The archived ramblings of my time as a world traveler up to my current life in Washington, D.C.
Actually had a relatively busy week, but since it was all for the AP, and the AP has an awesome policy of not giving stringers bylines, it was done anonymously.
But for those interested, here's what I was up to this week, told in a list of reverse-chronological order links:
Thursday
Wednesday, part II
Wednesday, part I
Monday
Long drives are in my future.
Starting tomorrow morning, we'll be piling into a car packed with too much stuff, making a trek from D.C. to Missouri for the holidays. It's not going to be quite that simple, though. The itinerary includes stops in Indianapolis, Chicago and Cleveland, and while we're in Missouri we'll be hopping back and forth between Joplin and Springfield a few times.
I'm not sure how much relaxing there will be. Hopefully some, but it might be the sort of vacation leaving us needing a vacation when we return.
Yesterday we had a day of the sort we should have more often in D.C. but don't, because most of the time we sort of forget to leave the house or our neighborhood.
We started downtown for some Christmas shopping and stumbled across a Christmas Market of arts and crafts. None of which we were interested in buying, but it beat going to Macy's.
Then we abandoned shopping for the afternoon, instead wandering to the National Gallery of Art. We checked out an exhibition of photographic snapshots before heading over to a free screening of a Romanian film. We had originally thought about sticking around for a classical performace by the Leipzig String Quartet but when we left the auditorium after the movie, the line outside for the quartet stretched through the lobby and the museum's shop, clear from the east wing to the west wing. Thankfully, we'd already decided to give the quartet a miss, since I don't think we'd have made it in. Instead, we headed to Chinatown for some cheap dumplings and another go at Christmas shopping.
It's the sort of day I plan in my head fairly often, but rarely execute. It beat hanging out in the suburban strip malls and big-box stores trying to run down a few last presents.
D.C.'s first snow of the year is falling as we speak I write. There's nearly an inch on the ground already, which makes the thick stand of leafless trees in the park behind my house look far better. It makes most things look far better.
Except drivers. I'm about to go out and see just how freaked out the District's car-driving populace is in the face of a few frozen water crystals falling from the sky.
As happy as I am with the snow, this isn't my first snow of the season. I got that out of the way more than a month ago during my trip to Denver. That snowfall was also far more impressive than this one, but I'm hoping this one, unlike my last, sticks around a day or two.
It has now been slightly more than one year since we arrived back in the States after our overseas tour. Somehow, my time in New Zealand seems as though it occurred more recently than our stay in Missouri at the beginning of this year. I probably tell fewer stories about our trip now, which I'm sure those I'm talking to appreciate.
I expected the travels to feel like a break from the arc of my "real" life. Instead, being back feels like the break. Of course, I imagine a big part of the feeling is because my "real" life, or at least my career path, is still on hold. I've been getting some freelance work, but so little I have almost nothing to point to in terms of what I've been doing. I'd like to break out, have something to work on, earn some money. Gotta change something, but it'd be nice if I end up being able to do something at least related to what I want to do.
So after all my rambling about the leaves, I walked outside today and realized I can see through the forested park behind my house all the way to the horizon. This is a first; the trees have turned into a bunch of sticks thrust vertically into the ground. It can only mean any redeeming qualities the local nature may have are in hibernation, and I can only look forward to the damp bleakness of the D.C. winter.
Another photo showing off the fall - this one is better larger, so click on the photo to get a better view of the Washington Monument through the trees.
Have to say, for all that's wrong with D.C., catching glimpses of the monuments and capitol as you drive around is still quite a sight.
D.C. sucked me in when I first arrived back in April by greeting my stay with two months of wonderful spring conditions, including warm air, low humidity and colorful plants everywhere.
A few miserable months of summer gave me insight into why the District has a reputation for miserable weather. I hoped fall would provide another lengthy buffer zone before what I'm assured is going to be horrible wet and cold-but-rarely-freezing winter conditions. (I would far rather deal with 20 degrees and snow than 33 degrees and rain).
A few weeks have given me the fall I was looking for, but it certainly hasn't been consistent as spring. A week of hot and humid, followed by a week of nice crisp weather, followed by wet rain, back to hot, repeat. It didn't help when Daylight Savings went away, and the sun is now leaving the party in the early afternoon.
Yesterday I was out walking at about 1 p.m. and thought to myself how it was a perfect day - jacket weather with some crispness to the air, but calm and sunny. Then two hours later I was walking home in a heavy rain, and before I went to bed I looked outside to see a 30-mile-an-hour wind blowing trash up my street.
I have a feeling the nice days are going to get rarer from here on out. But we still have the lingering effect of one of the nicer aspects of the past few weeks - the trees turning.
Washington and its surroundings actually host a large number of deciduous trees, all of which have been showing off their color-changing abilities. It impressed a recent visitor from Ireland (not so many trees left on the island) and has made a few long, slow drives around the city a bit more bearable. Of course, the leaves are starting to disappear, making the journey to the ground and gutter in preparation for the miserable months ahead.
And not the basketball episode. At a recent George Washington basketball game, the pep band broke into the theme from The Office during a timeout. In my experience, pep bands' exploration of the TV theme genre generally consists entirely of the Sportscenter music. Perhaps The Jeffersons' "Moving on Up."
The Office strikes me as an odd choice. There's no message behind that song that could possibly be construed to push your team to greater accomplishment. Of course, I'm guessing the band didn't intend any message beyond "this is a cool show and its music easily lends itself to instrumental arrangement."
Tonight I'm at Howard University for a men's basketball game. Eight minutes before tip-off, and there are not quite 40 people in the stands. It's probably the sparsest crowd I've ever seen for a game, and I covered plenty of Southern Miss women's games. Unfortunate. I don't know if there's any past tradition here, and I'm sure the Thanksgiving break has something to do with it, but I always hate to see a team playing in front of empty seats.
My first clue they weren't expecting a huge amount of people? There weren't any ticket takers at the door. There wasn't anyone at the door. Just walk on in and have a seat.
UPDATE: A few more people did just that. It appears the crowd is now easily in the triple digits.
I just realized I never finished the story started in my past posts.
I obviously didn't end up with tickets, but for Game 3 Tom and I made our way downtown and found a spot in a bar just across the street from Coors Field.
For most of the game, it actually looked like the Rockies might have a chance. When the Red Sox broke it open late, we decided to see if we could find a soft spot in the stadium's defenses.
We wandered across the street around the eighth inning and walked around toward the back of the stadium. A few fans were starting to leave, but most of the gates were still well-guarded against the ticketless like us. We did find what looked to be a possible weak point, with a large open area between the fence/gate and the actual stadium. The ushers were some distance from the gate, and Tom and I managed to step just inside the fence. When we actually moved for the stadium, the ushers caught on. They intercepted Tom. I was in front and had a chance of getting in, but figured I'd stop as well (I would have had a hard time getting back to his place without him).
So we didn't get in to see the game. We did get to watch the game with a buzzing atmosphere, although the spirit was considerably lessened the next day looking at a 3-0 hole (and then a 4-0 loss).
Unlike most of the Smithsonian museums, it's not easy to just swing by the Udvar-Hazy center, which is a branch of the Air and Space Museum. The giant open hanger features a number of notable aircraft, including an SR-71 and the space shuttle Enterprise.
There are obviously far more planes and the like on display, everything from old crop dusters and home-made ultralights to an F-14. Since the displays consist of lots of parked aircraft and almost nothing else, it can get a bit monotonous, but the hanger held my attention for a few hours, at least.
I had been thinking of stopping in at the center for a while, but since it's all the way out at Dulles Airport - about a 45-minute drive into Virginia, depending on traffic - it wasn't quite worth a drive for itself. This weekend, however, I found myself headed out toward Dulles for the final weekend of my Ultimate Frisbee league. After a morning loss, I had the afternoon free to check out the planes.
The obvious, featured planes are cool to see - the SR-71, the Enola Gay, the Concorde, the shuttle - and the sheer number of smaller planes kept my interest longer than I'd anticipated. I wish they'd done a bit more with one or two of the planes - I wanted to see the inside of the Concorde, rather than just stare at it from a few feet away. One of the coolest exhibits tucked away on the sides, at least for someone who grew up in the Top Gun generation, was an F-14 sitting right across from a MiG-21. (The MiG-21 wings are unbelievable short. Even more than most fighter planes, it looks like a rocket with a cockpit on the top. The wings are little more than small fins on the side - the entire wingspan is only about 20 feet across, which means the wings themselves are only a couple meters long.
The center also features a tower with views of the incoming Dulles traffic - the museum is maybe half a mile south of the airport's runways, so you can see the smoke kick up with each landing and look to the sky to see the planes lined up one after another until they disappear into the distance.
The tower also has a mock-up of an air traffic control center, complete with radio chatter and a radar screen. The radar and audio comes from Newark airport and it seemed to be about a 15-minute taped loop. I'm not sure how often the radar and audio is changed; I was doubtful it was ever changed at all, but the attendant commented on how they had to edit the Newark traffic. (He said the Newark airport was often disrupted by U.N. diplomat helicopters who didn't bother with the niceties of following the controllers. I have no idea if there's any truth to this.)
Since, I've found myself every so often putting on live Air Traffic Control chatter in the background. I don't know why; I can't really follow it, but I like the sounds.
I got into Denver a week ago. When I landed at DIA, it was almost 80 degrees. On Sunday, I woke up to a significant snowfall - a couple inches of white carpet on the ground. It stuck, covered lawns - not just a few flakes dusting the ground. Most of the snow melted during the afternoon, but there was still a pile on the edges of Mile High during the Broncos game. There was even a brief moment late in the game when a few more flakes started to fall, which gave some energy to the crowd (even though it'd warmed up during the day, it was a cold night).
Ever since, it's been in the 60s or 70s. No winter trip here, although the snow was a nice taste of what I'm not going to get in D.C., where I'm told the winters tend to be cold, wet and gray rather than colder, crisp and snow-filled.
Not that I've taken advantage of the weather. Monday and Tuesday were spent staring at computer screens trying to get World Series tickets for the games this weekend, which turned into an exercise in frustration. So no tickets for me, unless something completely unforeseen happens. However, I will be making my way into downtown Denver to see some of the craziness and hopefully see at least one Rockies win before heading back to D.C.
I left the friendly confines of D.C. this weekend, heading west to Denver.
Originally, the trip was to see friends and go to the Broncos game Sunday night (which turned out to be a good choice; the Broncos pulled out a last-minute win). But since the Rockies made the World Series, I extended the trip to stay in Denver for the games.
This morning, the World Series tix went on sale. Or were supposed to. The online-only sales were completely ineffective as the servers were jammed. A few hours ago the team announced they were suspending sales (after they reportedly sold just a few hundred of the nearly 60,000 available today) and will restart sales "later."
I didn't hold out much hope to get tickets regardless; I just wanted to be in the city while the games were going on. But I can't decide if this helps or hurts my chances - since I've got nothing to do but sit at the computer all week, I've got more flexibility to deal with these online problems than most. So perhaps I'll get Series tickets after all.
In honor of the Rockies' World Series run, another in my intermittent series:
I don't remember the first time I saw a game at Coors Field. I'd guess it was in spring of 1998, or possibly the year before. I'd guess I've probably been to more games in Coors than anywhere except the old Busch Stadium, since I tended to stop in Denver on my way back and forth between home and school when I was in college.
I know for sure I was in Coors for the
1998 All-Star game and Home Run Derby. We sat in the very top row deep above right field for the All Star game. I don't remember much about the game itself. I do remember a few moments from the Derby - Mark McGuire hitting a ball 500 feet off the front of the Rockpile center-field bleachers, Ken Griffey Jr. coming out after he'd announced he wouldn't be competing, a few Jim Thome home runs landing just one section away from us.
Coors gained notoriety for the thin air and home runs (and now the humidor) but the stadium itself doesn't get enough mention.
Sure, it's just one more of the retro-wave parks (and when I was in Cleveland, Jacobs Field seemed to be a near-exact copy, with a white stone exterior instead of brick). But Coors has character and a sense of place.
The stadium's location was near-perfect. It sits on the edge of downtown. A walk to the park is through LoDo (lower downtown) amid bars, lofts and a crowd of fans. But being on the edge of downtown (behind the park are railroad tracks and the interstate) means the large parking lots behind and below the stadium don't break up the landscape.
The best touch, however, was the decision not to add upper decks above the left field seating, giving a clear view of the Rockies past the scoreboard. The row of purple seats in the upper decks, marking one mile above sea level, are a nice touch as well.
The stadium is spacious and clean, without an over-abundant feeling of shiny, plastic surfaces you can get with some of the newest parks. And I've heard tell you can pick up some Rocky Mountain Oysters if you look hard enough, although I've never found the particular concession stand.
Until the last month or so, the Rockies have rarely been a team which seemed destined for greatness, although they were rarely completely lousy. The consistent mediocraty brought the crowds down from the record highs of the first few years, but the crowd at the games is generally knowledgeable and quick to cheer. I'm sure the atmosphere this weekend will be electric (although if Colorado drops Game 3 it'll be a pretty fatalistic crowd on Sunday). I'd like to be among the throngs inside, but if I have to make do with being part of the throngs outside it won't be so bad.
Obviously, I've gotten out of the habit of posting. My apologies to anyone who might care.
I haven't left the District in a while or gone anywhere particularly interesting. I have, however, actually earned a very small amount of cash the past two weeks, thanks to some work with the AP and one with the Washington Post.
Not that they're high-status gigs. They're stuff like this. But it beats not making any money, I suppose. And we'll see if I can build it up.
There are a plethora of different police forces patrolling the streets of D.C., or at least driving their cars around.
On a given day, I can see marked cars from the D.C. Metropolitan Police (the city's main police force), the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service, the U.S. Park Police, the National Park Service, the Capitol Police, the Metro Transit Police. Every so often, I see a new one to add to the list.
Today, I saw a new one I hadn't seen before. Squad cars bearing the name of Homeland Security, next to the designation Federal Protection Service.
According to this list I can look forward to spotting at least a dozen more insignia on squad cars around the city.
It was several years before I experienced my second baseball stadium.
One of the benefits of going to school in central Missouri was the relative proximity of two baseball teams; the Royals and the Cardinals were each about an hour and a half away.
In my first few years of school, I was more likely to make the trip to Kansas City. The Royals were never any good, but that actually worked in their favor. Kansas City had the best ticket deal - you could buy half-price upper deck seats for (I think) Tuesday and Friday games. In practice, this meant for $4.50 you could sit anywhere in Kauffman Stadium, since I never saw an usher in Kansas City. (This spring, I discovered there are some ushers restricting movement, but only to sections about halfway down the left and right field lines. Want to sit behind home plate or in the first row behind the dugout? No problem. Want to sit halfway between third base and the foul pole? No way. I don't get it.) As a Mariners fan, Kansas City also gave me a chance to see a team I cared about occasionally.
The first game I remember seeing in KC was when the Mariners came to town late in the season and Ken Griffey, Jr., was sitting around 50 home runs with an outside shot to hit 60 (in the years before Sosa, McGuire and Bonds blew past the then-sacrosanct number). A group of nearly 10 of us piled into a couple cars for the drive down I-70, picked up our cheap tickets and found seats about five rows behind the first-base dugout. (This was probably late in 1997, although I'm sure I also saw games there in the spring of 1997 as well.)
Kauffman is rarely held up as a shining example of baseball architecture. That the team has been lousy for the last 15 years doesn't help. Neither does the dated design, straight from the 70s.
But I've always thought Kauffman got a bad rap. If the stadium outlasts the new stadium building boom, in a decade or so its reputation will rise based on nostalgia. Suddenly, it's going to be one of the last remaining "old" parks and it's certainly got an unique design. Before too long, I see a backlash against the new crop of parks, all of which are based on the same Camden Yards-style new-retro aesthetic. (It's currently the ninth-oldest MLB park, according to Wikipedia, and in a few years it'll be the fifth-oldest.) And when the backlash comes, Kauffman is going to be uniquely poised to pick up admirers.
And even now, there's something to be said for the park. Unlike most of the previous generation of stadiums, it was built for baseball and it has a design unlike any other park.
The seats wrap around the field, soaring high behind home plate. The top of the stands gently curves down to the foul poles, and the seats just barely peek out above the edges of right and left field wall.
Beyond most of the outfield, instead of seats, sit landscaped grass terraces, pools and fountains which dance after home runs. The large crown-shaped scoreboard in centerfield with the lineups spelled out in lights isn't high tech anymore, but in this era of HD video screens replacing scoreboards, the older light bulb scoreboards have a fraction of the same appeal as the hand-operated boards. (A companion on a recent trip to a game expressed regret at the fact full-video boards would usurp the old clunky animations on the light bulb boards).
The best part of Kauffman's design is also its greatest weakness. Because there are no seats behind the outfield, just a walkway and some concession stands above the terraces, everyone in the park can see out, beyond the stadium itself. Such a view in a stadium gives fans a sense of place, a sense of the character of the area the stadium is set in.
Unfortunately, the area the stadium is set in is the wasteland along I-70 in the city's western suburbs, surrounded by nothing but bare concrete parking lots broken up only by Arrowhead Stadium at Kauffman's flank.
If this stadium was moved to the location of parks in San Francisco (water view), Denver (mountain view), D.C. (monument view), St. Louis (arch view) or even downtown Kansas City, where at least you'd feel like it belonged to the city and was a part of its environs, it would be hailed as one of the good places to see a ballgame. If it was in downtown K.C. it wouldn't be a must-see in the way Fenway, or Wrigley, or even the corporately-named park in San Francisco is, but it'd still have a reputation as a pleasant spot to watch baseball.
Instead, it's ignored at best. The only excitement I can remember over Kauffman was when I was in school and a fan was hit by a bullet randomly fired from a car on I-70. That's right, go to Kauffman, worry about drive-by shootings! Not even Tiger Stadium had that problem.
As my college career wore on, I was far more likely to make the trek to St. Louis and Busch Stadium than Kauffman. I knew more people from St. Louis, for one, and there were far more reasons to go see the Cardinals: better baseball, the promise of memorable moments. My best baseball memories are still in St. Louis. The only stand-out memory of Kansas City is driving all the way to the stadium to see Randy Johnson pitch for the Mariners only to have the game rained out without a pitch thrown.
Still, I've got a soft spot for Kauffman, and it's not just pity. I'm confident the Royals owners are too cheap to get a new park, so I believe in a years to come more people will come to see Kauffman as I do, as a pleasant place to watch a game without the too-shiny corporate conveniences of the modern parks.
Gotta say, there's something not bad about coming down to the Mall and setting up shop with a laptop outside one of the Smithsonian museums on a day like today. The sun is out but the humidity stayed away, people are out and about and there's a huge fountain to my left. I bash this city's lack of character often, but the Mall is a definite exception.
