It Tested So Well in Idaho

So this Arian Foster cat from the Texans came back to earth yesterday against the Redskins after going off against Indianapolis in Week 1 with 231 yards rushing. I watched most of that entertaining game between the Texans and Redskins. If this undrafted free agent keeps on doing work (150 yards per game), he is definitely going to need his own fan club. How does The Arian Nation or The Arian Brotherhood sound?

Baseball Trip - August 20 - Minneapolis to Milwaukee

On Friday, August 19, 2010, we drove back across Wisconsin from Minneapolis to Milwaukee where we watched the Brewers beat the San Diego Padres 10-6 at Miller Park.

The Trip. Given the mileage we had been rolling up, this one felt like a trip to the grocery store. While for most of the trip we had cloudy and overcast conditions in which to travel, this day we experienced some fairly severe thunderstorms on I-94 between Madison and Milwaukee in the late afternoon. RVs have an extremely large mass and surface area, so you can imagine that, like any vehicle with that size and profile, they are susceptible to high winds. We were getting pounded with some severe wind and rain (the kind that bends the trees toward a 60 degree angle).

Baseball Trip - August 19 – Utica to Minneapolis

On August 19, 2010, we drove from Utica, Illinois across Wisconsin to Minneapolis, Minnesota where we watched the Chicago White Sox beat the Minnesota Twins 11-0 at brand new Target Field.

The Back-Story. All three games we saw on this trip involved at least one team in pennant races, but this one had the best back-story.  Minnesota and Chicago have been battling most of the season in a pretty decent division race. This was the third game in a high profile, three game series. Minnesota won the first two games to stretch their division lead to 5 games. Minnesota was hot, having the best record in baseball since the All Star Game.

Baseball Trip – August 18 – St. Louis to Utica

Since our next game was Thursday night in Minneapolis (which is over 560 miles from St. Louis), we drove after the Cardinal game from St. Louis north through the state of Illinois to Utica. This was a trek of roughly 230 miles, which made for a more manageable journey the next day before the Twins game.

Baseball Trip - August 18 - Terre Haute to St. Louis

We drove from Terre Haute, Indiana to St. Louis, Missouri on Wednesday, August 18 and watched the Milwaukee Brewers defeat the St. Louis Cardinals 3-2 at the new Busch Stadium.

Crossing over from Indiana into Illinois, the drive on I-70 was pretty much the same as the day before – lots of cornfields. I-70 runs directly into St. Louis. We did pass the town of Effingham. (What is Effingham? Its what you eat on f’n Easter. Sorry.)

At a gas station just after crossing into Illinois, some guy chatted up Steve while he was filling the tank. When Steve remarked where we were coming from (Terre Haute), this dude started trash talking Terre Haute (or Terrible Haute as he called it), going on about its terrible odor resulting from a waste water treatment facility and a paper plant and some other plant. Kind of weird to get that unsolicited from someone.

Baseball Trip – August 17 - Zanesville to Terre Haute

Day Two of Baseball Trip 2010 was also a travel day as we drove across I-70 through Ohio and Indiana where we camped Tuesday night in Terre Haute, IN.

We left Joni’s house mid-morning and made a brief stopover in Columbus to see Ohio Stadium. For some reason, I never realized that the Shoe and the OSU campus were in such an urban setting (guess I assumed that all the large land grant institutions of the Big Ten were located in pastoral campuses with huge open areas for tailgating). Somehow OSU (sorry tOSU) seems to recruit OK with such a campus located in an urban area. Would be interesting to see how 102,000 get in and out of that location on Fall Saturdays. The stadium itself is pretty impressive architecturally (at least from the external view). They have still preserved the horseshoe configuration – the permanent seating in the one endzone added earlier in the decade is not attached to the rest of the structure.

Parking Wars

I guess this is progress. Apparently winning a couple of ACC games has generated significant increase in interest in Duke football, prompting yet another tweak to the Public Parking options for football games this fall, the second one in two years. New parking map is here. Here is a trip down memory lane – an inventory of parking lots over the last twenty years we have used.

Baseball Trip – August 16 - Hillsborough to Zanesville

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.