The California Trip, Part 2
Right. Well. After we slogged our muddy and bone-soaked selves back to Philly on the PATCO, I took leave of Jon & Steve and prepared for the impending plane ride. As mentioned earlier, I didn't mind the monsoon that struck us during the Rush show; on the contrary, it only made a fun night even more memorable. On the other hand, a few songs later I stared down at my drenched shorts and mud-caked All-Stars and it occurred to me that I had been planning on wearing both on the plane.
I hastily changed, rinsed the sneakers off in the bathtub and, not having any particular idea what would happen, tossed them into the dryer in the basement. Meanwhile I ventured back outside to pick up some sundries for the trip at CVS. My wallet and all of its contents (the money, the Rush ticket stub, my voter registration card, a luggage tag that formerly belonged to my grandmother's late husband, a photograph of my ex that I had apparently forgotten to remove) were all thoroughly soaked and wilted, so much so that, unthinkingly, I handed the guy at CVS a soaking wet 20 and had to watch embarrassed as he clutched it between his fingers like a wriggling fish and stared at it. "Uh, I got caught in the rain," I managed to explain, and he laughed. (Fortunately, my Sound of Market "Buy 29 CDs, Get One Free" card survived the storm unscathed.)
I acquired a chicken salad sandwich on my way home and ate it at 12:30 AM while watching the Phillies win one in San Diego. With vague comprehension I realized that I myself would be in that very stadium just 24 hours later. I had originally planned on going to sleep immediately after the Rush show and get four hours of sleep before heading to the airport, but now that I had laundry to do, I figured I'd attempt to pull an all-nighter. However, once I got all the laundry done at 2 AM and also ran out of other trip-preparation-things to do, I decided to squeeze in two hours of sack time. The downside of this plan is that when I woke up at 4 AM I was so exhausted and confused that I had no idea where I was or what was going on. I think I literally sat very still on my bed for five minutes, staring at the clock, trying to figure out how much more sleep I could work in and still make the train to the airport. Eventually I decided that this was likely to prove impossible so I got up, showered, distractedly read the newspaper, took one last glance at my packed suitcase (as I had been doing 40 times a day for the past three nights, because I am insane) and headed out into Philly at 5 AM. The streets were almost completely vacant, making my walk over to 30th Station rather spooky, as the only sound was the grinding of the wheels of my suitcase.
Interlude (during which I ate some dinner and watched a little Olympics)
People who know me know that I'm a big Olympic geek; I absolutely adore those crazy Games, and am glued to the TV whenever they're on. In fact, I'm watching them at this very moment. I have a few thoughts about this year's edition:
1. Paul Hamm might be the best gymnast in the world; he might not. It would be nice, though, if the people who run gymnastics weren't so thoroughly elitist and did a better job of explaining their sport, and more specifically their scoring system, so these ridiculous controversies and debates don't happen every single freaking time. I like gymnastics but it's difficult for me to take it seriously as a legitimate sport when this is constantly happening. Same goes for figure skating.
2. I'm not going to question the legitimacy of beach volleyball; it's a perfectly reasonable sport. But why does it have to continue to be on sand if they've built a whole stadium for it and they're no longer on a beach?
3. Some people make the argument that although it's nice that these people win their medals and all, ultimately it's meaningless because being able to, for example, swim really fast is kind of a silly and worthless skill that won't get you anywhere in the real world. I don't know, though... look at Michael Phelps. Sure, maybe this is just 15 minutes of fame for him... maybe nobody will remember him three, four, five months from now. But I don't know, I think he's got it pretty good. He gets to travel to a beautiful country, meet fellow athletes from all over the planet (many of them hot swimmer chicks), swim in front of cheering fans, succeed and win medals at the highest level of a sport that he undoubtedly loves, appear on talk shows, appear on the front page of newspapers... and when the excitement dies down, he goes back to school, studies hard and gets a job out here in the real (i.e., boring) world with us normals (he seems like a bright kid, he'll do fine), keeps training and appears in the Games in '08 and probably even '12, and spends the rest of his life having this exchange with random people:
"Hey, aren't you Michael Phelps? The dude that won those medals?"
"Why yes I am."
"Hey that's cool. You're the man."
I don't know, that sounds pretty nice to me. Sure, his fame won't last forever, but whatever Visa and that cell phone company are paying him for those commercials surely ain't chump change. Maybe in the future, when he's a little more anonymous, he becomes a coach and trains some new kid to win some medals of his own. Maybe he becomes an elder statesman of American sports and turns up at future Games as a beloved icon. That all sounds awesome. It sounds better, in fact, than being someone like Barry Bonds, who's in the public eye every single day of his life and never gets a moment's peace. I don't know, maybe it's just me...
4. Open letter to NBC: No, I am not going to fucking watch "Father of the Pride". Go to hell.
The Trip to California, Episode III
SEPTA ride to the airport... airport check-in... random wandering about... security check, et al. ... waiting and waiting... the flight. Not much to report here if you've ever flown. I flew America West, which in afterthought is kind of a cheap airline, because they only give you a crappy little bag of free pretzels and you have to buy a meal if you want one, but I slept through that apparently because they never asked me. I got some ideas for
Analog as I stared out the window... things about the shapes of clouds, mostly. They showed "Garfield" on the flight over and it looks appalling, even with the sound down. Meanwhile, there's nothing sadder than the pointless melange of TV they show when the movie's over... an episode of Friends, some random news broadcast, a few infomercials for some tourist stuff, a weird French Canadian candid camera prank thing that looked really embarrassing and stupid and kind of depressing and upsetting. I really must have slept through more of the flight than I realized because I could never figure out where we were, and before I knew it we were over a desert and ready to enjoy my three hour layover in Phoenix.
...which was also not interesting. I called my mom, ate some pizza, read the Arizona Republic sports section, and waited around for the flight. The flight to San Diego was equally non-eventful except that there was a stewardess who seemed amused by my Phillies cap because she was a Braves fan. Yes, there's no escape; there never was.
In San Diego, where I was instantly impressed by the fantastically perfect weather, I picked up my rental car and navigated my way through a really gorgeous part of San Diego which I'm guessing is the part of San Diego that makes people say it's this really gorgeous and perfect city, and crossed into the much less nice part of town where my Econolodge was. After checking in and finding that this was not nearly as nice as the Econolodge we had stayed at in Clearwater, I went out for a drive to the stadium neighborhood. Um... not much to report there either, really. I kind of drove around randomly looking for a place to park, and finally did, and then wandered around the stadium area waiting for the gate to open. As I did I passed by the back entrance where I saw this guy in a full Phillies uniform and I thought it was another Phillies fan but it turned out it was Paul Abbott, which, in the final analysis, isn't really all that impressive.
They finally let us into PETCO Park which is really, really cool. I won't get into how it's built in an actual neighborhood and surrounded by buildings and they're revitalizing the whole area, as they should be doing in Philly, because I'm sick of thinking about it. But when you enter the entrance I went through, there's this huge waterfall next to a staircase... very impressive. After wandering around the concourse for a while, I stumbled across a concession stand where they were selling fish tacos. I had vaguely heard of these and was curious enough to get just one, thinking that I might get something else later, but when I took it over to the field to watch the Phils take batting practice, I discovered that they're really freakin' good, so much so that I had to go get another one a little later.
All right, I need to figure out how I'm going to spice up this blog a bit. Except for the fish taco bit, which was thrilling and awesome, writing this is really boring me, and must be boring you too, dear reader(s). My vacation couldn't have been this desperately dull, could it? I don't remember it being so. Let me get through the rest of the evening, and I'll mull this over and figure something out tomorrow.
The Game. A really good one, actually. I discovered to my surprise that Philly's not the only stadium to have adopted the old Cubs tradition of throwing back opposing home runs. Polanco hit one off the Western Metal Supply Company building (which by the way is such a great idea that I wish the Phils had used... they could have used the Holiday Inn or something) and it got tossed back. At one point the Padres' right fielder went diving for a ball and hurled himself into the bullpen and right into a concrete wall.
Padres Fans. They've got that Southern California tendency to leave early, but they're very passionate about the team. On the other hand, they're really, really into those stupid-ass race things they have on the screen. Meanwhile, I sat next to this kind of scary woman with a Padres sweatshirt and a radio headset, who said almost nothing all night except "Good!" at opportune moments. Like, a Phillie would swing and miss: "Good!" That was literally it.
Phillies Fans. Oh, we were out there, all right. Now, I'm a pretty negative fan; you know that from reading this nonsense, and I don't try to hide it, though I'm not terribly proud of it. But sitting behind me was this middle-aged couple who were evidently Phillies fans, as they spent much more time talking about the Phils than they did about the Padres. For a while I wondered if I should turn around and say hello, but the more I listened to them to more irritated I got: like, I joke around about how I hate the Phillies, and they really are a wretched, detestable team, but I don't actually really hate them, not really. But this couple seemed to really literally hate them. All they did was complain about how bad they were for two hours, but if the Phils did something good (Polanco's home run) they wouldn't react at all. They didn't say anything, they didn't clap. Nothing. I mean, if you're not going to get excited about anything at all, why are you even there? Did you fly all the way out there just to direct your hate toward the Phils? You could have done that at home. God knows I do.
Afterwards. I drove around for a while looking for food, finally bought a Whopper, and ate it in my hotel room while watching, for some reason, a VH1 documentary about Kiss. The fun never stops when I go on vacation!
