Kansas City Royals @ Toronto Blue Jays (2)

The threat of rain has never been far away and it's been quite humid here this past couple of days and it's forecast to continue that way. It's been 24-27C/75-81F which has felt a lot hotter with the humidity. On the way home from the game last night, it was drizzling, but I didn't really get very wet as it was all drying off as fast as it was coming down.

Today was my second and final game in Toronto, as I'm doing a day trip tomorrow. This was a day game starting at 1pm, so after breakfast, I booked dinner for later and then set off on the subway. The trains are air-conditioned, whilst the stations are not, so it's nice when the train arrives and you can sit in the cool for a bit. Today's pitching match-up was Jeremy Guthrie for the Royals against the knuckleballer R. A. Dickey, who won the NL Cy Young award last year, when I saw him pitch for the Mets.

This game was strangely similar to yesterday's game! The game lasted just two and a half hours thanks to some good pitching by both starters. The difference was that the Royals got the early runs and the Jays made a successful late comeback, with a significant bit of help from Kansas City, it has to be said. After an error, the Royals relief pitchers issued back-to-back bases-loaded walks to give the Blue Jays a 4-2 lead after 8, which Janssen closed out in the 9th for his second save in two days, giving R.A.Dickey a win for his superb 8 inning effort.

The fast paced games are enjoyable - and it's unusual to see such fast games in AL match-ups. You can see why neither team is in contention, but I don't know how they can fix the problems easily, which as far as I can tell, are mainly from the neck up.

Over the two games I've attended, there have been some funny games and giveaways between innings. During Friday's game, somebody won a lawnmower for one game - I was imagining him getting home and explaining to his wife why most people who go to the ballgame come back with a flag, a T-shirt, a signed ball, but he'd come home with a lawnmower. The other highlight of Friday's entertainment was the coffee cup shuttle game (this is the 'hide <an object> in one of three identical <receptacles> shown on the stadium video screen, and then move said receptacles about in various manners, sometimes slowly sometimes quickly, jumping over each over, spinning around etc., and then require the contestant to identify which receptacle contains the MacGuffin.) The 1st place prize that one lucky contestant was playing for was a $150 gift voucher. However, in the middle of the game, ALL the coffee cups jumped off screen completely at the same time and then came back down again in a different pattern, much to the amusement of the crowd and bemusement of the contestant, who failed to guess the right coffee cup at the end - but was given the voucher anyway. As Saturday was a "Junior Jays Day", the game had a young child as the contestant, and a baseball hidden in a Blue Jays lunchbox (which were being given away as part of a promotion). The lunchboxes didn't move nearly as quickly or deviously, and importantly, did not disappear off screen, and the correct lunchbox was chosen and the Blue Jays Fun Pack of stuff was duly won.

After the game and before dinner, which I had booked for 5.30pm, which was really a bit early in hindsight, I went for a walk along the Lake Ontario waterfront. There are lots of canoeists and some expensive looking yachts and some very expensive looking yachts, all sharing the water between the mainland and the islands. I intend to visit the islands on Monday, when I'll have the whole day to do lake cruises and island visits and return to the mainland for my dinner booked for the 360 Restaurant up the CN Tower.

Kansas City Royals @ Toronto Blue Jays (1)

Today was my first full day in Canada and I'm still recovering from the extremely late arrival. Fortunately, the hotel serves breakfast until 11.30am during the week (and until 1pm at weekends!) so I didn't have to get down there really early, like in some other places.

I walked around some of the buildings that are near to the hotel, in particular looking for the coach terminal that I'm going to need to go to on Sunday - but I didn't find that, so I'm going to have to look for it again tomorrow. I walked around a little bit of the underground PATH network where many of the shops are. The tunnels are well used by everybody and it's nice to be able to get out of the heat at this time of year. I made my way gradually southwards along Yonge Street and then along Front Street to the stadium. It is extremely useful that the Blue Jays' stadium is right next to the CN Tower, as it makes it very easy to locate. There's a lot of construction work going on along Front St though, which makes the whole area rather chaotic at the moment.

To be honest, the best thing about the Rogers Centre is that it isn't the Rogers Center. It's fundamentally a round, concrete building with little aesthetic value at all. It looks quite odd with the Renaissance Hotel also forming part of the stadium, with its modern shiny glass. I had to walk half way around to get my gate, but when I got there, there was no queue and I was able to go straight in and up to my section in the "TD Comfort Clubhouse" zone. What this means is you get at-your-seat service throughout the game and comfy seats, although I thought that they were a little narrow compared to lots of other stadia, probably with the exception of Wrigley Field. The roof was closed for today's game, the opener of a three game series against the Royals of which I'm seeing the first two games. There were two good starting pitchers, as well, with Mark Buehrle for the Blue Jays going up against Ervin Santana of the Royals.

During this game, I kept having to remind myself that I was watching an American League game - the teams raced through the innings and by the 2 hour mark we were already into the 8th inning. The Blue Jays got on the board early with 2 runs in the first inning, and added another later whilst Buehrle kept the Royals quiet. As soon as he was out of the game, the Royals staged a rally, getting two of the runs back, but ultimately got no further and Janssen picked up the save in a tense 9th.

Both teams were having good seasons, but they are now languishing a fair way behind their respective divisions' leaders. Watching this game, I can see how frustrating it must be for fans of both teams. They both play well most of the time, the physical stuff is right there with some outstandingly good defensive plays, but then they throw in what can only be described as complete brain fades. Three examples in today's game: a tame ground out to the Jays' first baseman Adam Lind, but does he run to the bag to make the out? No, and neither did the pitcher, which left Lind standing a few feet up the baseline with the ball whilst the runner made it to first base; the other two occurred on the same play where the Royals had a man on first and the batter hit a sharp single up the middle. For some reason, the lead runner decided to try to make it to third, but realised that this was a mistake around a third of the way to third base and gave up running - only to find that the centre fielder, having come forward to shallow centre to field the ball held the ball and didn't throw it to third. Batter safe, runner safe, centre fielder embarrassed, crowd angry!

The game was a quick one at under two and a half hours - which can be mainly attributed to the quality pitching. The official box score says that the attendance was just over 21,000. Really? Or was that the number of tickets actually sold, because there were lots of echoes in the stadium and it looked very sparsely populated to me. Even the ticket touts outside were trying to flog tickets for half the face value.

I bought some tokens for the subway for the journey back to the hotel. They are tiny things, about the size of a half penny piece used to be, but it worked the ticket barrier and I was able to sit in the nicely cool subway train for a few minutes back up my hotel.

Arrived (eventually)

The flight to Newark left the gate a couple of minutes early and was in the air 5 minutes later. The journey was quick, with an early arrival too. The menu seems unchanged from last year - so I had the salad, the braised beef and ice cream for dinner, although it was a little weird having dinner at 11am!

I bought some new Bose QuietComfort 15 headphones at Heathrow, as that was the model that people on Amazon all seemed to recommend. I though that they'd better be good at the price they were (£250). They are really good. Even just putting them on cuts out some of the noise, and when you switch them on, the engine noise almost entirely disappears - it's almost unbelievable. So they are completely worth it - and unlike my old ones, they also deal with propeller noise too. When I connect them to my music player, I can have the volume down and hear it very well, instead of needing it really high.

Even though I was only in transit, I still had to clear US immigration, baggage claim and customs before giving them the baggage right back again and going off to wait for the next flight in the United Club, which I was entitled to use as I had another international flight to come, but didn't eat anything as I wasn't hungry, although this turned out to be a mistake.

The same plane seems to fly back and forth between Newark and Toronto. It had been delayed a bit in Toronto for maintenance, but my flight was due to be only half an hour late by that time, originally supposed to be at 3.29pm. After 3 gate changes, and over an hour, it eventually arrived over an hour after we were supposed to have left. The first attempt at leaving thus came just after 5pm and after 20 minutes of taxiing about, queueing to take off, we were diverted to a second taxiway and after some time, told that air traffic control had said the skies were too busy and they'd stopped all flights going in our direction. So we sat there, engines running, watching a steady stream of other aircraft going past and taking off, for about an hour. The pilot then reported that he'd been negotiating an alternate route which would take longer but that we could actually go, but the only route ATC were offering was too long and we didn't have enough fuel. In the end, after another half hour, the pilot said that he'd got an agreed route, but because we'd been sitting there for a couple of hours burning fuel ... we didn't have enough fuel for the new route, so we'd have to return to the gate to get some more. At least once we got back to the gate, we were given a glass of water each and a tiny bag of pretzels. We had another go at leaving at 7.45pm, finally leaving the ground at 8.20pm. We saw a spectacular thunderstorm from above just after we left, lots of lightning. I suspect that this was the primary cause of the airspace closure. We finally arrived in Toronto just after 9.30pm. Since I just wanted to get to the hotel by this point, I opted for a limo to the hotel for CA$60, instead of messing around getting the subway.

Unfortunately, my stay here was booked in three parts, because I was only intending to be here two nights originally, then had to add another two nights before and one night after onto the stay and I couldn't modify the original without paying an awful lot more for the room than the special rate I'd got. With three reservations, two of which are pre-paid, it was complicated. However, the lady on check-in has sorted it all out so that I can stay in the same room without moving.

All the restaurants were shut well before 11pm, so I went out and found a McDonald's almost right outside, so was able to have something to eat before falling asleep.

I'm not going to do very much today before going to the game this evening, which has two good starters with Mark Buehrle going up against Ervin Santana as the Blue Jays host the Kansas City Royals.

Heathrow

It took just under 2 hours to get to Heathrow this morning, with a little bit of slow moving on the M25, but a smooth journey with Lance. I had plenty of time to drop my bag off and have breakfast in the lounge. As so frequently seems to be the case, the lounge is at the opposite end of the terminal to my gate, so I'll have to leave a few minutes to get down there. Everything was remarkably easy, with no undressing required at security for a change! I was able to buy the headphones I wanted at 20% off, so I'll see how they go on today's flight. It's nice and peaceful sitting here, and now I'm off to find the plane.

Preparation

This is the blog for my 2013 Holiday! I'm just about packed now, ready for an early start tomorrow morning.