Pat's Thoughts - Day 14

It's been a busy couple of days since last I entered anything onto the blog. The days do tend to blur together.

- The Pro Football Hall of Fame was sweet. I am partial to the Baseball Hall of Fame, but still, seeing the busts of all the football greats was awesome too. Would have liked to have spent an entire day there, but the schedule reigns.

- The drive from Canton to DC wasn't too bad. We did get some traffic in Washington during rush hour. And we did get treated to some excitement at the Tampa Bay - Washington game. Got to see the guy for Tampa Bay get kicked out for using pine tar on his glove. It wasn't clear at the time what caused him to be ejected. I thought that it was a foreign substance of some kind, but I didn't know for sure until after the game. Spiced up a fairly ordinary game.

- I was a freshman in college the last time I rode on a passenger train. For all the crap that Amtrak gets, they operate a really nice train service in the Washington - Philadelphia - New York - Boston corridor. It was smooth and the scenery (at least what passed for scenery) flew by. We were in downtown Manhattan before we knew it. Plus we got to see a couple of familiar faces in Russ and Sandy. We were getting bored seeing the same people every day. It was a very nice change.

- This was my first trip to New York City, and all I can say is that it is really crowded. You don't get a sense of how many people are packed together until you get there. I've been in some large cities, but New York simply felt crowded. It was good that we were all able to see the Statue of Liberty and then on the subway to new Yankee Stadium. Some of these newer parks are blending together. But Yankee Stadium is still Yankee Stadium, even if it's new. Citi Park felt quite a bit like Nationals Park, which felt like Progressive Field, which felt like - well, you get the idea. Our schedule is such that we don't really have a chance to savor the atmosphere as much as we would like.

- The Atlanta - Yankee game was home run derby. As Mike was telling Sandy, chicks must dig the long ball. Between games, we got Sandy pointed back to JFK airport for her trip back to Seattle. It was a very quick visit with her, but we'll see her again in a couple of weeks. The Baltimore - Mets game was a fairly non-descript game. But at least it was a close game.

- Then it was some more sight seeing on Thursday morning in New York. Very emotional trip to Ground Zero, then a very nice trip to the Umpire State Building (bad baseball pun). I prefer the view from the top of the Space Needle myself, and I looked for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan but didn't see either of them. Then it was back to Penn Station for the ride to Boston. Another quick trip with few stops and suddenly we were in downtown Boston.

- The Miami - Boston game was okay, but I'm not a Red Sox fan at all. I was looking forward to seeing Fenway Park. I won't say I was disappointed, but there is a world of difference between an ancient stadium like this and the ones we've seen over the past few days. Fenway and Wrigley Field are by far the oldest parks that we will see. And for all of the charm of Fenway, it's an acquired taste. The home team won, which makes it two in a row for the home teams. By my count, the visiting teams have a 10-4 lead. And also by my count, tonight's game in Philadelphia marks the halfway point in the games. Not the halfway point in the mileage, but at least we're halfway through the games.

- Guess what? Not everyone knows your name at Cheers.

- So it's on the train again (not quite Willie Nelson being on the road again, but it will suffice) and to Philadelphia before we get back to DC and get reunited with the Caravan. And we've enjoyed having Russ on this leg of the trip to keep us company.

We're about ready to start putting some serious miles on the road trip in the coming days. We will even have a brief stop in Austin in the next few days. The saga continues....