Travel

Here’s something I haven’t done in a while – launched myself on successive weeks halfway across a continent with a job to do and a limited amount of time in which to do it. Five cities, five teams in five days over two weeks. What a trip!

The feeling is a lot different than it used to be. In the old days my motto was “Anywhere but Here.” Get me out of here, get me gone, go somewhere and milk somewhere else for all it is worth. Now I have a family left behind struggling with my absence and wishing I was there. Now I keep the trips short and sweet, do the job, pack in as much fun as possible and get home.

So I get to miss my family but still see a lot of beautiful Kansas City, ride up the St. Louis Arch, visit friends in Chicago, drive through Indiana and spend another night in Nashville.

It ain’t all pain and suffering, my friends. Just mostly.

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Europe

Two years ago today I woke up with one of the more painful hangovers in my life. Despite the sickness I had to haul myself 90 minutes across the state of Pennsylvania, book a London hotel, secure passage on a ferry to Normandy and wait for my late-night ride to the airport for the start of the grand adventure. By 11 o’clock that evening I had the last piece of kit I needed (a USB phone charger) and was aboard a Virgin jet non-stop to Heathrow Airport, London, UK.

Whee!

What started out years ago as a desire to visit the Norman landing beaches on D-Day turned into a month-long odyssey through England, France and Italy with stops in London, Portsmouth, Caen, Cherbourg, Paris, Rome, Florence, and a number of other small towns along the way. I saw Utah, Omaha, Juno, Sword and Gold Beaches along with Pointe-du-Hoc, the Merville Battery, Pegasus Bridge, Ouistreham, the Arromanches Mulberry and St Mere Eglise. I saw the RAF Memorial, Apsley House, Duxford Airfield, the National Army Museum, the Cabinet War Rooms, the British Museum, and the HMS Victory. I saw Notre Dame, Napoleon’s Tomb, Montmartre, Saint Chappele, the Louvre, Versailles, and Euro Disney. I saw the Pantheon, Coliseum, Circus Maximus, Palatine Hill, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Duomo, and Vatican City.

Hell, I covered so much ground I even got to see two old friends and a cousin!

After all that, I came back to the dear old United States of America and turned a number of good ideas into a five month circumnavigation of the entire country.

That’s a story for another day a month, a week and a day from now when that anniversary occurs.

I’ll leave you with the highlights of the trip.

Europe_2008

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Season

Opening Day.

The third finest day of the year. Maybe the fourth finest on years when St. Patrick’s Day is an honest hoolie.

I’ve only missed one Opening Day since 2005. In 2007 some gigantically evil bastard scheduled a massive work project requiring weeks of around the clock attention for the Opening Day weekend. I quit that job.

Now I’ve got the time and the inclination but neither Baltimore nor Philadelphia gets a home Opening Day. The Phillies, however, are opening in Washington, DC against the lowly Nationals. That shouldn’t be too hard to score tickets to, right? I mean, the Nats are worse than the friggin’ Orioles for chrissakes.

Well, you’d be wrong. I assume it’s all bandwagon Phillies fans. Every ticket is sold and the scalped ones are being sold at fantastic prices. I paid less for better tickets to the flag raising ceremony Opening Night in Philadelphia last year than nosebleeds in DC are going for now.

If that weren’t difficult enough to swallow I find out the President of the United States is attending the game to recreate the 100th anniversary of Grover Cleveland’s first pitch.

Now I’ve been to an Opening Day with the President in Cincinnati in 2006. It’s a right royal pain in the ass. There are metal detectors, snipers and an extended ceremony. Fair enough. I’d still go.

But honestly, our current President isn’t fit to carry Grover Cleveland’s jock. And I don’t want to share the same city or state with that jug-eared communist traitor. Let alone the same ballpark. Hell, the godamned guy plays basketball fer chrissakes. Why can’t he leave my game the hell alone?

Sod it. I can have more fun watching Red Sox Opening Night and Phillies Opening Day with a case of PBR and some pork rinds at home than I could being amongst Washingtonians and Constitution-shredding tyrants.

I’ll miss the sunshine.

It’s all good. Baseball is officially back.

Posted in The Baseball Gods | 1 Comment

Traffic

What the hell is going on?

Did the population of this area suddenly triple in the last sixty days?

Used to be I could leave work at 5:30 and more or less coast all the way into Philadelphia where I could find a parking space no more than one block from my house on my first drive around the block.

Now I leave at 5:30, sit in traffic for thirty minutes to go about five miles, get back to Philadelphia, drive around multiple blocks in ever-increasing circles for another thirty minutes and finally settle on a dubiously legal parking space no more than one mile from my house on my fifth drive around the block.

I swear to Jesus Christ Almighty – hanging on the cross at this very minute – the next time it takes me thirty minutes to find a parking space I am going to dynamite every single car sitting in a permit legal parking spot within a two block radius that has New Jersey tags.

Those bastards make my life difficult enough without taking up my parking space to re-enact their favorite scenes from Jersey Shore at Fat Tuesdays on a Thursday night.

Anyone up for a good Jersey-stomping flash mob?

Family excepted, of course. Hell, they might help.

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Gulf

Surely it is inarguable that the debate over a national mandate epitomizes the central ideological divide in the country today.

In broad terms, there is one side that believes liberty can be subverted for the collective good because government often makes more efficient and more moral choices.

Then there is the other side, which believes that people who believe such twaddle are seditious pinkos.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_14742998#ixzz0j82DScQ4

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