The grass wasn't very healthy. Granted, this is Arizona we are talking about, but a grounds crew has a remarkable amount of resources available to them to keep the grass green and beautiful, and Arizona's failed.
I've noted that the strength of the ice cream helmets, finding ice cream however is another story. We were on the second tier, and there was no ice cream for sale ANYWHERE on the second tier. I've never seen that before, anywhere. Also, once I got to the first floor where they had ice cream they only accepted cash. Of all the ballparks I have been to the only place we needed cash was for parking. This ended being a hassle because I didn't have cash on me. Luckily Emily had some or else it would have meant deciding between skipping ice cream and paying the $2.00 ATM fee. It is high time that the D-Backs concessions joined the 21st Century.
Also, outside the fact that it exceeded my low expectations it wasn't particularly exciting as a ballpark. The Arizona fans who showed up were fun and were into the game the whole time in spite of the rout their team was being handed, they deserve a much better stadium than they've been given. If ownership could build a better stadium for the fans as this young team develops into what could be an exciting NL powerhouse, Phoenix has the potential to be a baseball town... but I'm not holding my breath.
It appears one stadium is going to be axed and left for another time. We are running out of money in light of the fact that we still have a lot to do to actually move across the country, so we can't afford to stay in the Bay Area for the necessary time to wait for Oakland to come back into town. So, instead, we will be seeing a Giants game at AT&T before starting the trip up to Seattle. We figure we are bound to make another trip down to see more of San Francisco during which we can make a brief trip to Oakland to see an A's game.
I was really looking forward to seeing San Francisco so the fact that we are significantly shortening our time there saddens me, but after all we have been able to enjoy on this amazing trip I certainly can't complain. We'll probably plan for the trip to Oakland next summer instead since it isn't too terribly hard to get there from Seattle during a prolonged break of some sort.
After a great time in Denver the plan was to drive diagonally down through the mountains to the bottom left hand corner of Colorado, to spend the night in a little town called Cortez. Emily had always wanted to go to Four Corners to stand on the plaque and take a picture of her feet as she simultaneously stood in four states at once. Cortez seemed like a good stopping point for us to get to Four Corners early so we could drive down to Phoenix afterward where we would be staying with a family friend for a few days.
The first stop on our journey was a brief detour to Old School Burgers, originally known as Burgers 'n' Sports, to enjoy some lunch at the burger joint co-founded by former Yankee great Goose Gossage. It is often compared to the world famous In 'n' Out Burgers, and while it doesn't quite match up in my estimation, it was still a tasty lunch.
Afterward we made our way to Cortez. The drive was long, but remarkably beautiful.
Rather than ending with an exclamation point, it actually began with one when we decided to make a stop at the Garden of the Gods outside Colorado Springs. It was a fantastic decision. If you're ever in the area be sure to stop in, our only regret was that we didn't have more time to spend there due to the long drive ahead of us.
The rest of the drive was beautiful as well. We were surrounded by natural beauty the whole way through. For organization's sake I will save my thoughts on this beauty for the next blog, but suffice it to say that much of what we have seen on this trip has been truly awe-inspiring.
We made it to Cortez safely in time to wander around and see what could be seen in the dark. Due to a lack of other options at the hour we got some McDonald's and parked in the Pizza Hut/Dairy Queen parking lot to partake in our fast food.
This is when we got the bad news. One of the employees of Dairy Queen noticed us looking at a map as he took out the trash for the day and checked to make sure we didn't need any help finding anything. When we let him know we were mapping out our journey from Four Corners to Phoenix he let us know that Four Corners now charges for parking AND entrance onto the property. This in and of itself would have just been a drag, but the real drag was that they no longer allow you to stand on the plaque. The fact that Emily would be barred from fulfilling a childhood dream sucked, and that she would be charged TWICE in addition added insult to injury. She made the decision that she would ignore my offer to just jump the fence and stand on the plaque before getting thrown out and instead we would just skip Four Corners altogether. I felt horrible because she was really looking forward to this brief detour. The Dairy Queen guy must have sensed Emily's disappointment because he came back out a little later with some free soda for each of us.
Even after enjoying some lovely Cortez hospitality, it was early enough that I decided there was no reason to stay in Cortez if we weren't going to Four Corners the next day. We decided to drive down into New Mexico and hit the Interstate before retiring in the early hours of the morning. It worked out well, but let me tell you that having never been to New Mexico it is downright creepy to drive through it in the darkness. Surrounded on both sides by the shadows of huge rock formations lit only barely by moonlight is disconcerting indeed. It was like driving past huge sleeping dragons, the darkness made it feel as if the rock shadows were haunted by some sort of unnatural beast or ghost or perhaps just some old fashioned mutants. I'm damn glad the car didn't break down that's for sure.
We also underestimated just how spread out things are on the Interstate in the desert because we ended up having to drive all the way into Holbrook, Arizona before settling in for the night. It was another adventure to add to the list and even added another state onto our grand total, even though we only saw it by the dimmest of moonlight.
The next morning we woke up and headed to Flagstaff for some Starbucks time before driving the rest of the way to Phoenix to complete that leg of the trip.
So, here is the trip progress as we arrived in Phoenix:
Trip Mileage so far: 4488
States
driven thru: 15 (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, plus the
District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, Ohio (x2), Indiana (x2), Illinois (x3), Wisconsin, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona)
License
Plate Game Progress: 50 of 50,
plus DC, 5 Provinces and Special
Diplomat Plates: Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, DC, Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
California, Nevada, West Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, Missouri,
Oklahoma, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, Washington, Utah, Wisconsin,
Maine, Mississippi, Iowa, North Dakota, Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota,
Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, Louisiana, Montana, Arizona, Illinois,
Oregon, Arkansas, Kansas, Alaska, Wyoming, Hawaii, New Mexico. Also:
Quebec, Ontario,
New Brunswick, Manitoba, Saskatchewan.
Stadium Progress:
This trip: 7
- PNC Park (Pittsburgh), Jacobs Field
(Cleveland), Wrigley Field (Chicago), Miller Park (Milwaukee), U.S.
Cellular Field (Chicago), Great American Ballpark (Cincinnati), Busch Stadium (St. Louis), Coors Field (Denver).
Lifetime: 16 of 30 - AL: Yankee Stadium*, Fenway Park, Oriole Park @ Camden Yards, Tropicana Field, Jacobs Field, Kauffman Stadium, Safeco Field, U.S. Cellular Field - NL: Shea Stadium*, Citizens Bank Ballpark, PNC Park, Miller Park, Wrigley Field, Miller Park, Great American Ballpark, Busch Stadium, Coors Field. (I've also been to a game at Skydome before it was called Rogers Centre, but in the rules I created it doesn't count as an official visit.)
*New stadiums to open in 2009.
Another stadium in the books. It's funny to think that not long ago I hadn't even made it a third of the way to my goal of seeing all 30 Major League stadiums, and now I've made it past half way. Coors was another crown jewel for the MLB to show off to all who appreciate a great ballpark.
The Game
As far as the game was concerned, it was the beginning of this long string of losing for the Yankees. They had started playing a bit more like everyone expected them to play at the start of the year, even better than that, but now they have fallen back into their losing ways, and it looks like this will be a sad end to the Joe Torre era.
Strengths
Coors was another beautiful ballpark. Simple. Classy. Easy on the eyes all around.
The scoreboard was probably my favorite part. The home plate entrance was beautiful as well. All of it was great when it comes down to it. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking as far as the strengths are concerned.
Weaknesses
The only weakness was really the fans. It wouldn't have been too bad if they just hated the Yankees and rode the Yankee fans the whole game, everyone does that.
I'm used to the same unoriginal whining from the Yankee-haters. “Yankees Suck!” Oh, wow, did you come up with that one all on your own? Amazing. Has anyone ever told you that you should do stand up. You're downright hilarious. Next you'll be making some hilarious joke about the Yankees payroll. You should be in movies.
The reason the Rockies fans were particularly lame at this contest was that first off none of them showed up. They were outnumbered by of ratio of somewhere around 4 to 1 at least. So, rather than getting mad at their fellow fans for staying home, they got mad at us for showing up. This in an of itself wouldn't have been so bad. The tipping point was that the fans were silent heading into the game. You would think the Rockies fans were on their way to an execution. They wouldn't make eye contact, they sat silently in their seats. However once the victory was assured they wouldn't shut up. Emily and I enjoyed laughing at how ridiculous it all was, but it was pretty spineless as far as sports fans go. Yankees and Red Sox fans have for the most part earned their reputation for being obnoxious, they often take their loyalty to their team WAY too far, but at least they are consistent.
One Rockies fan who shouted at me for wearing a Yankees hat FROM HIS CAR after the game told me I'd probably never been to New York. When I informed him I lived there his brilliant response was “What the hell are you doing in Colorado?!?” I was too dumbfounded to respond. Apparently the guy hadn't heard of the concept of a vacation. The same driver also threatened to sick his dog on another Yankee fan.
In fairness I am assuming these were the worst of the Rockies fans, that there are tons who are as classy and honor the game as much as their ballpark does. It was much more expensive than most Rockies games with the Premium Ticket Prices, so many probably stayed home because of that, but the ones who were at this game were downright nuts.
But, enough about the fans, here are the beautiful stadium pictures:
