Happy Summer Solstice

In case you missed it, at exactly 4:59 PDT summer began. Technically, it is when the sun is the farthest north when the declination of the sun is at the Tropic of Cancer. Christa, Charlotte, and I celebrated this by heading outside in the brutal Fresno heat to enjoy the beginning of summer. While we didn't look directly into the sun (a friendly reminder from you eye doctor who never recommends you look directly into the sun) we did enjoy being outside from the official transition from spring to summer. So enjoy the longest day of the year, they only get shorter from here on out.

To commemorate the 10 year anniversary of our baseball trip, The Penner's and Wiens's met up to catch a Triple AAA baseball game between Fresno and Portland.  As you can see, things have changed since we last went on our trip.  Keeping score was a little more difficult when you are chasing kids around.  They did great though.  They even made it through an extra inning game and survived the firework show following the game.   But we had a great time reminiscing about our trip, complete with a review of our "Trip All-Star Team" and a review of the stats.  Unfortunately we didn't think of taking a picture of all of us until we were about to leave the parking lot.  

Well...

Sometimes you're right and sometimes you're not... I guess was right in the fact that Lamar Odem was inconsistent (as usual) and they ended up losing.  Next year, I'm predicting Portland over Boston in 6.  Go Blazers!

NBA Finals Prediction

Just thought I would toss in my prediction before the start of the series. I'm going with the conventional wisdom and picking the Lakers in 6. The key to me is Lamar Odem. If he can play consistent, then I like the Lakers.

June 4th, 1998

Thursday June 4th, 1998
No Game
Gas:

Baker, CA $9.45

Shafter, CA $7.00
Lodging:

Brian: Shafter

Aaron: Fresno

We began our morning with a huge breakfast. We walked over to Excalibur for an amazing all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. June 4th is Brian's birthday, so my birthday gift to him was paying for his meal. If you know Brian, you probably know that a huge breakfast is probably one of the greatest gifts he could get (Happy 30th birthday Brian).

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We arrived into Shafter in the early afternoon. We were tired and ready to be home, but we had grown accustomed to life on the road, living out of a suitcase, driving, and enjoying each other's company.

I originally was going to spend the night and head home the next day, but the day was still young and I wanted to go home and see Christa and my family, so I left Shafter and finished the last 1 1/2 hours by myself. The crazy thing is that after all that driving, the worst driving I faced was on Highway 99 on the way home. Traffic was horrible and I almost got into an accident when a water cooler fell off the back of a pickup truck.

We had traveled 8660 miles, visited 17 baseball stadiums and seen a game in everyone (Amazingly we had no cancellations due to weather, which was close to happening in a few cities), had no car problems, got no speeding tickets, and had an amazing time together seeing this great country we live in.

Thanks for all who took the time to read and relive this trip. This trip could never have occurred without great support from family and friends and I thank you again, 10 years later, for all you did.
We now return you to your regular scheduled blogging.

June 3rd, 1998

Wednesday June 3rd, 1998
No Game
Gas:  St. George, UT

Lodging: Las Vegas, NV

We packed up our campsite and made our way to Las Vegas.  Now most of you would think, awesome...two guys, Vegas...oh wait, we were only 19 years old.  There are not a lot of things to do in Vegas when you are below the age of 21.  But we still had a fun time there.  We stayed at The Holiday Inn on the strip, which was the steal of the trip.  We got a double room, on the strip, for only $30, and that's including taxes.  

Anyway, we headed to New York, New York and had lunch there.  we then headed over to MGM Grand and hung out around there.  We thought about hanging out and watching some games in the sports book, but we weren't even old enough to do that.  We walked around the strip and visited a few stores.  In the early evening, we took in an all-you-can-eat buffet.  That was nice because we hadn't had a lot of food to eat over the last few days.  We walked by Treasure Island and saw their pirate show.  We saw the Stratosphere  off in the distance and it looked like it wasn't very far, close enough to walk.  Well, looks can be deceiving.  We walked, and walked, and walked.  It was a lot farther than we thought.  We finally made it and traveled to the top and took in the view from the top.  We decided we would take a cab back.  We first went to the Fremont Street Experience and saw the show there.  It is a light show that is syncronized  to music.  Following that we headed back to the strip and walked around for a while looking at the Vegas nightlife.  Finally we headed back to our hotel and went to sleep for the final time on the trip.

June 2nd, 1998

Tuesday June 2nd, 1998
No Game
Gas: Thompson, UT $13.49
Lodging: Richfield, UT

Today was just a travel day.  We left Denver in the morning, traveled through the Rockies, and made it to the Richfield KOA in the early afternoon.  We thought about continuing on, but we hadn't camped for a while and decided a nice afternoon and evening camping sounded like fun.  

We arrived in the late afternoon and set up camp.  We stayed at the Richfield KOA which was right next to a restaurant called JB's, so that is where we had dinner.  The rest of the night was spent reading, relaxing, and working on the baseball stats for the games we had seen.

June 1st, 1998

Monday June, 1st, 1998
Arizona Diamondbacks 6 @ Colorodo Rockies 4
Stadium: Coors Field
Gas: Lakewood, CO $9.01
Lodging: Denver, CO

We spent today exploring downtown Denver.  We left Mary Jane's apartment, got an oil change for the car, and then headed to downtown Denver.  On our way there, we saw Mile High Stadium, where the Denver Broncos at the time played their games.  We decided to stop by and see what we could of it, as it was scheduled to be replaced by Invesco Field.  We were able to drive right into the parking lot by the stadium.  Nobody was there to stop us, so we just walked into the stadium  We were able to get to the south end zone bleachers and snap a few pictures.  Nobody ever did stop us the whole time we were there.

When we finally got downtown, we headed to the Denver Mint to see where all of our coins are made.  We then headed to the state capitol.  We toured it and headed up to the top of the rotunda and got some really nice views of the city.  After that, we headed to the Denver Public Library where we spent most of the rest of the afternoon.  Now, you might be wondering what would we be doing at a library as tourists?  At each game that we had attended, they had been passing out the All-Star ballots for the upcoming All-Star game.  Most people would fill them out at the game and put them in the ballot box.  We knew though that this year's All-Star Game was going to be played at Coors Field, which was going to be the location of our final game.  Early on in the trip, we decided we were going to save a ballot from each game we went and would turn them in at Coors Field.  For whatever reason, we thought there was some sort of special symbolism about turning them into the location of our final game AND the home of the All-Star Game.  So we grabbed the most recent Baseball Weekly, headed to the library and scoured the stats to determine who are 1998 All-Stars would be.  It was then time to fill out our 16 ballots and then head to game.   

The tickets that we had were probably the best ones of the trip.  The were on the third base side about 30 rows up.  The highlight was being able to turn in all of our ballots when the ushers came to collect them.  We did realize as we were walking back to our car that this was going to be our final game and thought brought on a bit of sadness for both of us.  Following the game, it was back to Mary Jane's and we both called it a night.