Picture Dump

First things first: NORDBERG IS A GOLDEN GOD! He ended up winning the tournament in New Orleans for a large sum of cash. ESPN has tentatively set July 18th as the date that the tourney will be televised. July 18th will be my 26th birthday. I slept on this guy's couch in Detroit just 3 weeks ago! I hope he still remembers me when he's a big TV star! Does anyone else see the connection here? I sleep on his couch and he runs hot at a big live tourney that will be shown on TV on my birthday. I think that he owes me a certain percentage of this win. 50% will do. Seriously though, Nordberg is a great player and, more importantly, a better guy. I couldn't be happier. Here's his recap if you want to read it. VIVA LA NORDBERG!!!

I'm back in Kansas City and I had a great day recovering from the craziness of Vegas. Today I ate great BBQ at Arthur Bryant's, toured the Jazz and Negro League Museums, ate Southern Fried Chicken and Catfish at The Peachtree, watched the Suns-Mavs game and lost some money playing poker.

Tomorrow, I'm driving to St. Louis and back to Kansas City after the game. St. Louis is about 4 hours east of Kansas City but I had to do it this way because of their schedule. I'll probably get out of KC around noon and get back by 2 AM. Thursday is another day of rest and I drive to Denver for my 28th ballpark on Friday. I'm driving to Vegas on Saturday and flying back to Seattle on Sunday. Home sweet home.

Sorry for letting everyone down over the past few weeks. I don't know what to tell ya. I'm having fun and blogging isn't atop my list of priorities. Anyway, here are some pictures that I never posted, complete with exciting commentary:


Trying to get towed in DC 

I thought it would be funny to have a picture of the no-parking sign just in case I got towed from the Nationals game. I still chuckle but I may be the only one.


Aisleway into RFK. 

Man, this picture really epitomizes the nastiness that is RFK.


Philly Cheesesteak 

I forget the name of this place but Nat took me there for a bellyfiller and I was very impressed.


Ownage of cheesesteak 

BUT NOT THAT IMPRESSED!!!


Hottie Ballgirl 

We had great seats in Philly and I got to pose with the ballgirl. She had a nice tush.


Me, Al and Nat 

Don't know who this statue is of but it's the only picture that I have wih Al and Nat.


Eva and her Big Ho 

Al's wife, making him proud and making every other man jealous.


Fenway Pahhhhk 

Beauiful day in Beantown


Rogers Centre (the stadium formerly known as Skydome) 

The Hard Rock Cafe and Skydome Hotel. I kinda like it.


My Grandparents' grave site in Waterloo, Canada 

I brought some flowers and tried to clean the moss off the grave. I cried for a few minutes.


PNC Park in Pittsburgh 

One of my top 3 ballparks.


Pittsburgh skyline and one of the rivers 

What a view!


Soft pretzel in Cleveland 

One of the most awesome things I've ever eaten.


Me and Dookie in Detroit 

One of very few pics of me and Dook.


Dookie and Jimmy at Wrigley 

Cool pic in front of a famous sign.


Getting rained on in the bleachers 

We had bleacher seats and waited in line for the gate to open then sprinted up the ramp to get front row seats. Then is started pouring but if we moved, people would steal our seats. So we got really wet.


The old scoreboard at Wrigley 


Bleachers on rooftops 

Apparently they sell tickets for like $100 but it includes food and all-you-can drink. I want to do it someday.


Sausage Race in Milwaukee 

We had standing-room-only tickets because Milwaukee-Minnesota is a hot ticket (seriously) so we stood behind home plate for most of the game. It really wasn't bad. The game was unbelievably long and the Twins were killing the Brewers. Everyone stuck around until the top of the 7th for the HOTDOG RACES!!! Everyone was kinda apathetic about the game by this point but a roar erupted when the hod dogs came out and everyone got on their feet. There was a handicapped section right in front of us where people in wheelchairs could park. A LADY GOT OUT OF HER WHEELHAIR AND STARTED CHEERING FOR THE HOTDOGS! See the lady in blue? The hotdogs gave her new legs! We saw a miracle in Milwaukee!


Metrodome ceiling and tiny scoreboard 

The Metrodome ceiling was interesting to me. It looked like a tent, like someone pitched the frame then stretched a cloth over the top of it. The crowd wasn't that big but they got pretty loud. It made me miss the Kingdome. The scoreboard at the Metrodome was ridiculously small.


Debbie reppin' Mr. Brett in front of his statue 


Turkey Sandwich from Izzy's in LA at 3 AM 

So much turkey. Such a bad idea.


Vegas Dufflebag 

Speaking of bad ideas.


pre-151 shot 

Ugh, 151 is the bane of my existance.


post-151 shot 


LA - Vegas transportation 

Party Bus.


For Al 

This is around noon, after 3 solid hours of drinking. I started with beer at 8 AM, moved to mimosas at 9:30 and bloody marys at 10:30. The locigal progression was to straight SoCo out of a plastic dixie cup.


The view from our table at Mix 

We ended Friday night at Mix, a club atop the new tower at Mandalay Bay. Frank's brother works there and got us a sick table on the patio. This really is the view from our table. Usually you need to buy a bottle of booze for this table. The cheapest bottle: $475 for a fifth of Grey Goose. Instead, Frank's brother hooked us up with 4 or 5 rounds of drinks, 40-50 drinks FOR FREE. Shots of tequila and vodka crans were all the rage and we had a great time. I'm not really a clubbin' kind of guy but being a VIP was fun.


Double-fisting at Harrah's outdoor bar 

This is Sunday night in Vegas. I've walked by this outdoor bar a million times but this was the first time I've ever hung out there. I had a lot of fun.


Yelling something at Harrah's outdoor bar 

Like I said, a lot of fun.

Vegas Weekend

I flew into L.A. on Thursday night, chartered a bus to Vegas on Friday morning and it's been insanity ever since. Friday may have been one of the best days of my life. I fly back to KC on Monday night and I'll try to get a full recap up.

My friend, Peter Feldman, is at a WSOP Circuit final table in New Orleans. Gooooooo Nordberg! Gavin Smith, another great guy, is the overwhelming chipleader and I hope he finishes 2nd.

I'm watching US - Latvia right now and drinking water in preparation for a long night. I can't believe how soon the World Cup is kicking off. Goooooooo Nats!

I suck

First things first: RIP Marisa Cooper

Thanks for all the harsh comments, they're pretty flattering. I’m sorry that I haven’t been posting more, or at all. I’m simply having too much fun. Please remember that if I don’t blog for a while, you can: (a) call me and see how I’m doing or (b) assume that I’m having too much fun to update this damn weblog. It’s one of those problems that grows and grows the longer you ignore it and pretty soon you feel like never writing again. I’ve tried to write a huge long update on multiple occasions and quit out of frustration every time. With that said, here is my update of the DC - Philly - NYC - Boston - Cooperstown - NY - Toronto - Pittsburgh - Cleveland - Cinci - Detroit leg: I had fun.

AlCantHang has a good recap of Philly here and Nat has some good pictures here. I can't figure out how to link the actual post on Al's page but it's posted on May 8th. Al writes better than me and Nat takes better pictures so get over there and check ‘em out.

I saw a lot of old friends and saw a lot of cool ballparks. I will say that PNC Park in Pittsburgh made its way into my top 3, along with Safeco in Seattle and AT&T in San Francisco. PNC is right on one of the rivers and has a beautiful view of Pittsburgh’s skyline in right field. Comerica Park in Detroit is probably in the top 6 or 7 and would be higher if Detroit had a nicer skyline. How about trying to rank the new-retro stadiums in order! That’ll come after my Chicago recap.

Dookie met me in Cleveland and joined me for games in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, Chicago and Milwaukee. He has seen 11 stadiums now, pretty impressive. Anyway, Dookie and I left Detroit on Wednesday because Jimmy was flying in that night and we were going to paint the town red. Traffic really sucked coming into the city and the weather was even worse. There was a ton of construction and a lot of big trucks and I could barely see through the rain. Not fun. We got to Chicago around 2 or 3 PM and I was really happy to be off the road. We had plans to stay with Jimmy’s sister’s husband’s brother who Jimmy had never met and we decided to wait until Jimmy arrived at 8:30 to contact the guy. We parked near his house and walked to Wrigley Field. It’s a tiny stadium and was easy to walk around. We considered going to the game that night but already had bleacher tickets for Thursday’s day game so we decided to save the $50 and drink more. We hit a bar called Stadium Club or something and started drinking pints of Old Style. The bar got really crowded and smoky around gametime and the weather had cleared up so we decided to sit on their patio for a bit. About 5 minutes after we got seated it started hailing really hard and we were grateful that our table was under an awning. Our waitress stopped coming out to serve us but we stayed reasonably dry. At some point we got a call from Jimmy letting us know that his flight was canceled because of the weather. He wasn’t flying in until 7 AM the next morning.

Soooo, here’s the situation: Me and Dave, both semi-drunk, in Chicago at 7 PM with no place to stay. The whole Jimmy’s brother-in-law’s brother thing was a little weird anyway but without Jimmy there it was impossible. The hail had stopped so I decided to walk back to the car, hop on my laptop and try to steal a wireless signal to look for a cheap hotel that we could walk to or take a cab. I succeeded in stealing a really weak signal and could only use MSN messenger. I asked Nat to look for hotels for me and he found a one-bed, 10’ x 10’ room for $105. Dookie thought that was ridiculous so we decided to spend that money on more beer, get drunker, and ultimately sleep in the car.

Around 8 PM, we started our quest for more beer. We were north of everything so decided to walk south toward downtown. We were on a street called Halsted and stopped at the first bar we saw, called The North End. As soon as we walked in I noticed there was only one female in the whole place. I went to the bathroom after ordering a beer and got there just as a flamboyantly homosexual man got there. He asked, “Are you coming in with me?” and I respectfully declined. I went back to Dave and he whispered to me, “Are we in a gay bar?” I was pretty sure of it and my suspicions were confirmed when the bartender told us how much he loved Seattle and more specifically, Capitol Hill. I felt fine but Dookie was pretty uncomfortable so we pounded our beers and left. Apparently Shane from Road Rules was there but I didn’t recognize the person that Dookie pointed out. As we walked south on Halsted we started to see rainbow pained garages and large rainbow phallic structures. We were definitely in the middle of “boy’s town”. All the bars looked really nice but really weren’t our cup of tea. Eventually we got to a bar called The Union and saw a few girls. The bar was mentioned in a Tucker Max story so we knew it would be good. We ran inside and got some beer and chicken wings. Manly! The bartender informed us that Friday night the bar offered all-you-can drink from 6-9 PM for $10. Well, we knew where we were going on Friday!

Eventually we made our way back towards Wrigley and found some good bars on Sheffield. We watched the end of the Spurs-Mavs game 5, a game that really pissed us off at the time but doesn’t matter now, and walked to McDonalds. In case you didn’t know, a late post-midnight dinner at McDonald’s is not a good idea. We eventually made it back to the car and passed out. I woke up a few times to urinate in the courtyard of the apartment building across the street but slept surprisingly well.

Argh. I’m tired and this is too much writing. I know, I suck. I guess you’ll all have to live with that as my update for the past 2 weeks. It’ll be easier to update daily from now on.

Here’s the stadium list I promised you. Remember, these are just the new-retro parks.

1a. Safeco Field in Seattle
1b. AT&T in San Francisco
1c. PNC in Pittsburgh
4. Citizen’s Bank in Philly
5. Comerica in Detroit
6. Camden Yards in Baltimore
7. Petco in San Diego
8. Ballpark at Arlington in Texas
9. Miller in Milwaukee
10. Turner Field in Atlanta
11. Jacobs Field in Cleveland
12. US Cellular in Chicago
13. Minute Maid in Houston
14. Great American in Cincinnati
15. Chase in Arizona

US Cellular would be higher if they weren’t ridiculously elitist. They have a large 500 level and don’t let anyone with 500 level tickets walk around the lower concourse. WTF is that? I will never voluntarily give Jerry Reinsdorf my money. Great American was OK but just very boring. Chase really turned me off with its dome-like feel. I have a hard time figuring out where to put the old stadiums on this list since the new ones are obviously nicer so they have their own list. Here ya go:

1. Fenway in Boston
2. Wrigley in Chicago
3. Yankee Stadium in New York
4. Shea Stadium in New York
5. Dodger Stadium in LA
6. Rogers Centre in Toronto
7. Angels Stadium in Anaheim
8. Network Associates in Oakland
9. RFK in DC

Honestly, the top 5 on this list might all be better than any of the new stadiums. You can’t buy history and each of those stadiums gave me goosebumps as I walked through the turnstiles. The Skydome was surprisingly nice. The hotel and restaurant in centrefield really make it bearable. They use fieldturf instead of Astroturf and even though it looks splotchy, I give them props for it. Angels Stadium has been upgraded but still is kinda blah. RFK is just disgusting.

That’s 24 down, 4 to go. I’m going to Minnesota tomorrow night and driving to Kansas City on Wednesday. I fly to Vegas on Thursday and get back to Kansas City next Monday. I’m driving to St. Louis on Tuesday and back to Kansas City on the same day. I drive to Denver on Thursday and see my last game, at Coors Field, on Friday. I drive to Vegas on Saturday and I fly home on Sunday. I’m leaving my car in Vegas because I want it during the WSOP. I’m flying home on June 4th, flying to Germany on June 8th, flying back to Seattle on June 23rd and starting the WSOP in Vegas on June 27th. It’ll be much easier to leave my car in Vegas instead of driving all the way to Seattle and back. I have a number of friends there and I’ll be able to park it in someone’s driveway.

I got my oil changed today. The trip will go over 9,000 miles tomorrow. I’ve been in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ontario, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. That’s 25 states and one province. I think the final tally will be 31 states.

It’s been a great trip but I’m also really excited to move on. The World Cup will be amazing and the World Series will be fantastic. I hope I’m not broke by the end of the WSOP.

It just gets better all the time

The road trip just keeps getting better. The last few days have been more fun than any man should be allowed to have. Since Tuesday I’ve been to five baseball games in four different stadiums with eleven different people. Derek, Nat, Al, Eva, Matt, Ivy, Chris, Ezra, Emil, Mr. Matros, and Mrs. Matros. I saw a 14th inning stretch and I saw Arthur Rhodes get a save. I saw the Braves lose three consecutive games and fall 9 games behind the Mets. The Braves are 0-6 in games that I’ve attended. 0-6! I saw Jose Reyes get 5 hits in a game and I saw David Wright hit a walk-off double to end one of the best baseball games that I’ve ever attended. I drank SoCo with AlCantHang and I played Chinese Poker with Matt Matros and Chris Fagris. I stayed in an old plantation style house and Nat showed me how the previous owners rang their servants. I ate the biggest and tastiest cheesesteak that I’ve ever seen and I made it my bitch. I saw two old stadiums that won’t be around four years from now and I saw two “new-retro” stadiums, including the one that started the stadium revolution.

Guess what I get to do the next few days? I get to see a day game at the oldest and arguably the coolest park in the majors. I get to spend a day at the Hall of Fame. I get to watch the biggest rivalry in sports in the house that Ruth built. I get to share a beer or four with Pauly.

I’m wicked tired so that’s all I could come up with as a recap: the lazy writer’s list. I’ll try to get pictures up at some point. In case you’re curious, here’s my schedule for the next week:Sunday: Orioles-Red Sox at Fenway
Monday: Hall of Fame in Cooperstown
Tuesday: Red Sox-Yankees at Yankee Stadium
Wednesday: Senators-Sabres in Buffalo (NHL Playoffs)
Thursday: A’s-Blue Jays at the Skydome
Friday: Marlins-Pirates in Pittsburgh
Saturday: Tigers-Indians at Jacobs Field
Sunday: Phillies-Reds in Cincinnati

Sick, sick, sick. Unreal. Both the Tigers-Indians and the Phillies-Reds games look much more appealing now than they did at the beginning of the season.

Nat leaves me on Wednesday morning, catching a train back to Philadelphia, but Dookie rejoins me in Cleveland on Saturday. He’ll be with me for over a week, through Chicago and maybe Milwaukee. I can’t believe this trip is more than halfway over.

Hump Day

Happy Hump Day to all you working stiffs out there. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous in DC and Baltimore, continuing my lucky weather trend. It started in Oakland and San Francisco, where it had rained nonstop for over a week then suddenly stopped for the two days that I was in town for A's and Giants games, and has continued to the East Coast where it's been sunny and 70 every single day. I'm probably jinxing myself by writing this but I'm going to knock on wood and continueworshiping the weather gods before I go to sleep every night.

On Monday, I woke up at 8:30 and caught the Metro from Devo's house to the Smithsonian and the Mall. I actually got to the American History Museum at 9:30 AM and they didn't open until 10. It might have been the first time in my life that I've been up and about before a museum opened. The museum had an exhibit titled, "Amreica at War" or something like that and it showcased what life was like during all the major wars from the Revolutionary War until today. The ehibit was obviously done very well and I really enjoyed it. They also had the original "Star-Spangled Banner" and were working on cleaning it and mounting it for display. I went to the Natural History Museum next and enjoyed looking at dinosaur bones. I considered going to the Holocaust Museum but I didn't want to get depressed so I skipped it and wandered around the Mall for a while. I only took one picture all day:


Washington Monument 

At noon I caught the Metro back to Devo's place and drove up to Baltimore. I checked into the Days Inn in the ghetto and played poker all day. I'm competing with some people on 2+2 all month and trying to score the most tournament points on Poker Stars. I tried 8-tabling on my laptop and quickly found that it wasn't a good idea. I ended up down about $400 and decided to only play 4 at a time, max.

Tuesday morning, I checked out of the ghetto and went to the Sheraton Inner Harbor. The hotel is 2 blocks from Camden Yards and 2 blocks from the Inner Harbor. The Inner Harbor is the nicest, most happenin' spot in Baltimore and the Sheraton's location was perfect. Baltimore's hotels aren't cheap and the best deal I could find on Orbitz was the Holiday Inn for $159. The Holiday Inn is 1 block from Camden and about 5 blocks from the Inner Harbor. I checked out Hotwire.com and they had an unnamed 3-Star hotel for $110 so I decided to roll the dice and it ended up being the Sheraton. The Sheraton was $330 on Orbitz. I'm not sure what the deal is with Hotwire and why they don't tell you the name of your hotel beforehand but they usually have pretty good deals and they tell you the neighborhood that you'll be staying in. I'll definitely use them again.

Anyway, I played some poker until my friend, Derek, showed up at 4 PM. I hadn't eaten all day so we went to a little brewery by the stadium and had dinner. I had a crabcake sandwich and it was delicious. I'm not sure wha kind of crab they use(Blue?) but it was definitely the bomb. We had a few IPAs to wash down our dinner then headed to the stadium. I'd been to Camden before but I was still impressed by the stadium. It's beautiful in its own right but gets extra cool points for starting the new-retro stadium revolution. I really like the way that they incorporated the warehouse into the scenery and I like the view of downtown behind centerfield. Here are some pictures:


The Babe 


Nice Seats, Huh? 


The Right Field Warehouse 

I had a great time hanging out with Derek and I'm happy he made it to the game. He and his wife have a 7 month-old baby and I know he's busy as hell. Baseball is the perfect event to hang out with a friend and talk about everything under the sun. I love it so much. We saw a good pitching from Kris Benson (Anna's giving it up tonight!) and 3 Oriole home runs paved the way for a 9-2 victory for the home team. The scoreboard claimed that the attendance was 15,000 and change but it definitely felt like less than that. It was definitely the smallest crowd I've seen so far and quite a change from the 45,000-plus that were at each of the Mets-Braves games.

After the game I went back to the Sheraton and played some more tournaments. I ended up winning a $50 Stud Hi-Low tourney despite not really knowing how to play. I played very very tight until I got to the final table and picked up an (A2)3, picked up a 4 on 4th, 7 on 5th, then 2-2 for the smoothest of 7s and trip deuces. I then picked up (A4)A that held up for a scoop and then got rolled up deuces that held up for a scoop. It's an easy game when you pick up 3 monsters in 4 hands late in a tourney. Once I got a big stack it was pretty much over and I abused the small stacks into submission. The tourney was pretty small but the $840 for first place put me back in the black for the tournament challenge.

This morning I woke up at 10:30, called to front desk for a check-out extension, and went back to bed until 11:30. I checked out at noon and walked to the Ineer Harbor. It was another beautiful day and it was definitely an enjoyable atmosphere. I ate lunch at the ESPN Zone and then went to Barnes and Noble to buy The Complete Stories of Truman Capote. The book came highly recommended by my dad and I wanted some non-poker reading material. Here's a picture of the old power plant that houses the new businesses:


Power Plant 

Again, I really like how they incorporated an old historical building into something new and hip. The smokestack looking thing that a power plant has runs right through the Barnes and Noble and adds a lot to the aesthetic beauty. Around 2 PM, I drove back to DC and found RFK Stadium using my GPS. The stadium looks pretty ghetto and the neighborhood was kinda shady so I looked up Starbucks in my GPS and found one about 2 miles away. Now I'm at a coffee shop called Cosi, across the street from Starbucks. I bought a drink and now I'm stealing someone's wireless internet and updating my blog. Starbucks has a T-Mobile signal but there were 3 or 4 other unsecured connections for me to choose from for free. God bless America.

The Nationals game isn't until 7 PM so I'll probably be here for 2 more hours. I'm really excited for the upcoming games, in Philly and at Shea. Tomorrow I get to kick it with Nat, Al and Eva and on Friday there's a big crew going to the Mets game, including Matt, Ivy, Chris, Ezra, Emil and Nat. Nat's coming with me on my Philly-NYC-Boston-Cooperstown-NYC rectangle of baseball love. Al is planning on calling in sick for work on Friday so that should tell you what Thursday's going to be like. If Al's calling in sick, I might be calling in dead.

Apperently, starting June 7th, it's going to be a class C Felony to play online poker in the state of Washington. I haven't really read into the details but apparently the budget is $0 to enforce this law. However, the threat of a felony is enough to get me to stop playing. That's really going to suck. Carl was planning on buying a place and even put an offer on a condo the day before he heard about this law. Now he's withdrawn his offer and is seriously considering moving to Vegas. The damn Indian Casinos have a ton of pull I guess and I'm pretty sure they were the major factor behind this legislation. I'm not very happy.

OK, that's it. I'll try to get a blog up on Friday, as long as I don't drown in a pool of SoCo.