While my boys and I have taken a number of minor league baseball trips over the years, this year, for the first time ever, I joined my older brothers Rich and Steve for a whirlwind tour that included major league games in St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee. Rich and Steve have been doing this gig pretty consistently since Steve retired from the Air Force and moved back to Altoona in 1992, but this was the first time I had joined them.
The trip started on Monday, August 16, which was a travel day (no ballgame planned). I left my house in Hillsborough around 6:15 AM and drove up to Rich’s home in Manassas and then we left from there for Zanesville, OH where my sister Joni and brother-in-law Phil graciously allowed us to spend the night.
I packed some goodies for the week to complement the smorgasbord of snacks that Rich loaded into the RV:
- Food Lion Brand Barbecue Potato Chips and “Classic” Sun Chips
- 12 Bottles of New Castle Brown Ale
- 12 Bottles of Samuel Adams Summer Pale Ale
- Case of Bottled Water
(When one is considering the attributes of a snack, one often does not consider its loudness. I didn’t have any sophisticated digital sound level meter or anything like it, but I would estimate the decibels of this bag of Sun Chips to be between that of a 747 takeoff and a rock concert.)
Anyways, by the time I was halfway to Manassas, I realized that I had forgotten to pack soap, shampoo, sun block, and a baseball cap. (Who the hell takes a baseball trip and forgets to pack a baseball cap?) Fortunately, I took care of the toiletries with a stop at a 7-11 and Rich and Steve had multiple, spare, baseball caps available. I settled on a fitted Pirate cap that was my exact size, 7 1/2. Excellent.
Made good time on the trip to Manassas and pulled onto Eclipse Dr by around 10:30 AM. Right then, I received a call on my cell (wrong number) and when I hung up, I looked back and realized that I had blown right by my brother Steve, who was taking a walk.
Since I had recently blogged about the dis that my brothers gave me on the last game at Forbes Field, Rich and Steve decided to bust my chops. They indicated that, because of Steve’s recent surgery and the complicated logistics around his recovery, I would also not be permitted to attend this trip.
We got on the road by 11:00 headed for Zanesville.
There were three sleeping options and I think that I made out the best. I got to sleep in the top bunk above the driver and front passenger. I could completely stretch out with plenty of room, but just had to be aware of the low clearance up there. Steve got the “formal” bedroom in the back and Rich graciously used the bed that is converted from the dinette area seating. So in addition to doing all the driving on the trip, Rich got the sh
For the first 3.5 days of the trip, I took up residence in the dinette area and Steve rode shotgun up front with Rich. This was sweet. I could spread out there and use the dinette table for reading and even for some blogging later in the trip. Originally I deferred to Steve, thinking that shotgun was the preferred option and the one he wanted, but then it occurred to me by Thursday that maybe Steve actually didn’t want to ride shotgun, so we switched it up from that point on.
- Rich and Lora had loaded the RV refrigerator with a bunch of goodies: beer (of course), water, soda, breakfast foods, lunch meats and breads for sandwiches.
The fridge was really loaded down with drinks. The first three times that Rich or Steve asked me to grab them a beverage, I just nonchalantly walked back (while the vehicle was bouncing around) and opened the refrigerator door and 4 or 5 cans and bottles emerged like projectiles out of the overloaded fridge onto the floor. I finally got the hang of that around the fourth time, opening the door slowly and just cracking it enough to extract the desired item. (Who says that I am a slow learner?)
On this leg of the trip, we went up US-15 through Frederick, MD, where we hooked up with I-70 and then I-68 through Morgantown. This stretch brought back a lot of memories. We passed by Willowdale Drive on US 40 in Frederick, where we had lived between June, 1986 and November, 1988 (chased out of Montgomery County MD by the congestion and high cost of living). Portions of I-68 were just opened in the late 80s, when several road trips were taken from Frederick to Morgantown for some Pitt-WVU clashes. (Couple of good blog posts need to be written about those trips.)
We made good time on the trip – we stopped for lunch in the RV courtesy of Rich’s cold cuts and chips. After we got on I-79 North in Morgantown heading toward I-70 in PA, Steve checked in with Joni to let her know about our target destination time and, wouldn’t you know it, we, just after that, hit some big construction traffic (naturally). At that point, at least, we had Pittsburgh Sports Talk Radio to pass the time – apparently Flozell Adams had a really bad debut for the Steelers against the Detroit Lions.
At this point, the first occurrence of the flapping trim appeared on the RV. Some decorative trim on the passenger side of the RV became detached and started flapping against the passenger side window. We pulled off and reinserted the trim into its channel – we were not quite as efficient as, say Jimmy Johnson’s pit crew in this endeavor but we got the trim back into the channel.
Since Phil has the Fox Sports Net Package on satellite, we retired to the family room to watch the Bucs handle the Marlins 7-1 (what are the chances of that happening?) and then watched Clint Eastwood’s Line of Fire with classic Clint as an aging Secret Service Agent paired against bad guy John Malkovich. Good flick – but I found it hard to get past Steve Hytner (Kenny Bannia from Seinfeld) cast as an SS Agent.
The next morning Joan showed us some photos of the beautiful beach front property she and Phil had bought and also took us through a downstairs tour of some awesome family pictures including a number of Mom and Dad that I had never seen before.
