Baltimore Recap:

Six days ago I left Rochester for the Baltimore area to go an O's game and the mane (ha!) event, the Preakness. I had heard stories from the people that went last year. Sounded like a party of epic porportions. So the days before leaving, I had a weird mix of apphrension and being skeptical. It can't be as crazy as they made it out to be? What if it was that crazy? Could I handle it? Do you really hire people to carry your beer in from the parking lot to the front gates? All of this, among many other questions were swirling around my head as I tried to sleep Thursday night.

After picking up some Majik rolls at Jim and Ralph's we were on the road, the trip got off to a bit of an antagontistic start as I yelled out to the crowd of charity bike riders "June 18th Bitches!!" from the back seat of the car. For those who don't know, June 18th is the Survival of the Fittest. Just check out that site, it's got maps of the race for pete's sake!! Last year was the first year, sadly I was not a part of it. I'm pretty sure I was somewhere west of the Mississippi.

Getting back to the trip, I think the first major highlight that I don't think I'll forget is when we made our first stop to change seats in Williamsport, PA. Home of the Little League World Series. Others might have been democratic and just rotated seats. Not us, we had contests and games to see who got first pick of seats, that's how we roll. Some ideas were thrown back and forth until genius struck fellow author Dan H. A beer chugging contest. In the Little League World Series Parking lot, overlooking the field. At about 1 p.m. Knowing what you know about my stomach and how well I chug beer, the first coupling of Zach Fields and Vomit could have made a very early appearance. But I didn't think about it too much and down the hatch warm Budweiser went. I finished a disputed third, which even finishing was an achievement. Not vomming, even bigger achievement.

After getting back in the car, I just thought about the symbolism of a group of 22-23 year olds chugging a beer overlooking the site where the youth of the baseball world are celebrated, ridiculed and put under immense pressure. I'm not sure what the symbolism exactly meant but it meant something.

Eventually we got to the Baltimore area. What a dump. I guess the Inner Harbor area is cool and trendy and what not. The rest is not. I've never seen The Wire ever but it's accurate, trust me.

From here on out to honor the gully nature of B-More, bullet points:
-The O's game was on Friday night. Weather was overcast, rainy. Wanted Boog's BBQ but the line was bonkers and our seats were in deep left field
-Sammy Sosa was still on the DL, I say he was ducking us.
-Pat Burrell is not a quick left fielder
-Brian Roberts and Tejada, who's hotter right now up the middle?
-A button-down shirt was far from adequate, I was damn cold.
-The Syracuse contingent that we met down there stayed until about the third inning, probably better off, someone would have gotten asked to leave I'm sure.
-The Phillies ended up winning, 9-3.
-Bought a 30 pack of the High Life from a convient store on the walk back to the car. I don't want to overstate the grimey city life but it was defintely one of those stores where you put the money in and they whirl it around, all the while standing behing bullet-proof (maybe) plastic, then whirl your change back to you.


Saturday festivites coming later today, Bike Race shopping.