May 20th, 1998

Wednesday May 20th, 1998
Cincinnati Reds 8 @ New York Mets 6
Stadium: Shea Stadium
Future (Next year): Citi Field
Gas:  Woodbridge, NJ $8.90

Lodging: Seacacus, NJ

Today we took off from our "homebase" of Elicott City, MD and headed for a few days away with the girls exploring New York City and Boston.  

We left in the morning and headed to Battery Park.  We took a ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and took a tour of that.  After spending some time there and taking the ferry back we realized that we were going to be cutting it close with rush hour traffic if we were going to get to the game on time (And by on time I mean really, really early so we can take all of our pictures).  When we were waiting for our car to arrive from the garage, we began talking to a guy who was heading that way.  He told us to just follow him, stay on his tail, and he would get us to the Shea Stadium.  This was a ride of a lifetime.  He was crossing back and forth into oncoming traffic and speeding like a maniac.  Brian did a great job of following him and true to his word, he took us right to Shea. 

Once we got into the stadium, we could see dark clouds looming over New York City off in the distance.  We could actually see lightning and hear thunder.  It did sprinkle a little before the game and we thought we might have our first rain delay...but the clouds moved away quickly and the game went on as planned. Because of the threat of rain, nobody showed up and we were really the only people there.

The fear of our trip came right after the game.  As we were walking out to our car in the parking lot, we noticed that we couldn't see our car.  All four of us knew where we parked, but we could not see it.  I don't remember who said it, but someone did finally say, "ahhh...is our car gone?"  This of course would not have been good news.  Stuck in New York City, with no car that had all of our stuff in it.  Brian and I began running to see the "crime scene."  Fortunately as we got closer, we could see that the huge truck in front of our Civic had perfectly hidden it.  We still had our car and was very relieved.

The night was only beginning though.  We had planned to stay with another Mennonite Your Way family, William and Lorna Henkel.  We had called earlier in the day and told them we were in New York City and were planning to go to the game that evening, but they said we could just come to their house following the game.  After dealing with the traffic following the game, then just some really bad traffic, we got across to New Jersey.   But we could never find the right turnoff.  We kept calling Mr. Henkel and he kept telling us where to go but we could just never find the right turnoff.  We stopped a few times to ask directions and were getting really frustrated.  By this time, it was approaching 1:00 am and we were still not at our host's home.  We kept calling and apologizing but Mr. Henkel was very gracious.  He told us "I've stayed up many a night with a high school daughter, don't worry about this."

We finally got there about 1:10 and Mr. Henkel was still up to welcome us home.  We finally all fell asleep at about 1:30 am.