Alright, alright. Let’s get this going. I know I’ve been dragging, and these posts are long, but I have been getting pretty good feedback overall. Anyways, the next few days are going to get pushed together, just because 1) not as much happened, though stuff did happen, and 2) I’d like to move on to stuff that is going on now, as opposed to now 2-3 week old news. Chad, I didn’t say 1a for you, so be happy. Let’s get on with it.

Tuesday

This was the day of our first Tribe game. We went out to Dunedin, which is pronounced Dun-i-din and not doon-din as Geoff would have you believe. The Blue Jays were out here. To get out to Dunedin, we had to drive on the LONGEST CAUSEWAY EVER. It was 11 miles, 6 lanes, and very close to endless water on both sides. I thought this was pretty terrifying when we first got on it, but I got used to it after about 4 miles. It was pretty scary though, I’m not joking. And it wasn’t even the worst part of today’s driving session!

The Blue Jays played in crazy Knology Park. I don’t know why the company was called Knology. I think it was a phone/cable/internet company, and Geoff thinks that they decided to be called Knology after they got the 1-800-KNOLOGY phone number. We didn’t think much of this company, to say the least. Before we got to the park, we had to find a place to put the RAV4. We drove down past the park a little and started looking on side streets. I was going to turn back towards the park, but we saw this little kid jumping up and down 6 or 7 houses away from us and across a major street. I thought about turning left, but he won us over with his enthusiasm, so we decided to go down to where he was. His father/grandfather (I’m guess latter, but I don’t want to be rude) told us to park on the lawn, and the kid gladly took our $5. Geoff tried to tell him that he sold us, but the kid was too busy grabbing our $5. It was all very strange. Anyways, we went over to the park and got us some tickets to the game. There was a good crowd out, but we got decent seats on the third base side halfway up. The park was quite nice, and while the concourse/concessions were not the best, the park itself was pretty and I really had no complaints about the place overall. As for the game itself, it was crazy. This was the only game we watched all the way through, I think. Jason Bere started for the Tribe, as he was trying to lock up either 4th or 5th in the rotation. He safely put himself in AAA, giving up 6 runs in 2 innings, including a grand slam to Eric Hinske. Some other crappy pitcher came in and gave up 2 more runs, and our Tribe was quickly down 8-0. Josh Towers was pitching for the Blue Jays, and he killed us for 5 innings, giving up maybe 1 or 2 hits and 0 runs. However, Terry Adams came in and sucked a lot, putting the Tribe right back in it. We tied it up, the Blue Jays got 2 in the 7th, and we came back with 1 in the 8th, but that was it. We lost 10-9, but the game was much closer than it should have been, and our offense looked very promising against old-ass pitchers.

Dunedin was located north of St. Petersburg, which means it was on the western side of the Tampa Bay. We decided to drive down to St. Pete, and we took US-19 South down. This road was very reminiscent of New Jersey. That’s pretty much all there is to say about that. The S&M Truck Store (or whatever it is called) was there too. We got down to downtown St. Petersburg, and we weren’t very impressed. Geoff did like the strip club that had a $79-a-week motel upstairs. We decided to go on the bridge back to Tampa. This was officially the worst part of the drive. 11 miles back again, but a lot more water on both sides of us, to the point where it felt like we were in the middle of the ocean. It was pretty freaky – I guess I am agoraphobic or something. Anyways, Tampa was pretty lame too, and we decided to head back to Lakeland.

On the way back, and on the way to Tampa too, we saw a sign that we found amusing. It was for Dinosaur World. Yes, that’s right. They had big model dinosaurs. In retrospect, we should have gone to check it out. There were dinosaurs everywhere!! Actually, I guess its good we didn’t go. It was unexpected, to say the least.

We had a shitty Outback experience before we got all the way back to our motel. The food was average and the service was terrible. I think the waitress hated us, probably because we were the only people both over the age of 13 and under the age of 40 in the whole restaurant. It seemed that way at least, and I think that’s a pretty dumb reason to hate two customers, but that’s just me.

That pretty much summed up Tuesday. Wednesday was pretty quiet, so I’ll go ahead and write about that here too.

Wednesday

This was our first game at Winter Haven. The Tribe had the Devil Rays, and despite being reasonably close to Tampa, there weren’t that many Devil Rays fans. There were, however, a shitload of Indians fans. We got seats way up the first base side, basically in the right field bleachers. When we were walking in, we saw Bob Feller playing catch with some kids near home plate, which was pretty amazing. Bob freakin’ Feller!

The game was pretty boring. We saw another guy trying to get into the rotation, Jake Westbrook. He had an excellent start, and the Tribe offense was more alive than it was in Dunedin, getting 7 hits but only 2 runs. The only notable part of the game was seeing Robert Fick play right and blatantly drop a fly ball. It was routine, and yeah he just dropped it. He’s officially the worst outfielder ever.

Yeah, the drive wasn’t really exciting, and nothing amazing happened. It was just a nice, relaxing day in Florida. Sorry!

I think my next post will finish out the trip, Thursday-Saturday. It will be pretty long, but I should put this whole series to bed. So, be sure to check back!

God I am seeing a Coors Light ad in which they are singing their own version of "Take me out to the ballgame". Can we kill the people who make Coors Light ads? Please? I hate them so much.