14, 755, 1500, 4-4, 3-2

So here I am, back in Florida after a whirlwind week of travel and activities.  Originally we had a plan of leaving early Thursday because Ali had a bunch of appointments.   Well Ali agreed to cancel them so we could leave Wednesday instead. Wednesday morning I packed the van up for departure.  As I did, I realized there was no way we could have taken the Camry with all the bags, crates, chairs, shelter and suitcases I was jamming into the van.  It didn’t take long for me to wish I would have reconsidered and found a way to take the gas sipping hybrid.

Before we left we had to stop at the bank which happened to take us by Sam’s Club.  I figured I would do my first fill up there where they have “cheap” gas.  I hit the $75 limit on the pump without even filling the monstrous party van gas tank.  I didn’t feel like double swiping the card to totally top it off.  It was the first of many painful stops at the pump on the trip.

I had the van equipped with my Garmin GPS as well as my recently acquired free radar detector.  I have never had a radar detector in my life just because I never felt like plopping down the money for one.  It turned out to be quite handy.  I can’t tell you how many times it’s little led’s and chirps alerted me to police lurking.  There were a number of false alarms as well but it was a welcome trade off.  We rarely did more than 10mph over the speed limit but it still was reassuring to have the detector watching out for us.

At first I had set a goal of reaching Richmond Virginia on day 1.  The reason I picked it was that was the first state that had a La Quinta, our hotel of choice, after Georgia.  We punched the address of the La Quinta in and saw an estimated arrival time of 1 am, flash up.  It didn’t phase me, at first.  The driving was going fine.  The gas stops were not.  I initiated myself into the double swipe club after running the tank down to less than an 8th of gas.  At the one station I pumped $120 bucks into the god damn tank.  It was incredible.  

We calculated the gas mileage we were getting.  I had it in my head that we would average somewhere in the high teens.  When Ali spit out the number “14” I was disgusted.  I angrily thought of 35-40 mpg the Camry offers and kicked myself for not finding a way to take it instead.  Well there was nothing we could do about it now but grin and bear it.

The party van was driving quite well.  I actually did some emergency prep this time as opposed to the trip out west last year.  I verified that we actually have a spare tire, I loaded a floor jack, a tire iron, my socket set and a roll of duct tape for the trip, just in case.  Luckily, I needed none of it.

I did most of the driving on day one, driving all but a couple of the 12 hours or so.  When I asked Ali if she could drive for a bit she said “Ok….” in a tone that said “I don’t really want to”  I got a bit angry and asked if she expected me to drive the entire thing.  She said she didn’t, she just wasn’t looking forward to driving the van as she isn’t real comfortable behind the wheel of the thing. 

As the miles droned on the goal of Virginia became more and more ridiculous.  The ETA had slipped to after 2am because of gas/food/bathroom stops during the day. I abandoned Virginia as a stopping place and instead stopped at a Red Roof Inn in Fayetteville, NC around 10pm.  I was beat.       

 Wednesday night Nicki did not eat her supper, a normal routine for her, she just will not eat while we are travelling for some reason. Unfortunately I slept like shit that night, the last thing I needed.  It felt like I was waking up constantly.  I dragged my weary body out of bed and got ready for more driving. 

Even though I more or less know how to get to PA, I let the GPS guide me on several occasions across what I figured were “shortcuts”, well when we got to the Washington DC area it got us into big trouble.  Normally you take the 695 loop around the Baltimore / DC area.  Well for whatever reason the GPS directed us up INTO DC.   I stupidly put blind trust in the GPS.  Well it f’d us big time.  The one exit it wanted us to take was blocked off for some reason.  This lead us into a maze of traffic hell into the city itself.  Before we knew it we were driving by the Washington monument and were only a stone’s throw from the White House.  The traffic in the city was pretty much bumper to bumper.  The GPS was driving me insane.  It was attempting to route us out of the mess by spitting out what seemed to be an endless stream of directions.  The problem was the directions were impossible to follow. 

I would make a right hand turn into 3 lanes of crawling traffic and the Garmin would say “in 100 feet make left turn…”  There was no way I was going to be able to pry bar the party van through 3 lanes of traffic in 100 feet so many times I had to just ignore the advice and plow ahead.  Each time I did I was greeted by the maddening “Recalculating…” which usually resulted in more physically impossible directions to follow.  I was getting quite pissed and at one point turned the f’ing thing off.  After about 30 minutes of crawling around a maze of DC traffic we finally got back out onto open road.  We got some good unexpected pics of DC at least.  On the trip back I didn’t bother to use the GPS for directions until I was safely south of the beltway.

Our route in to Reading took us right by the exit for the town I grew up in, Gouglersville.  I asked Ali if she minded if I drove by the old house just to take a peek.  It brought back lots of memories as I drove through Gouglersville.  As we went by things I called them out to Ali, “There is Brightbill’s old store, there is the grave yard, there is my friend Jeremy’s old house…”  As we drove the road that I traversed by bicycle countless times it transported me back in time 30 years.  A lot of the scenery has really changed.  The pine trees along Hampshire Road that were planted when I was a kid are now massive and hang over the roadway.  The Lazy A Ranch that used to be a focal point of our road, filled with horses and activity is now abandoned and boarded up.  The pristine white fence that used to surround it is now rotting and in a state of disrepair.  We pulled up to our old house.

I park down below it by the side of the road and get out.  I was hoping to be able to walk around on foot and take a few shots.  Unfortunately the new owners apparently have two dogs that don’t take fondly to people parking near by.  As soon as I got out I was greeted by continuous barking.  I didn’t want to look like a stalker so after taking a few quick pictures I hopped back in the van.  As we drove by the house slowly I had Ali snap a few more pictures.  The area right around the house looked like an absolute mess, totally overgrown with junk.  There was a stand alone garage being built and the owners sold a piece of the land up on the hill that now had a single family home on it.  Evidently there is also a new addition off the dining room area that we could not see from our drive by.  It just felt weird seeing the house without someone named Duffey living there.

As we drove the rest of the way to the townhouse I was shocked by how many things have changed.  Many businesses are closed, buildings shuttered or knocked down and landscapes changed.  In Naples we are used to seeing new things opening up constantly.  In Reading it seems like all of the big national chains have squeezed out most of the small businesses that were part of my life growing up.  It’s sad.

So we got to my Dad’s townhouse somewhere around 4pm.  It felt good to finally reach our destination after two days of driving.  Once we stepped inside we realized that we had some more work to do before we could relax.  My sister and brother occasionally come back on weekends and use the townhouse as a place to crash.  Both of them still have high school friends locally that they hang out with.  Well the place was a bit of a mess.  There were dust bunnies and cob webs everywhere and the kitchen counters were gross.  Obviously cleaning is not high priority when they are there, not that I would expect it to be.

So we came up with a game plan.  We threw together a grocery list.  I got groceries while Ali worked on cleaning as well as stripping the beds to wash the sheets as well as the bath towels since we had no idea when this was done last.   I headed off to Redner’s and stocked up.  It took me quite awhile since I didn’t know where anything was.  I grabbed various food items to get us through the weekend as well as supplies for the Rumble.  I was able to drop $120 just like that.  When I was there I saw a woman that I knew I graduated with from Mifflin.  I had no idea what her name was anymore.  I didn’t really interact with her at school so I didn’t bother to try interact with her now, it was just funny that I ran into her.

Before I left Ali was belly aching that she had no wine to help her cope with the stress.  Alcohol in PA can’t be bought anywhere except liquor stores, unlike Florida where you can get it almost anywhere.  At the time I told her she shouldn’t need alcohol to cope.  However when I saw that they had a liquor store attached to the Redner’s I thought I would surprise Ali by grabbing her a bottle.  When I got back she was very happy to see I snagged her some white zinfandel. 

The rest of Thursday night was spent cleaning up, washing and organizing.  I called Todd and touched base to establish some plans for Friday.  He said my niece had a final practice for her recital on Friday evening.  We came up with a plan for us to go watch the recital practice since we would miss the actual recital because of the Rumble,  and then head over to Victor’s for the dinner we talked about previously, sounded like a good plan to me. We collapsed into bed, both exhausted.

Unfortunately I found myself having yet another night of bad sleep.  Again I seemed to wake up constantly.  When I got up in the morning I was surprised how chilly it was with temps in the 50’s.  It felt good.  I had to pull out early to go pick up Randall at the Philly airport.  His plane was scheduled to arrive at 9:15am.  On the way down to Philly I flipped off the satellite and turned to Y-102, the station where my buddy Homey works as one of the morning DJ’s. I texted him with simply “I’m listening…”  That fired off an exchange of text messages back and forth.  I was doing something you should never do, texting while driving.  Scott even went as far as to give me a “shout out” not once but twice on air.  I missed the first one while I was in a store grabbing coffee. It was kind of cool to hear.

Randall’s flight arrived on time, actually a little ahead of time.  Randall came walking out into the terminal in full volleyball regalia wearing an AVP shirt and hat.  You would think he just flew in for the Belmar event, it was funny.  On the ride back up to PA I gave him a brief rundown of the plans which he was fine with.  Randall was happy to tag along on whatever we did which made things easier on us.

When we got back to the townhouse Nicki initially gave Randall the bark and back up routine but it didn’t take long for her to remember who he was and soon her tail was wagging as Randall was petting her.  We directed Randall to what is normally Patrick’s bedroom as his sleeping arrangement.  Friday afternoon we piled in the van and headed out for a brief sight seeing tour with Randall.  The only noteworthy thing we could think of to show him was the Pagoda.  As we drove to it we gave Randall commentary on various things as we passed them.  I slowly navigated the party van back and forth up the face of Mount Penn until we reached the Pagoda.  The Pagoda is an oddity.  For some reason in the early 19th century some guy decided to put a pagoda, a chinese building on top of Mount Penn.  I never really knew the history of it even though it towered over the area I lived in for 30 years.  Well we took this opportunity to find out what the deal was.

Evidently there used to be a huge quarry up in Mount Penn.  The pagoda was erected to help cover up the scar left on the mountain from the excavation.  Originally it was built with the hopes of it being a luxury resort.  For some reason they were never able to obtain a liquor license for it and it was in turn sold to the city for $1 in 1908.  Since then it has undergone a restoration in the mid-70’s and again in 1992.  It seemed to still be in decent shape considering it was 100 years old.  Ali and Randall went inside and explored while I stayed outside with Nicki.  Nicki was quite interested in walking around and looking and smelling the myriad of new things. I’m not sure how interesting Randall found the Pagoda but it was the best Reading had to offer. 🙂

 

 A little later in the day we headed over to my brother’s place.  It was the first time I saw this house that he has been living in since the divorce proceedings started.  The house looked pretty small on the outside.  However it also had a free standing garage as well as another large storage building in the back which works out great for Todd’s business.  The inside of the house wasn’t bad at all as Todd had redone much of it.  I got to see my niece Caroline for the first time in a couple years.  Since she isn’t even four yet, two years is an eternity.  She was very shy and would not talk to us.  She responded to our presence by acting wild, running around the house and getting into things non-stop.  It was nearly impossible to talk to Todd as my niece was constantly demanding his attention.   The joys of having a three year old I suppose. 

After hanging there for a bit we headed over to her practice.  We met up with my sister-in-laws parents there whom we also had not seen in at least a couple years.  Caroline went into the back and came out in her cute little lamb outfit.  As we were waiting for the Caroline’s number to start there were some awkward moments when my soon to be ex-sister-in-law showed up.  She wasn’t supposed to be there but in an act of defiance decided to come anyway.  It was sort of bizarre as we all sat on the one side with her parents and she sat alone 30 feet to the right.  We ignored her and she did the same to us although I was primed for her to try to talk to me.  I had a few choice words I would have liked to say to her face to face.  

Caroline came out for her number.  It was her and four other little girls in tap shoes singing and “dancing” to a cute little song.  It was fun to watch.  At that age there is minimal coordination or technique but it still is enjoyable to witness.  When she finished we all praised her and told her how well we thought she did.  Even though she was still not talking directly to us you could tell she sort of liked that we were there.

 So we headed over to Victor Emmanuel’s.  Since it was Friday night we were afraid it would be quite full.  I remembered when I was younger going to Vic’s and the waiting room would be elbow to elbow jammed with people waiting to grab some cheap italian food in a fun atmosphere.  Well like most local PA businesses, it looks like Vic’s has taken a shot as well.  There wasn’t a soul waiting and there were a couple dozen empty tables.  I pointed up to the pictures on the wall of the board members.  I pointed out a chubby bald guy to Ali.  “I graduated with him…”  Either he looks way old for his age or I look young for my age, the difference was pretty striking.

In the past I have written about how they have updated Vic’s over the years.  When it was in it’s heyday it had sky high slightly stained drop ceiling with all sorts of gaudy flags hanging from the wall.  It had a very definite low brow feel to it but that was part of it’s charm.  Now they have lowered the ceilings and redecorated to give it a more contemporary and modern feel.  I liked it the old way better.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is the food.  It’s not fancy by any means and I don’t think Randall was impressed by his meal at all. However I ordered the same thing I have ordered for the last 30 years, rigatoni and meatballs.  It still tasted the same as it did in 1978 and at least to me, that is a good thing.  The light crowd also meant lighting fast service.  We hadn’t even finished our salads when the entrees came piling out.

Another amazing thing about the place is I saw waitresses that were working at Vic’s Friday night that started when Jimmy Carter was still president. It was weird seeing the same women, albeit beat down by three decades of time serving customers just like I remembered as a kid.  It’s hard to believe they would be there that long.  I guess the money is good.

As we were getting ready to leave a couple came over to the table.  I didn’t look up at first but I immediately recognized the voice, it was my Aunt Stephanie.  It was amazing that we ran into her.  Not only because we ran into her that night but the fact that a couple years ago we ran into her at another restaurant as well.  The odds of running into somebody twice in that manner when you are only in the area a few days out of several years is pretty incredible.  She was with her new husband.  It was great to see her.  I always loved Aunt Stephanie, I was closer to her than my blood relative, my Uncle Butch.  They got divorced in 1989.  Something bizarre went on there.  After the divorce my uncle basically estranged his entire former family in favor of his new wife.  He basically has not talked to any of his three kids from his first marriage in nearly 20 years.  It is unbelievable.  Anyway, she seemed to be very happy and asked how things were with us.  We were ready to go and followed them out to the parking lot.  I hugged her goodbye.  I still can’t believe we ran into her, again. We headed back to the townhouse.  We had to get a good night’s rest for the highlight of the trip, the Pottstown Rumble!

AGAIN I slept poorly.  My sister Meg had arrived late Friday night.  She then went out with her friends and didn’t come back until between 2 or 3 in the morning.  When she came back Nicki started in with a growling routine that woke me up.  Once that happened I couldn’t fall back asleep for quite awhile.  I awoke groggy and tired once again but I hoped that the adrenalin from the Rumble would negate any ill effects from lack of sleep.  I made an egg beater and toast breakfast for Randall and I to give us some energy to get things going.  I got Ali up and we threw supplies in the van and were off.

We got to the Rumble a little later than normal for me, a bit after 8.  They recently renovated the park where it is held by resodding it and changing some of the layout.  We told the guy we were playing BB and were directed to the back of the park, the very back.  The party van bounced unhappily over the uneven ground as we parked in the farthest corner of the park.  We unloaded and drug all the gear over to the nets.  We sat it down and left Ali and Nicki there to guard it while Randall and I signed in.

Randall said it looked impressive, the park was jammed with nets as far as you could see.  The line to sign in was long since we were there a bit later.  As we waited I looked around for familiar faces but hardly saw any.  I guess a lot of the vball crowd I played with has moved on to bigger or better things.  When we signed in I noticed that there didn’t seem to be as many names as years past.  It turned out there were less than 20 nets of BB, still a big number but a lot less than years past.

Once we got back to Ali she told me that she forgot the cup that Nicki drank out of in the van.  So I grabbed Nicki and we quickly went over to the van and grabbed it.  By the time I got back they had called for the players to come to center court for the pre-tourney instructions, again Nicki and Ali stayed behind.  After the instructions they play the national anthem, immediately after that they fire up a quick, very loud barrage of the small white fireworks that sound like cannon shots.  I told Randall they do it every year.  Well when I got back to our stuff I found out the fireworks had caused some major drama.

I hadn’t even given a thought to the fireworks effect on Nicki.  Ali anticipated the loud noise and was crouched down with her, covering her ears.  Well when the fireworks went off Nicki freaked out.  She bolted out of Ali’s arms and took off in a full sprint.  She ran and ran and ran.  She ran the full 300 or so yards back to the van!  Ali sprinted after her, panicking of course, not realizing Nicki was running to what she considered to be safe and familiar.  Once Ali got her back to our stuff Nicki was still freaked out and was clinging to her and I for reassurance.  The noise also had the unpleasant side effect of literally scaring the shit out of the dog.  Ali had to wipe her ass with a wet towel later, how nice.

So we found out we were team 2 on a five team net, the worst number to be.  It’s the worst because team 2 has to wait two full matches (four side out games) between each of their matches.  It gives you way too much time to get stiff in between your games.  We also played in the first match, something I don’t particularly like either.  I didn’t have time to do much stretching at all and I even forgot to take my pre-game Advil or throw the pre-game football. It was right on to the court for warm ups.

I decided I was going to go old school for the Rumble.  I abandoned the frequent costume changes and actually wore the exact same shirt and shorts I wore in 99 when Rich and I won.  Except for one game where I played shirtless, I wore the same outfit all day.  I didn’t even don a hat.

So we were ready to start our first match.  The Rumble plays by old school rules meaning you have a significantly bigger court and you use side out scoring, both things that I like.  However playing beach ball in Florida for 7 years has made me unaccustomed to old set up and caused issues for both me and Randall.  Our first game was against two guys whom I would guess were in their 20’s.  They were both solid players but I thought we would be fine if we played consistent ball.  Well our first game we didn’t do that.  There were several instances where we let balls go that we thought would be clearly out that landed in.  That extra court size required us to quickly adjust our internal calibrations as to what was in and what was out.  We also found ourselves getting jammed with serves high which often resulted in less than stellar passes.  We lost that first match by 3 or 4 points.  I wasn’t thrilled with the start but I told myself that in 99 we lost our first game too.

So game 2 starts and we are playing much better.  We start fast and before you know it are sitting on the cusp of an easy victory, leading 10-5 (game is to 11)  There is a play where the other team hammers the ball way out of bounds and it winds up floating in the creek.  The ball is too wet and slimy to play with afterwards so we switch to their ball, an older and heavier Mikasa.  We somehow manage to let the ball change get into our heads.  Randall and I take turns committing unforced error after unforced error and we manage to totally choke like bitches and lose the game 13-11.  We were both besides ourselves with disgust.  To allow a team to come back from that deficit is inexcusable.  I tried to remain somewhat upbeat.  At least it happened early, we can still control our own destiny by winning our other games.

In between games I started to see some familiar faces.  Charlie was nice enough to come down and cheer me on.  I saw my old partner Jim as well as a few others that I played with in the old Gary league.  Patrick and Meg also showed up to watch us play for a little while which was nice.

Unlike Friday which was nice and cool with high’s in the mid 70’s, the weather Saturday was very hot.  The shelter we brought to provide us shade, called a Coolaroo, ironically was anything but cool.  It felt hot under the shelter with no wind.  It didn’t take long till most of us retreated to the good old fashioned shade provided by the trees along the creek.  At least it wasn’t raining.

Our second match was against two brothers.  The one guy had a pulled quad that severly limited his mobility.  The other guy was a pretty strong player.  Early on we didn’t do much to take advantage of the one brother’s injury and we the game stayed close.  Soon we decided to stop being nice and made the guy hobble after serves.  We won both of those games pretty easily.

During our matches we enlisted Ali to run the AV equipment.  For years she would tape nearly every one of my matches which in turn got turned into my collection of silly volleyball videos.  Since we got Nicki she rarely gets to attend my events anymore.  It was nice to have her back in the saddle cheering us on while filming the action.

Our third match was against two younger guys, probably 20 or less.  You could tell they were indoor players by their style which included very sloppy hands while setting.  They both had some skills but they had a hard time being consistent with any aspect of their game.  We beat them the first game and then in the second we both sided out for quite awhile before we pulled away.  They started whining and complaining like little bitches.  They were blaming much of their poor play on the fact that we were playing with our ball.  Then they didn’t like that we called hands on them a couple times.  Late in the game the one kid on their team basically gave up and didn’t even try to return serve, thus earning their team one of the two nicknames from the day, The Quitters.  We finished them off and were now sitting at 4-2.

We had a ridiculously long break between our 3rd and final match, a full two hours.  Luckily the heat made it pretty easy to warm up but still it was very annoying to sit for soooo long.  Physically I was feeling pretty darn good.  My knees only had minor aches and pains going on and my energy level was still good.  Just like the tournament in Siesta Keys in May, I never really felt tired the entire day. 

We were in a tough position on our net.  The team that we lost to just got beat twice by another team on our net that was undefeated.  So the guys that beat us were at 6-2 and the team we were yet to play was 6-0.  That collapse at 10-5 was looming over our head quite a bit now.  We HAD to win both games to force a tie, no two ways about it.

The team we were playing was rather bizarre looking.  I nicknamed the one guy the Bionic Walrus.  He had a long, ZZ Top looking beard/moustache deal that hung down either side of his face forming hairy looking “tusks”.  He also was outfitted with full knee and ankle braces on both legs.  He was skinny as a rail which made the Walrus part of the nickname even funnier.  His partner also had some serious straggly chin hair going on but was much shorter.  Despite their appearance, they were both very solid players that made very few mistakes from what we observed throughout the day.  We took the court knowing that we had to significantly pick up our level of play to beat these guys.  We did anything but that.

Again the unforced errors became a staple of our game. Serves out of bounds, and hits out or into the net doomed us.  I saw very few serves during the game which frustrates the hell out of me.  Through out the day I had done a decent job of putting balls away.  They decided to not give me many chances to do it in our match. Even with our errors the game was back and forth for awhile but they wound up running the last 3 or 4 points and putting us away. 

The last game was pretty much a joke.  I still had energy, still wanted to win to at least finish 5-3.  Randall seemed to be spent whether it be mentally or physically by then.  We got beat badly the last game.  At the end they were throwing up lollipop serves and we still wouldn’t convert.  Ironically they got their last point of the game when I actually got served.  Randall gave me a good set and I crushed the ball hard but too far to the angle and out. Game over.

It was a very disappointing moment.  Even though I said I had no expectations, I did expect to at least make the playoffs.  Instead we finished 4-4, out of the playoffs, just like 2 years ago in the rain soaked cluster f with Charlie, shit.  I tried to not focus on the poor outcome that much.  Instead I tried to think about how I had come through the event relatively unscathed physically.  Yea my knees hurt but nothing serious at all.  It was fun to play, fun to see old friends and fun to just be part of the event. 

 We packed up our stuff and made the walk of shame back to the van.  On the way out we stopped so Randall could grab a tourney t-shirt, I had bought mine earlier.  In contrast to Florida where they include a t-shirt with your entry fee, at the Rumble you have to lay out an extra 15 bucks if you want a shirt.  Oh well, supposedly it all goes to support the Parks & Rec department.

So Charlie and I started a tradition of getting sandwiches from A&M sandwich shop in my old stomping grounds of Wernersville after the Rumble.  They have homemade bread that is just awesome.  Well originally it seemed too far and out of the way to do it this time but Randall and Ali were fine with me stopping there.  The same old greek guy was there working the stove as always.  We took the sandwiches back to the townhouse and enjoyed them there, they were fantastic.  Both Randall and I were beat up and tired from a day of volleyball.  We took showers, watched some tv and went to bed.  It was the first solid night of sleep I had since leaving Florida, thank goodness.

So Sunday was our day to go to the Phillies.  Todd and Caroline came over to the townhouse around 10 to pick us up for the 1:35 game.  We didn’t leave until around 11.  I sat in the back of the SUV with my neice who was strapped into her car seat.  Todd has one of those dvd set ups in the Tahoe.  I’ve mentioned before how I think they are a bad idea as they make a kid dependent on an AV system to survive a ride in a car.  I didn’t take him to task for it however, it’s his kid. 

Caroline still wasn’t all that warmed up to Uncle Shawn although she interacted with me a bit and would actually answer me if I talked to her.  I was amazed at Todd’s patience as he answered a seemingly endless string of questions from her.  We got stuck in some pretty horrific traffic on the Schuykill Expressway but still managed to get to the field about an hour before game time.

The field looked great from the outside, even better from the inside.  It’s a beautiful stadium with great sight lines through out.  Even though it is a brand new stadium it has an old ball park feel which I like.  The 45,000 seat capacity is far less than the nearly 70,000 seat Veterans Stadium it replaced. Speaking of seats, that was my only gripe (along with the astronomical food & drink prices).  The seats are too damn narrow.  If you would be unlucky enough to be seated next to a fat ass they would be pouring over into your seat.  I don’t know why they wouldn’t design the seats to comfortably accomodate the typical 50 pounds overweight American.

I bought the tickets on Stubhub.  They were good seats in the left field corner, lower level.  We also lucked out that the seats were exactly one row behind the shade line.  We were shaded the entire game.  The people out in the direct sun were BAKING.   We were close enough that I could play catch with the left fielder.  The game started and the philly hecklers immediately got warmed up.

There were two guys in front of us that for some reason had it out for Gary Matthews Jr who plays left field for the Angels.  His dad played for the Phillies for several years and was well liked.  For some reason these two guys hated his son and took every opportunity they could to give him a hard time.  They also ripped into Pat Burrell quite a bit.  Nothing like mocking your own players.  Then there was the row of drunks behind us.  They were loud and annoying.  The one drunk guy caught the hiccups.  Everytime he would hiccup he would blurt out “F*ck!”  He literally did this at least 20 times.  Thankfully they bailed after only the third or fourth inning.

Caroline was not a very happy camper.  She started talking about wanting to go home before the first inning was even over.  I felt bad for my brother, I don’t think he got to watch hardly any of the game.  He walked around with her for a couple innings and after the 6th inning took her out to the SUV so she could nap.  Such is fatherhood I guess. 

Baseball generally isn’t a great spectator sport for me.  It just doesn’t get my blood pumping like football.  Even being in a big beautiful stadium didn’t totally alleviate the boredom factor.  The Phillies got down early 3-0 and then battled back to 3-2.  In the bottom of the 9th they had a guy on second with two outs and they brought up some Japanese player I never heard of to pinch hit.  He pops out and the game is over. The Phillies lost all three games of the series to the Angels, boooo.  It was cool to see the stadium and decently entertaining to be there but I don’t know if it was worth the price I paid for the tickets piled on with the food costs.  I did snag myself a sleeveless Phillies t-shirt to match my couple Eagles shirts. We didn’t get close to a foul ball.  We had one fly over us into the upper deck but that’s it.

It was surprisingly smooth getting out of the parking lot after the game.  On the way home we hit a few back ups but made much better time than the trip down.  After we got back we grabbed subs from a sandwich shop close by to bring back to the house.  We said our goodbyes to Todd and Caroline as we wouldn’t be seeing them anymore on the trip.  Caroline actually gave me a psuedo hug which was nice.  Todd talked of possibly coming down to Florida in August when my sister is due to visit.  It would be nice to have the whole gang together.

So Monday we had no definitive plans.  Ali and I started the morning off early by walking Nicki up to the convenience store about a mile or so away.  The walk took awhile because of Nicki’s endless sniffing, about an hour and a half for the journey.  After that I plunked down on the sofa and saw The Scorpion King was on.  I was still feeling sore from the Rumble and not overly motivated so I settled in to watch the flick.  It was on regular broadcast tv so it was filled with commercials, tons and tons and tons of commercials.   The commercials were maddening, I kept seeing the same 3 or 4 of them over and over again. Finally the flick ends and they go right into the next one, The Mummy Returns.  Oh, I like that one too, so I start watching it.  I wound up spending the rest of the morning watching the films despite much griping from Ali.

Ali was very annoyed that I was just sitting there watching movies.  She said it was dumb for us to be up in PA and just sitting there, something I normally won’t even do in Florida.  I told her that I was sore and tired.  I asked why I had to be the master planner, if she wanted to do something specific, tell me.  I knew we had to get stuff organized to leave on Tuesday and I had to take Randall to the airport later in the day.  Other than that I didn’t really care if we shoe horned something else in.

Ali said that she mentioned to me before we left Florida that maybe we could hook up and see her brother and neices.  I told her it was crazy to expect me to make a mental note about this and then plan for it accordingly.  We argued back and forth about it a bit.  I’m sure Randall was thrilled to be sitting right there. Finally I told her to call her brother and see if they would be around.  We wove together a plan where we would get lunch and then come back, grab Randall’s stuff, drive him to Philly and then stop at her brother’s on the way back.

Ali made a great suggestion to stop at Boehringers for lunch, a small ice cream/food stand in Adamstown.  It is another one of those childhood main stays that I used to love.  So as we approached I was happy to see it was still there and not boarded up.  As I got closer though I was bummed to see a sign that said CLOSED MONDAY.  There were people working on the place, painting it.  I cursed our bad luck of picking the day they decided to paint.  We tried to think up of alternatives.  Ali once again saved the day by suggesting the Pit in Sinking Spring.  They had outdoor picnic tables a dog could sit by.

The place was not busy at all on a Monday afternoon.  Ali and Randall ordered the food while I sat outside with Nicki.  They were quite accomodating of the pooch.  The one girl brought out an empty plastic container to pour water into and then they prepared and cut up a plain chicken breast for Nicki to eat.  Nicki scarfed down a bunch of chicken as I fed it to her one piece at a time.  I had a messy but good barbecue sandwich and both Ali and Randall enjoyed their meals as well.  After we were done time was tight but we still shot across the street to a grocery store to pick up some Shoo fly pie for Randall.  He tried some earlier and liked it.  Originally I thought he might want to take some back to Florida with him but instead he ate a piece when we got back to the townhouse.

Ali and I quickly showered and then it was back into the van to take Randall to the airport.  He got there quite early for his 8 o’clock flight, a little after 5:30, but he didn’t mind so we would have the extra time to hang at my bro-in-laws.  Randall thanked us for everything, said he had a good time and that was that.

We hit a bit of work traffic on the ride up to Collegeville but nothing too severe.  We pulled up to their large house and were greeted by my two neices, Lauren and Laiken whom are both very cute.  They were both excited to see us but they were EXTREMELY excited to see Nicki.  Nicki did not share in the excitement.  Nicki quite simply hates kids.  When she is approached by them she runs for cover.  I don’t know if it is the quick movements, their voices or something else but she just can’t stand to be around kids.  Well of course my neices don’t understand this and move in to bestow affection on Nicki whom in turn looks for shelter.  Ali’s brother explains to the girls that they have to be careful and that Nicki is scared.  They slow down for a moment but are shortly once again attempting to pet her.  For awhile the process continues, the girls advance, the dog retreats.  Eventually, while we stand guard and pet her, Nicki allows them to pet her a little bit although you can tell she is merely tolerating it. 

They called out for pizza which we ate out on the deck.  I had not been to their place in a couple years so they give me the quick tour to show me the improvements they made since my last visit which included painting the inside of the house and extensive framing and drywalling of the basement to turn it into what will be an awesome entertainment area.  The rest of our time there I spent most of my time working on a couple technical issue Mike had with both his Blackberry and his wife’s Treo.  I host email for Mike on my home server.  He got a new Blackberry and now we are trying to figure out how to get it hooked up and working with my server once again. 

We didn’t stay very late since we planned to get up and out the door by 7am the next morning for the long drive home.  The girls were sad that we had to so and felt a bit bad too.  It would be nice to interact with them more often.  I extended an invitation several times for them to come down and visit whenever they wanted.  Hopefully they take us up on it.

So once we got home around 10 there was still lots to do.  Most of our stuff was packed but we wanted to make sure we left the house in better order than what we found it.  So there was laundry to do, trash to collect and various other things that kept us up to 11:30 or so. My sleep that night was short but at least solid.

Tuesday morning before we left was hectic.  There seemed to be a million loose ends to tie up.  Of course Ali being the recycling maniac that she is, had collected mounds of recycling during our stay, much more than the meager recycling bin would hold. We had several bags of recycling as well as a cardboard lid with more recycling in it.  One of my duties that morning was to take all this shit over to the community trash area.  The van was transformed into a psuedo garbage truck as I loaded all the recycling into it along with two bags of regular trash.  I was not a happy camper.  I remember thinking to myself, “would it really be a big deal if we just threw these few things away…”

As I collected the shit I was getting annoyed because I knew we wouldn’t be out of there by 7 like I hoped. I made a smart ass remark to Ali that maybe if she got up when I did we would be ready to go.  She fired back that she was up later than I was getting stuff ready (she was) so she didn’t want to hear it.  She was right, I should have shut up, I was just frustrated.

So finally we are ready to go, closer to 8 than 7.  We do our final checks to make sure we didn’t forget anything.  I turn down the water heater, unplug the fridge and turn up the ac. We hit the road knowing it was going to be a long day of driving.  Our goal was to hit Georgia where there is a nice new La Quinta.

The drive on Tuesday went fine.  Ali and I switched up the driving more than we did on the drive up and she didn’t gripe about it.  It gets so damn boring and monotonous.  We took minimal breaks and ate peanut butter sandwiches we packed along the way to minimize stopping.  We managed to get to our destination right around 8pm after 12 hours of being on the road.  This hotel was awesome, maybe the nicest La Quinta we had stayed at.  It just opened in December.  Our room was beautiful and big.  The bathrooms had granite counters and the TV was an LCD flat screen.  The next morning they had a massive free breakfast spread as well.  It was great, we hated to have to leave so early.  We were back on the road before 8 am.

We plugged in our home destination into the GPS and it estimated our arrival at around 3.  We wound up having more gps issues on the way though.  My GPS has limited memory so I have to load in the maps for the specific area we will be travelling.  Well the GPS wanted to takes us off of Route 4 and down some roads in central Florida instead of the long boring drive on 75.  Well that sounded fine to me so I turned off and followed.  Well evidently I hadn’t loaded maps for the entire way that the gps was intending on routing us which caused it to get confused.  It would up sending us in a non-sensical loop.  Both Ali and I were getting very frustrated.  Ali looked up the area on her phone and identified we could head down route 17 and get back on 75.  I turned of the the route directions for the gps.  On this trip it was as much of a pain as a help.

Even with our unintended detour we managed to get back to the house by 4 pm.  We were glad to see it was intact.  Everything looked to be more or less in place, the grass had grown, the pool still looked crystal clear (thank GOD) and we were back home.  Nicki celebrated by flopping on her back and rolling around on the carpet.  She also ate her supper, something she only did a couple times on the trip.

Except for the disappointment in the Rumble outcome, the trip was a success and fun.  It was very expensive as well.  In total we laid out $755 just for gas.  Ali and I talked about getting one of those clamshell type things for the roof and taking the Camry next time.  Adding everything up we wound up dropping about $1500 on the trip, about 5 bills more than I anticipated.  That is about what we spent on the 10 day trip out west that covered 2000 miles more of road, sheesh. 

A few other odds and ends…

– Several times I was considering if I wanted to stop and see my grandmother even though I was pretty sure she would have no clue who I was.  I didn’t stop but I should have and feel guilty about it.

– I have a lot of pictures to post, haven’t done it yet.

– I have two cameras full of video to break down and edit, who knows when that will happen

– Flying Hills is a very pleasant place to live, at least if you are just visiting

– The most we paid for gas on the trip $4.09, the least $3.85, woo hoo.

– Once we got to PA I pumped up the pressure in the tires to see if it would equate to better gas mileage on the return trip, it didn’t.

– Most of the city of Reading looks like a shit hole.