BOWLING GREEN KY -- Our final vacation of the year started off a somewhat serendipitous note: because of field conditions, Bowling Green's game last night was postponed and rescheduled for a doubleheader starting at 5:00 this evening. This didn't affect our plans; considering we would be crossing into the Central time zone, our planned ETA was 4:00 ( Read more... )

Our baseball sightseeing would continue in Lake County, Ohio, but once again, I decided to bypass the Thruway, confounding my GPS, Elyse. So as we drove through the wilds of southwestern New York, we came upon a giant, fenced-in complex in Perrysburg which I later learned was the long-abandoned J.N. Adam Hospital campus ( Read more... )

JAMESTOWN NY -- Given schedules and locations, I was able to cobble together a two-city, day-night doubleheader. But with the noon game being in Erie, I made the choice to spend the night before at our aunt's house in Morgantown before driving the remaining three hours north ( Read more... )

With a two-hour drive up to Altoona, Pittsburgh's AA affiliate, we were able to squeeze in a Memorial Day game. Since West Virginia is a low-A Pirate club, Chad knew people here too. (Apparently, they didn't know Chad as well; the first pair of tickets from the box office were not in a wheelchair section ( Read more... )

COLLEGE PARK MD -- I referenced my familiarity with Martinsburg and Chad's wheelchair-tire troubles yesterday, so I easily found the local bike shop. I was quite surprised to find a penny-farthing at the entrance. (A penny-farthing is one of those old-timey bicycles with a humongous front wheel.) Again, the bike shop couldn't immediately help -- ( Read more... )

MARTINSBURG -- Our second mini-trip of the year started us off south to go north. (Truth be told, from Charleston to Martinsburg it's a negligible difference between going up 79 then east, and 64 then north.) We stopped off in Lewisburg for lunch, totally blanking that our stepbrother and his family live there, and ignorantly eating lunch by ( Read more... )

LONG ISLAND CITY -- Today was an odd start, as it began at my aunt's house instead of mine. It still started early -- she woke me up at 5:15 -- and I was able to easily make the 9:00 flight in Pittsburgh. Points to the airport folk who had a live pianist playing near the ticket counter. However, minus points for playing such songs as "Please ( Read more... )

This trip was not our official baseball trip (that's later in the summer, in which we'll visit Idaho, Montana, and Washington), so Chad was involved in a lot of the planning and arranging ( Read more... )