We drag ourselves out of bed around 830 a.m., shower, and check out. We're 350 miles from Houston, and it's looking like it's going to start pouring rain shortly- no doubt thrilling news for the residents of the Big Easy.
Bourbon St. in the morning light. Note the absence of people- everyone else is sleeping it off. But we've got to move on...
To save time, we skip breakfast and head straight out of town. Of course, we don't even make the western city limits before our resolve cracks, and we find that we're both having a strange craving for IHOP. In particular, I want a Rooty Tooty Fresh N Fruity, with the apple-cinnamon topping on the pancakes. Magically, an IHOP appears along the freeway, and we pull over for a delicious breakfast.
Perhaps because of the late night drinking and (relatively) early rising, it ends up being a very leisurely breakfast, mostly spent in silence reading the newspaper. And it has in fact begun raining torrentially. So we run out to the car and get back on the road.
The Louisiana Superdome. We elect not to wait out the coming storm there.
Ed takes first shift after the IHOP, and so I pop in today's road trip mix:
8/28/07: The Big Mix
1) Hard Travelin' Hootenanny - Woody Guthrie
2) Matt Houston - Original TV Theme
3) Here I Am - Emmylou Harris
4) When I Grow Up - Garbage
5) The Beaten Generation - The The
6) My Generation - The Who
7) Kid Fears - Indigo Girls
8) Jesus to a Child - George Michael
9) Cry Little Sister - Gerard McMann
10) Naked As We Came - Iron & Wine
11) Wherever I Go - Stve Earle
12) Whiskey Talkin' - The Silver Hearts
13) Baby Bye Bye - Dan Bern
14) I Remember You - Steve Earle
15) In God's Time - Dan Bern
16) Are You Out There? - Dar Williams
17) True Companion - Marc Cohn
18) When the Day is Done - The Samples
19) Hand of the Almighty - John R. Butler
This from Ed: "We get on the road, and I have the privilege of driving in the downpour because, of course, Gus can't drive after he eats. We're goig to need to push it to make the first pitch, so I'm flying every chance I get- and there aren't many chances due to the traffic and the weather. Along the drive Gus's sister Maria calls to check our status (we're meeting her and her husband Dan at the game and staying with them tonight). When she finds out where we are, she says there is no way that we'll be in Houston by game time.
We assure her that we are men, we drive as such, and therefore we will make it on time.
Motivated by Maria's skepticism, we really push it. And when the weather and traffic clear up, we fly and get to Houston at 630-ish. We pull into the parking lot at Minnute Maid Park at 636 p.m., in plenty of time for the 705 first pitch. However, Maria and Dan are running late (oh the irony)."
Minute Maid Park. And, special parking for every man on the lam...
We have been incredibly lucky on this trip in that the weather has been rainy in a number of places along the way, but beautiful every time we needed it to be in order to watch a ballgame. And today, although the weather is absolutely terrible, we're at the one stadium we're visiting on this trip that has a retractable roof.
Dan and my sister arrive late, and so Ed and I hunker down under a tent outside the main entrance, listening to the crowd inside groan. The hometown Astros are playing the St. Louis Cardinals, so if the crowd is groaning good things are happening. Damn! And all we can do is listen...
[Flashback- summer 1999...
The summer of '99 I was doing my internship for business school. I was working at the Federal Communications Commission in DC, in the Satellite and Radiocommunications Division. Another guy from my program, Pratap, was also working there, and we roomed together in an apartment in Rockville, Maryland.
At some point, Pratap, who grew up in India, confessed that he had never been to a baseball game. Naturally, I took it upon myself to correct this tragic state of affairs. One Sunday afternoon, we decided to drive up to Baltimore and see a game at Camden Yards. We didn't have tickets, but there's a legal scalping area, and the Orioles were not doing well enough to think they would sell out, so I wasn't worried about our not having tickets.
So Pratap and I and a couple other guys piled into my car and we drove up to Baltimore. Unfortunately, we hit nasty traffic on he way there, and equally bad, the pitchers were doing very well, so the game moved very fast. So by the time we got into the very long line for tickets, the game was already in the bottom of the 2nd.
As we slowly moved forward in line, the 2nd inning ended, and they went into the top of the 3rd. At that point, the ticket folks made the announcement that the game was now officially sold out. I was stunned. But, upon talking to one of the ticket guys, we got directions to the legal scalping area, and headed there.
Now, Camden Yards is a big complex, and the scalping area was, presumably deliberately, 180 degrees around the stadium from the ticket area. By the time we got there, it was the bottom of the 3rd. The scalping area was pretty active due to the game selling out, and so we couldn't find a scalper willing to part with tickets for a price we were all willing to pay. Although I wanted to keep negotiating, the majority view was that we should just go back around the stadium a bit and cross the street, to where there were some sports bars, and watch the game from there.
Grudgingly, I accede to the will of the group, and we walk to the nearest sports bar. By the time we get there, it is the top of the 4th. The bar is packed, and it rapidly becomes clear that we're going to have to fight multiple people to get to the bar and get drinks. Seeing my chance, and determined that Pratap is going to see a damned baseball game if it kills us, I propose going back to the scalping area, since by now the demand for tickets has got to be rapidly dropping off, and so we might be able to get reasonably priced tickets.
So we troop back to the legal scalping area, which by this time is devoid of people. And the game is in the bottom of the 4th. Then I hear a voice behind me:
"Need tickets?"
There is just one guy, and we get into a heated negotiation. With one seller, and one buyer, it's a test of wills. He starts off at $60 a ticket, and by the time we're done, I've gotten him down to $30 a ticket. It's possible I can force it down lower, but I can see that additional savings will come at an unacceptable cost of time spent negotiating. We've missed nearly half the game.
So, we fork over $120 cash, and walk up to the turnstiles to get in. I hand over my ticket, and the usher puts it in front of the fancy laser scanner thingy.
"I'm sorry- this ticket's already been used," he says.
What?
In short order, it becomes clear that all 4 of us have tickets that "have already been used." I whip around to try to find the scalper, but he has already vanished as suddenly as he appeared, like jazzercise and Freddie Prinze, Jr. I tell our story to the head usher, and he says there's nothing he can do for us directly, but we're welcome to head over to the main administrative office and see if they'll do anything for us.
So we walk another 1/4 of the way around the stadium, to the administrative office. It's the top of the 5th now. I repeat our sob story, and the woman I'm talking to decides to take pity on us and says we can go in and stand in the standing-room-only part of the stadium. So we finally enter the stadium and proceed to the SRO area, which we reach just as the top of the 5th ends. As we watch the players head for the dugout, I turn to the others and say, "You know, we _have_ tickets, why don't we go and see who's in our seats, and maybe we can sit down after all. I mean, those are our seats."
The others agree, and so, propelled by righteous indignation, we head toward the seats on our tickets, which, it turns out, are very nice seats. We arrive as the bottom of the 5th is starting and find 4 generic looking white dudes sitting in our seats. One of them looks up at us and we have the following exchange:
Me: "You're in our seats."
Him: "No we're not."
Me (waving my ticket in his face): "Yes you are. We have tickets for these seats."
Him: "These are corporate seats. The original tickets were stolen from our office in a robbery a couple weeks ago."
Me: "What???"
Just then, I get a tap on my shoulder. I turn around, and there are a couple of security guards.
Security guard: "Is there a problem here?"
Him: "Yes, these guys are in possession of tickets stolen from our office."
Me: "Wait, but..."
Security guard: "Sir, you'll have to come with us."
So the two security guards escort us out of the section, and down a couple levels into a back hallway. The lead security guard is on his walkie-talkie, and soon we are surrounded by security. You'd think we were Al-Qaeda, though obviously it's still 2 years at this point before anyone outside of the intelligence services knows what the hell Al-Qaeda is.
[Note to the NSA analyst whose text-filter engine has just found my blog: I am not a member of Al-Qaeda. They are all sons of motherless dogs. Please don't have me rendited to some underground Syrian prison.]
We are joined by a person from the management of Camden Yards. The head security guard is adamant that he be given permission to lock us in a room until Baltimore PD arrives. He is loving his job right now. There is Action happening, and he is determined to be Decisive and Totally In Control of the Situation. On the other hand, I am Freaked Out, and so I jump in by telling our story to the lady from management. She looks very sympathetic, which irritates the head security guard. He _really_ wants to lock us up and see Baltimore PD take us away. He's certain that thanks to his quick thinking and decisive action, he's caught a bunch of thieves.
I end my story by saying, "Do we really look like the kind of guys who go running around breaking into office buildings?? We're just some dumb guys who got screwed by a scalper!" Fortunately for us, we do look a lot more like dumb guys than professional thieves, so over the objections of the security guy, she takes us away and, to make it up to us, finds us a set of empty seats in the box area, where we are seated just in time to watch the top of the 7th inning.
And so the four of us got to watch 3 innings of baseball from some very nice seats at Camden Yards. When the game was over, we filed out...
Pratap: "Well, that was a lot of fun. We should definitely do this again."
Me: "I am going to fucking kill you."
And now back to the BMFRTE, where Ed and I are waiting in the rain outside the stadium...]
By the time my sister and Dan arrive, and we get seated, the first inning is already over, with the good guys (the Cardinals) up 3-0.
The yellow stuff next to the Nymex sign tells you the current price of things like oil&natural gas. 'Cause there's nothing so tragic as being at a sporting event & suddenly realizing you don't know the current market price of natural gas.Our seats are once again awesome- right behind the first base dugout. My sister takes this moment to remind me, Ed, and Dan that just as it is the duty of the Secret Service to dive in front of a bullet shot at the President, it is our duty to dive in front of any foul balls that come this way.
Future Hall-of-Famer Albert Pujols
The game turns out to be a glorious 7-0 victory. All of us are happy except Dan, who has the misfortune of being an Astros fan.
Ed, me, and my sister
After the game, we head back to my sister's place, where we have drinks and dessert, and stay up talking until very late. Which is going to carry a heavy price, since our flight out is at 630 a.m. tomorrow morning...
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