Vacation

I took a vacation. Imagine that.

And it wasn’t one of those sissified, namby-pamby, lie about on the beach all day and read trashy novels sort of vacations either. This was a knock-down, drag-out, roadtrip of strange and wondrous experiences. Sadly, I only have photos of one of the strange and wondrous experiences which I will bore you all with after the break.

In three days I was in Baltimore, Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York and Camden. Now that’s a quality time. I saw Social Distortion, Bad Religion, Tiger Army, some infantile looking brats who grew up watching too many Poison videos while listening to the Ramones, and a whole bunch of other random bands.

I saw King Tut’s stuff for the third time on this latest trip to America, played video games at Dave and Busters, dealt with rush hour traffic in Chadd’s Ford, visited Brandywine Battlefield and helped rip apart a 1942 Willys Jeep.

And, I went to the Bronx.

161st St. and River Ave. My first trip to the Dark Side. The belly of the beast.

Yankee Stadium.

That’s the view from the cheap seats.

That would be Alex “A Fraud” Rodriguez queuing up for the first of three tries at hitting home run number 500. You always knew when the man was up – the entire stadium stood up and focused their cameras. And he didn’t hit it. I went to two goddamn Yankees games in one week and he couldn’t even manage one history-making home run. Lousy bum.

Yes, I went to Yankee Stadium and survived to tell the tale. In fact, I actually cheered for the Bombers and was bummed when the lost to Ozzie’s White Sox. It’s impossible not to cheer for the Yanks in the Stadium. Even if you weren’t petrified of being shivved and your body dumped in the Bronx, the atmosphere is so incredible you want to go along with your 45,000 closest friends.

Plus, it was a Roger Clemens day.

For a whole 1 ^2/3 innings until he gave up 8 runs on 9 hits with 0 strike outs. Then Mr. Torre made the stroll:

It was a rough game. Damned hot – although I was in the shade – and a game time of something over four hours. There were sixteen runs scored (eight apiece) in the second inning alone. And they stopped beer sales at 3:30 even though we were only in the middle innings. Painful.

Sadly the picture is too small, but this really was the best part of the day.

That would be 7-4 final, Red Sox over Orioles while the Yankees were down 12-9 in the bottom of the eighth. I clapped very surreptitiously. It made me happy.

Then it was off for a stroll down Fifth Ave. But not without experiencing the head end of the Bronx El and a glimpse of New Yankee Stadium.