Driving 42.5% Across the Country

I've always wanted to drive across the country.  Tom was moving to San Francisco and he asked if I had any interest in joining him on his drive.  My weekend in New Jersey with Adam conflicted with the beginning of his trip, but I was able to join him in Denver.  I missed out on a little bit more than the eastern half of the country.  My phone says it's 2,951 miles from here to San Francisco and 1,253 miles from Denver to San Francisco.  I've traveled extensively on the east coast and I've also done plenty of driving in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, so I wasn't too disappointed on not being able to join Tom until Denver.

I arrived in Denver on Monday a couple hours after Tom got there.  Our first stop was Coors Field for a tour.  It's amazing that Coors Field is now the third oldest National League ballpark.  It's a really nice stadium, but the problem is you just can't play normal baseball at that elevation.  Our tour guide explained that the ball travels 9% farther at that elevation than at sea level.  To combat that, they made the dimensions about 4% bigger than most ballparks.  So the stadium isn't big enough to take away those extra altitude home runs, but it is big enough that there's more room for doubles and triples.  And if you play deep to try to take away doubles and triples, you're going to let more singles fall in.  I was at Coors Field in 2012, but they've made some changes since then.  The most notable is the right field roof.  They took out seats (it is a huge ballpark and the Rockies hadn't exactly been selling out on a consistent basis) way up high in right field and put in bars and places to sit and not watch the game.  Or you could hang out by the railing and watch the game.  Also, I noticed how high the row of purple seats is.  I knew about that row, which denotes a mile above sea level, but I was right down by the field when I went five years ago so I didn't notice it then.  We also learned that Blue Moon (you know, crafty MillerCoors) was created at Coors Field.

This is from the right field roof.  You might be able to make out the row of purple seats that's a mile high.

Apparently every team got one of these when the All Star Game was at Citi Field in 2013.

On the field at Coors Field

After Coors Field, we went to Zanzibar or Stars and Stripes or whatever it's called now.  It was on Bar Rescue.  I didn't have anything to drink because I was holding off until our next stop, but Tom had a beer.  The inside looked pretty cool, but I noticed there was a refrigerator where they kept some liquor that looked really dirty.  They also had these cheap flags from other countries hanging up.  Tom said he would get rid of them.  I agree, they didn't really make sense and they definitely didn't add anything.

Zanzibar/Stars and Stripes

Then we went to the Cherry Cricket, which was featured on Man vs. Food.  It has been voted the best burgers in Denver.  On the show they had waitresses throwing darts at a dartboard that determined Adam's toppings.  Apparently that's not an actual thing (I wouldn't want my toppings to be left up to random dart throws anyway).  I got a burger with hot jack cheese, guacamole, pico de gallo, and grilled onions.  Tom got a black bean burger with some stuff.  It was very good, but it definitely doesn't unseat another Man vs. Food spot, the Vortex in Atlanta, as the best burger I've had.  I had a Melvin IPA to drink.  I'm not a huge IPA fan and they had a pretty wide selection so that's not what I would have gone with ordinarily, but it was the one beer they had from Wyoming so it was my chance to cross Wyoming off the list.  I liked it more than I usually like IPAs.

Little Cricket Burger and Melvin IPA

We were off to Salt Lake City the next day.  The fastest route took us through Wyoming, where we drove for over 300 miles on I-80.  When I went to Denver five years ago, I drove to Cheyenne.  I definitely didn't expect to ever be in Wyoming again.  To get to I-80, we drove north on I-25, which could have taken us to Cheyenne, but that would have kept us too far to the east, so Tom's phone had us cut across to the northwest to get on I-80 around Laramie.  Part of that cut across was about four miles on a dirt road in northern Colorado.  The highest elevation on I-80 in the country is in Wyoming a little to the east of where we had gotten on, but we did see a sign for the continental divide with an elevation of 7,000 feet at one point.

This was a random hotel in The Middle of Nowhere, Wyoming.

We didn't do a whole lot in Salt Lake City.  Before going to the hotel, we went to a vegan restaurant.  I had a salad and a Moab Rocket Bike Amber Lager.  I'm pretty sure I had a beer from Utah when I went to the Jazz game in 2015, but I didn't mention it in the blog post.  So I can now say with certainty that I've had a Utah beer.  It was pretty good, but it was served in a frosted glass.  I've never been a fan of that because you take it out of the refrigerator and you get all that condensation.  That just waters down the beer.  Jon Taffer pointed out the same thing on Bar Rescue once.  I went to Bruges Waffles and Frites, which is a Man vs. Food spot that I went to in 2015.  This time, I just had some fries with aioli sauce and andalouse sauce.  They were good, but I maintain that European Republic has better fries and sauces.  I went to Temple Square and walked around and thought about the All About Mormons episode of South Park.  And then I went back to the hotel to watch the All Star Game.

Northeastern Utah

Joseph Smith was called a prophet.  Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.

The next morning we were off to Reno.  It was my second time in Nevada.  The first time was for an education conference in Las Vegas a month before I started the blog.  We stayed at the Eldorado.  I took a walk around and got lost at one point because it was connected to another hotel.  I went to the sports book and checked out some odds.  The Dodgers are currently the favorites to win the World Series.  Hopefully they'll prove that to be accurate.  The Warriors are heavy favorites to win the championship again next year, with the Cavaliers at 3 to 1 and the Celtics and Spurs at 10 to 1.  In the NFL, I didn't look at the favorites, but the Jets and Browns are tied with the worst odds to win the Super Bowl at 250 to 1.  And Notre Dame was 28 to 1 to win the National Championship in football and I think 75 to 1 to win the National Championship in basketball.  I didn't make any bets because the entire purpose of casinos is that they make money while providing you with nothing in return.  One good thing about our hotel was that the Brew Brothers microbrewery was right inside.  We went for happy hour and had a couple of pints for $3 each.  I had a Redhead Amber Ale and a Carano Extra.  Both were pretty good.  Nevada is a state I might have had before, but we can make that one official now too, which brings my beer state total to 35.

Casinos look nice.  That's because their entire purpose is to take your money and provide you with nothing in return.

Our shortest city to city drive was the last one, Reno to San Francisco.  We went through the Tahoe National Forest in California.  There were a ton of trees.  The elevation also got pretty high.  I saw signs for at least 6,000 feet.  We might have even got up around 7,000.  For a little while, Tom's car said the outside temperature was in the mid-40s (it was very before sunrise).  The descent was pretty rapid.  We could definitely feel the air pressure increasing as the altitude decreased.  We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge around 9:00 in the morning and got to Tom's apartment shortly after that.  It was really foggy as we crossed the bridge.  I took some pictures, but they weren't great.

Inside the Tahoe National Forest

Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog.

We wanted to do an AT&T Park tour the following day (I had been there once before for a Giants game in 2014), but it turned out that there was a private event and hence no tours.  The move into the apartment went as smoothly as possible.  The movers were done around noon, which was before they were even scheduled to arrive.  So we went to AT&T Park to see if we could get a tour that day.  We went to look into buying tickets and there was a sign on the cash register that said the 1:30 tour (the last one) was sold out.  We asked and they told us that they had two tickets left.  So we got to take the tour.  I wanted to paint asterisks near any mentions of Barroid's "accomplishments."  He was the biggest cheater in the history of baseball (dishonorable mentions for Roger Clemens, A-Roid, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire).  The first stop on the tour is the upper level and you work your way down.  It is quite a view from up there.  It was at that stop that the tour guide explained that there's a garden in center field because Hunter Pence wanted one.  That makes sense because Hunter Pence is the type of guy who brings 13 items to the express lane.  And I've always disliked how they don't cut nice looking patterns into the grass.  The tour guide explained that the grass is that way because that's the way it was Seals Stadium, where the San Francisco Seals played.  I think it's a pretty dumb reason, but at least there is a reason.  I was hoping that we'd get to go in the press box, but that was not included.  Of course, AT&T Park was the site of Vin Scully's last game.  The visitors' clubhouse was definitely not as nice as the visitors' clubhouse at Coors Field.  The tour ends up in the visitors' dugout and on the warning track between the dugouts.

Asterisks are greatly needed.

Here's a guy who was a much much better player than Barry Bonds.

That grass could look so much nicer.

On the field at AT&T Park

We got to two Bar Rescue spots on that first day in San Francisco.  After the tour we went to Patriot House, which is a little weird because it's on the third floor of a big office building.  We were there in the middle of happy hour, which was not busy (it was before most people had gotten off of work and it was a Thursday).  I had a Racer 5 and two fish tacos.  I would rate the experience as pretty solid.  Of course, I liked the Patriot House theme, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for San Francisco.  We went from there to Tom's friend's apartment to watch the Mike and the Mad Dog 30 for 30.  They were the best.  I hope that somehow they end up back together when Mike is done at WFAN, even if it's not every day.  They should do a weekly podcast.  Back in my camp days, I did a Mike and the Mad Dog Alvernian article.  It might have been my best one ever.  Then the three of us went to the Roc, another Bar Rescue spot.  This one was right by Fisherman's Wharf.  I just had a glass of water.  Tom asked for a Jack and Diet Coke because he had been there once before and they didn't have Jack Daniels.  They still didn't have Jack Daniels.

The Smelly Hippie House would make more sense for San Francisco, but I appreciated the Patriot House theme.

Our last day was Friday and we didn't have much to do.  We got to sleep late.  We actually made it to two Man vs. Food spots.  First was Ike's Place, where Adam had the $30 Kryptonite sandwich.  I wasn't going to do that so I had the sandwich named after Adam instead (it was $13).  It was pretty good, but probably a little bigger than it needed to be.  From there, we took the bus back to Fisherman's Wharf to go to Ghirardelli Square.  I had to get some ice cream there.  I had a sundae that was all chocolate themed.  It was good, but probably not as good as I was expecting.  I do like chocolate more than vanilla, but I think I would just go with the regular sundae if I ever get back to San Francisco.  After that, we walked up to Coit Tower.  The weather/hills combination was kind of annoying.  It was all cold and foggy where Tom lives so I wore a sweatshirt.  But then it was like high 60s and sunny when we were in eastern San Francisco.  Walking up ridiculous hills in that weather with a sweatshirt on got pretty hot.  After that, we took the bus back to Tom's apartment to rest for a little bit.  Then for dinner we went to our second Man vs. Food spot, Taqueria La Cumbre.  After the big lunch and the ice cream, I decided to go with a vegetarian burrito.  It was fine, but nothing special.  To be honest, I'd rather have a vegetarian burrito at Chipotle.  Maybe a burrito with meat would have been better than Chipotle.

We didn't go up Coit Tower, but there were some nice views from outside the tower.

We did a lot of driving through five states.  It was cool driving through the mountains.  Here's how I'd rank the states in terms of the scenery during the drives:

5.  Nevada- it was the most desert-like.
4.  Colorado- We didn't actually do that much driving through the mountains in Colorado.  We had the mountains to the west of us for most of the time.
3.  Wyoming- About 300 miles of driving through the mountains.
2.  Utah- Eastern Utah was really cool.  Western Utah was not as exciting.
1.  California- Mountains and forest in the east, the Bay Area in the west.

So that was it for my first trip to California for the summer.  I will be back next week.  It will be a more direct route, but there will be a stop before I get to California.

Gettin' Paid

The title of this post is a reference to pre-camp 2003.  Pete would get it.  The reference is in honor of Hector Olivera.  I'll get there.

I made my second trip to New Jersey for some minor league baseball.  This time I went to visit my friend Adam and we went to see the Somerset Patriots of the Atlantic League.  The Atlantic League is the league that the Long Island Ducks play in.  I still haven't been to a Ducks game, but my first experience at an Atlantic League game was enjoyable.

When I went to Trenton earlier this year, I was unsuccessful in my attempt to cross New Jersey off my beer list.  So I wanted to make sure that I succeeded this time. So we started by going to the Twin Elephant Brewery, which has only been around for a little over a year.  They had seven or eight beers on tap and we both got a flight with five beers.  Most of them were pretty good.  The guy that showed us the big room where they do all their brewing said 95% of their beer is sold right at the brewery so that's likely a beer that I won't have the chance to get anywhere else anytime soon.

I think New Jersey beer put me at 33 states.

That evening, we were off to the game.  It started raining right before we got there, but it didn't last long.  There was a little rain during the game also, but it didn't affect the game at all.  The Patriots play at TD Bank Ballpark.  The setup was very similar to Arm & Hammer Park in Trenton.  There was definitely a better food and beer selection, though.  Since I did some drinking at the brewery, I opted not to have a beer.  And I only had a black bean burger to eat.  I was about to spend a week on the road so I didn't want to eat a lot of unhealthy food at the game.  There was a pretty good food and beer selection, though.  The crowd was pretty good as well.  I'm putting TD Bank Ballpark at number 9 on my list of minor league parks, between Arvest Ballpark in Springdale and Memorial Stadium in Boise.

The Patriots were playing the Sugar Land Skeeters from Texas.  The Atlantic League teams are all in the Northeast except for the Skeeters.  I have no idea how that team makes money.  Their travel expenses have to be significantly higher than the rest of the league.  I would think that all the teams use buses and/or trains for their travel except for the Skeeters.  I guess the Skeeters could just fly at the beginning and end of each road trip, but they have to spend a lot more on air travel than any other team in the league.

One of the interesting things about the Atlantic League is that you will find a lot of familiar names because you do have a decent number of players with Major League experience.  The Skeeters had two people that we took an interest in.  Manny Corpas is a former Major League pitcher.  The only reason that he was particularly interesting was because we were sitting right next to the Skeeters' dugout and Adam noticed that he was wearing Chicago Cubs pants.  You definitely notice some things sitting down by the dugout.  One of the Sketters' hitters was saying that the umpire said he could barely see a pitch because of the sunlight reflecting off the AT&T ad right next to the batter's eye as the sun was setting.  The other interesting player was Hector Olivera.  The Dodgers signed him for six years and $62.5 million.  He never played in the Majors for the Dodgers, but he was part of the trade where they acquired Alex Wood.  So that worked out pretty well for the Dodgers.  He played parts of two seasons for the Braves and hit two home runs.  They traded him to the Padres and the Padres released him.  So I'm pretty sure Olivera still is getting paid by one of the three Major League teams that once had him.  He was the DH for the Skeeters and he had two singles, a double, and a walk.  The manager for the Skeeters was Gary Gaetti.  I remember Gary Gaetti, but I definitely didn't remember how good his career was.  He had 360 home runs and 1341 RBIs.  That's 105 more home runs and 341 RBIs more than Chase Utley.  I'd have to look at Chase Utley's stats before I would say he's not a Hall of Famer (and I would say no for sure, but if Ryne Sandberg is in the Hall of Fame, you can make a strong case for Utley), but I'd never even think of Gary Gaetti being anywhere close to the Hall of Fame (to be fair, Gaetti played in five more seasons than Utley has so far, but Utley is not going to catch him in home runs or RBIs).

Our view for the game

The game was not particularly competitive.  The Skeeters went up 10-0.  The Patriots scored two in the 8th and two in the 9th to make it 10-4.  I like patriots in American history, but I was happy that a team named the Patriots lost.

The Former Home of the Hartford Whalers

I made it to my third minor league game of the season.  I took the train to Hartford to see the Hartford Yard Goats play at Dunkin Donuts Stadium.  The stadium is brand new.  It was supposed to open last year, but it wasn't finished in time.  But it's open now and it's really good.

I started my day in Hartford by going to Woody's, which was featured on Man vs. Food.  I'm surprised there was a Hartford episode (I'm also surprised that Hartford had an NHL team for almost two decades and the Hartford Blues were an NFL team in 1926, but there were lots of NFL teams in random locations in the early days of the league), but Woody's was worth it.  This was one of the few times that I had the same thing Adam had, in this case the Deputy Dog.  They take a hot dog and top it with pulled pork, cheddar cheese, and barbecue sauce.  The bun is grilled and it was like the bread on grilled cheese.  It was really good.  The dog was excellent and so were the toppings.  I think this was my 21st Man vs. Food spot (the 16 on the list in this post, plus Lucky's Sandwich Company in Chicago, Helena's Hawaiian Food and Mac 24/7 in Honolulu, and Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park in Charleston, which was on his ballpark episode).

The Deputy Dog

After that I went back to the hotel for a little bit and then to a 4:00 mass at St. Patrick-St. Anthony's.  I love a good vigil mass.  This worked out really well because I had an early train back on Sunday and I wouldn't have had time to go before I left.  I could have gone to the late mass at home, but that would interfere with watching the Dodgers.  I guess what I would have done would be to go to a church near Penn Station before taking the train back to Long Island.  Anyway, 4:00 was also better than a later vigil mass because the game was supposed to start at 6:35 but it got moved up an hour because it became a doubleheader after Friday night's game was rained out.  So a 5:00 mass would have overlapped with the game.

So I got to the stadium shortly before game time.  I took a lap and then watched the first inning from my seat.  I ended up sitting in the same row as the priest who had the mass I went to before the game.  After the first inning, I went to look for food and beer.  Bear's Smokehouse is a Hartford barbecue place and they had a stand in left field.  The line was long, but it looked like the most interesting option so I waited.  While I was waiting on line, the Portland Sea Dogs hit a home run to make it 1-0.  I had a brisket sandwich and a City Steam Naughty Nurse to drink.  The brisket sandwich was good and they give you a choice of barbecue sauce, but they put it on for you.  I liked the brisket sandwich that I had at the game in Charleston better.  There you didn't have options for the barbecue sauce, but you could put it on yourself.  City Steam is a Hartford brewery.  The Naughty Nurse was quite good.  I enjoyed those from a little perch out in left field.  When I went back to my seat later, there were a few foul balls hit right over in the area where I had been standing.  Later in the game I had a Narragansett Lager.  Ordinarily, I'd only have one beer at a game, but this was my chance to cross off beers from both Connecticut and Rhode Island (I think I'm up to 32 states that I've had a beer from now, I'm hoping to cross a few more states off the list in the next few weeks).  The Narragansett Lager was not as good as the Naughty Nurse.

My view for the game

This was good stuff.

When there's a doubleheader in the minors, they only play seven innings.  The game ended with that 1-0 score.  I enjoyed a good pitcher's duel.  The last two outs came on a nice double play.  One starter pitched a complete game and the other went six.  There was supposed to be a half hour in between games, but after they got the field ready, they covered the infield.  The rain hadn't started, but there was a severe thunderstorm watch.  I didn't know how long the rain delay would last and I didn't feel like hanging out on a crowded concourse if that thunderstorm came so I decided to leave during the delay.  It lasted for an hour and 21 minutes.  I don't think that severe thunderstorm ever actually happened.  I went back to my hotel room and watched a couple Scrubs episodes and a little bit of the Dodger game before I fell asleep.

I took a quick walk in the park in the morning before taking the train back to New York.  In the background is the Connecticut State Capitol.  Definitely not my favorite golden dome.

I was really impressed with Dunkin Donuts Park.  It's small (little foul territory, dimensions of 325, 357, 400, 350, 308 from left to right), but it had more of a big league feel than the other minor league parks I've been to.  You have a deck in right that overhangs the field and the suites up high that make it feel bigger than it is.  The concourse goes all around the stadium.  What I thought was weird was that the visiting team had the better bullpen.  Their bullpen is out in the open in left field.  The home bullpen is kind of like this dungeon underneath the overhang in right.  The concourse below the overhang gives fans a good look at the bullpen.  It's like you're hovering over it.  I watched the Yard Goats' starter warm up for a little bit before the game.  It was pretty cool.  But if I were a player, I'd rather have the other bullpen.  What's also weird is that the Yard Goats' dugout is on the third base side, but their bullpen is in right field whereas the visitors' dugout is on the first base side, but their bullpen is in left field.  But whatever.  The food selection is decent.  The beer selection is excellent (lots of local beers made me resist the urge to get a Sam Adams Summer Ale; if I went back, I'd have a Summer Ale).  The crowd was good.  Regions Field in Birmingham was my clear number 1 minor league ballpark.  Dunkin Donuts Park comes really close.  I'm going to keep Regions Field number 1 because the stadium is a little bigger and the crowd was really good.  But when I went to Regions Field it was Thirsty Thursday and they had $2 beers.  I suspect that if I had gone on another day of the week, the crowd wouldn't have been as good and I'd have Dunkin Donuts Park number 1 on my list.