Final day

I had negotiated a 2.30pm late checkout, which was a bit inconvenient really, as my flight wasn't until 9pm.  I had received an invitation to Classified - a "secret" new restaurant in terminal C at Newark Airport, available by invitation only.  The website won't even tell you where it is - you have to make a reservation in order to get directions!

I made a reservation for 5pm and left my hotel at 2.27pm, not hurrying at all.  In the end, I arrived at the airport at 3.30pm and was in the appointed area at around 4.20pm, so I looked in some shops and sat and waiting for a bit until 5pm.

I went to the appointed meeting area and gave the special password to the lady, who then led me through an unmarked door and through a maze of twisty passages, to come out in a small seating area.

It is an expensive restaurant, but the food was excellent, and the service was good too, which is easier when you only have around 20 tables, mostly for 2 people only, to deal with.  In fact, there were never more than half a dozen tables occupied at once whilst I was there.

I was able to drag out a starter (Steak Tartare), a main course (cooked steak) and a coffee for 3 hours, as it was calmer and quieter than the Polaris Lounge that I'm entitled to use.  I was able to watch the New York Football Giants playing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on the television at my end of the dining area, albeit with the sound off and subtitles instead.

Whilst I was there, I saw my plane, N677, being pulled to the gate by a tug ready for my flight.

It is always sad to watch night fall for the final time, as it means my holiday is over and I am about to leave.

After having travelled to the USA, and then on all the flights around the USA with all my bags, the woman at the gate this evening insisted that I gate-check my main bag because I wasn't allowed to take 3 bags on board.  I was supposed to leave it at the end of the jetway, but thought I'd see what the cabin crew's view was, and they had no problems with it - and indeed, we still have a couple of completely empty overhead bins here, so there's no space problem at all.

We're coming in the southern route this morning, over Cornwall rather than Ireland.  We're scheduled to land at around 9am, but knowing Heathrow, we might go around in circles for a while first!.

Manhattan Scrabble Tournament

I spent the final full day of my holiday at a Scrabble tournament in the middle of Manhattan.

Whilst I often talk to people at baseball games about where I've come from and why I'm attending games, these are passing acquaintances of a couple of hours - except for Angelique at the Giants home park in San Francisco, of course.

So attending a Scrabble tournament is a different kind of event to go to, because I have something more direct in common with the other people at the tournament.  I actually know some of the people already, have heard of others, and sometimes they're heard of me, particularly as I post in Scrabble Snippetz and on the NASPA Facebook groups.

So, it was today, although it nearly wasn't!  For some reason, the alarms on my phone were really quiet and didn't wake me until I woke up naturally just before 9am - I needed to leave the hotel by 9.20am to ensure I got there, as I needed to take 3 different subway trains to get to the venue by 10am.

Cornelia Guest - Director and Organiser

Fortunately, I'd had a large dinner the night before at Virgil's, so I wasn't desperate for breakfast, and I'd read that there were breakfast things available at the venue, which actually belongs to the Honors Bridge Club, who seem to own/lease most of two floors of a building in the middle of Manhattan!  There's all the equipment for bridge, including tables, bidding boxes, signs and other things.

Cornelia Guest runs the regular Manhattan tournaments and she has borrowed the two rooms on the 12th floor space for Scrabble today.



There were only four of us in the Collins division, including Cornelia herself to even up the numbers as César del Solar, who'd signed up previously, was needed to even up numbers in the NWL divisions.

There's the four of us in the photo: Jason Keller, Cornelia Guest, me and Ayotunde Adeyeri.

It was an 8 game tournament, so we played a double round robin and then two final rounds to be determined by the computer after the 6th round was completed

I started against Ayotunde, and lost by not many, but didn't get any bonuses.  Next, I played Cornelia and lost again, but this time I did get RETAINER and SITTERS.  Third game, I played Jason, the highest rated of all of us - even higher than my fantasy rating.  This game went much better for me, getting PORTION, COJONES and TARDIER down to give me a win 472-432.

Then the repeats, where I started against Ayotunde and this went better too with DAWDLES (90), HOMY (65), BAUD (30), RESEATED (64) and SCRAPIE (91+5) in consecutive moves in the middle of the game helping me to a 526-436 win.  Cornelia was up next, and I had some nice words here too, with ORALISED (84, actually a phoney, but she did not challenge it!) and GUNMETAL (74), BIZ (56) early on in a row, with RENOVATE and FIGHTING later on en route to 537-373 win.  Then, it was Jason again, and it looked good early on as he bonused on his first turn before I put LEAZE for more (74).  Unfortunately, I had only SPACIOUS after that and Jason had more so I lost 403-556, leaving my record as 3-3 after the round robin, but it was close for the top 3.

I played Cornelia in the 7th game, going out with my only bonus of the game ELATION to win 418-299, which set up a final round decider between Jason and me where I had to win by 202 to win the tournament, which was unlikely.  In another close game, I had ENJOYERS (110) and NEURONE (69) on the way to a win, but only by 50 points, thus ending up level with Jason on 5 wins but behind on spread for a second place finish.  The final board is shown here.

All in all, an enjoyable day, and afterwards, I went to dinner at Benjamin Steak House, which looks posh, so I took my trousers with me, despite it still being 28C/82F even at 8pm at night.  It turned out there were plenty of other people wearing casual things too, so I was fine.  After dinner I took the train down to the 9/11 Memorial area, but disappointingly, it's all roped off with no access at that time of night (11.30pm!)  It was still hot.  It took me ages to get a 1 train back to the hotel, because I went into the station, found it was too hot, so went back outside again to cool down, but then the gate wouldn't let me into the station again as there's an 18 minute period that must elapse before you can use the same weekly pass at the same station.  If the station agent had been there in her hut, she could have let me in, but she didn't come back until my 18 minutes had expired and I could enter!

Flurry of posts

I've posted a flurry of articles today as I catch up with game 3 in Boston all the way to tonight's game.

I'm now going to bed, as I've got to be up bright and early to go uptown to the Manhattan Scrabble tournament being hosted by Cornelia Guest at the Honors Bridge Club.

Toronto Blue Jays @ New York Yankees

The one and only game in New York, and the final game of all for me this season, was to see the series opener between the Toronto Blue Jays and the New York Yankees, who had clinched the AL East division title the previous night against the Angels.

After leaving Virgil's BBQ, I went straight up to the stadium, using the 4 express train.  I was surprised at how empty the trains were, because usually they are packed.  Perhaps it was because there was still 50 minutes before the game was due to start, so I beat the rush.

That also meant that I entered the stadium much sooner than usual, too.  So I got to hear both National Anthems play - because, of course, games involving the Blue Jays have the Canadian anthem played as all as the United States anthem.

I had a cheaper seat than usual, emphasis on the relativeness of the cheapness, given it still cost $135.  However, the view was good from here.

Crew Chief 'Country' Joe West was umpiring the game tonight.  His crew had just done the three games in Boston, and Joe had the plate for the 15 inning game on Tuesday that had over 600 pitches in it!  He's published a Country & Western album, hence the nickname.  He's the longest tenured umpire in the majors, having done it for decades, and all being well, during the 2020 season, he will become the record holder for most major league baseball games umpired.


I saw Aaron Judge hit a home run for New York, that sent the crowd into a frenzy early on, but it was a nip and tuck game, and Toronto edged ahead and held on for a win that disappointed most of the crowd, despite a double by Judge that he'd just hit in this photo.

However, it was a close game and most exciting, which is all you can ask for as a neutral really.

Of course, I saw the Yankees play in London back in June, so it wasn't the first time that I'd seen them this year, but it was good to see Judge play at home and all the other well-known New York players.

I've not seen Toronto for a few years, though - I don't recognise most of their players, but some of them have familiar names, as several have fathers with distinguished careers too: Cavan Biggio (father is Craig Biggio, Hall of Fame 2B for the Houston Astros); Vladimir Guerrero Jr (father Vladimir Guerrero mostly of the Angels - the man who thought he could hit any pitch, even those above his head, and did so!); Lourdes Gurriel Jr (father, Lourdes Gurriel who played in Cuba)

Boston to New York

I had an early start this morning, as I'd worked out I had to leave my hotel by 8.20am in order to make the 11am flight, with some contingency. 

Being right at the end of the line does have some benefits: notably, you can always get a seat, because it's not full when it leaves Riverside.

On my travels today, I saw this sign that reminded me of the Korean airliner crash at SFO a few years ago where a news channel had been fed fake funny names of the plane crew and went ahead and broadcast the names anyway ("Sum Ting Wong", "Wi Tu Lo", "Ho Lee Fuk", "Bang Ding Ow")

In the end, Green Line, Red Line, Silver Line (actually a bus that starts electric and switches to diesel half way) got me to the terminal with half an hour before boarding was due to begin.  The flight was uneventful and very quick - only about 50 minutes actually in the air.

At Newark, I recharged my phone and then travelled into New York by train, arriving at 2pm in my hotel.  I'm going to Virgil's BBQ for dinner next, and then up to Yankee Stadium for the final game of my trip.

Ooh, Betty! I've been articulated!

Since I had plenty of time to spare before dinner, I decided to wander up to the Charles River and walk along it for a bit.

All the space along the river is public and open, unlike in Cambridge back home, where the University of Cambridge colleges keep as much of it private as they can.

There are bike trails and walking areas everywhere.  I didn't cross the river into Cambridge itself, but I saw a lot of sailing boats, eights rowing and people just sitting watching.

There's an esplanade that's more wooded, and I saw people in canoes that were obviously not skilled in the art given that half of the time, they seemed to he headed into the trees - much like the punters back home.

I'd already looked up how to get to my restaurant on the T from Fenway or Kenmore stations, but by the time I'd walked all the way along the esplanade, I noticed that I was only one stop away from Copley Square anyway, so I carried on walking there instead of taking a train for a few seconds.


The sun was setting by this point, which was pretty.

All the areas of Boston that I've seen have been nice.  All through the suburbs out to the end of the 'D' line at Riverside where my hotel is, though Newton, Brookline and other places all look very quaint and nice.

I hadn't realised, but my dinner was actually in the bar and restaurant of the Fairmont on Copley Square, and the bar was full of quite smartly dressed people.  Since I'd worn long trousers due to the cold start, I fitted in OK once I'd taken my Giants shirt off, revealing the normal plain polo shirt underneath!

I don't think I've ever had a steak that was so salty.  The last couple of mouthfuls were really too much, but apart from that it was all OK.

The Green Line trains are simple two old trolleys coupled together, each one with a bendy bit in the middle.  I didn't realise that when I first travelled on the train, until I discovered one foot was moving backwards and forwards as I was half standing on the join!

The movement in this video wasn't as extreme as some of the earlier bits, I couldn't get to sit there earlier on in the journey to film it, and when we arrived at Riverside, we didn't cross to the other track, which also makes it go a lot further.

San Francisco Giants @ Boston Red Sox (game 3)

The final game in Boston saw our best pitcher, Madison Bumgarner - whose nickname Mad Bum and number 40 are on my hat - pitching.  This game should have been our best chance of winning any of the games in the series, but it turned out to be the only one we lost.

The weather is certainly turning autumnal, as it was chilly again at the time I left, but due to get quite warm in the middle of the day, up to 28C/82F or maybe higher.

My seat was in the Grandstand, section 25, where the seats are quite narrow - they are still the original seating layout from when the park was constructed over 100 years ago.

I still couldn't see the main scoreboard properly because of the pillar obstructing the view, but I was able to see left field, which had been tricky in the first two games as I was on top of the wall that you can see in the second picture.  In those two games, I was sitting either side of the right-hand lighting stanchion.

The hand-operated scoreboard is one of the last remaining in baseball.  San Francisco has one of the other few, although at Oracle Park, they can change the scores from inside the scoreboard.  Here, people have to come out the little door ()nect to the W.B.Mason sign) between innings and hang the new numbers on the scoreboard, as they are doing in this photo.

Madison gave up 5 runs and wasn't really sharp today, which was a shame.  However, the Giants staged something of a miracle comeback late on and scored some runs in the 8th inning, and left the bases loaded.  Then again in the 9th inning, 1 run behind, the last out was made with runners on all the bases - so it was a game that we could have won in the end.

People photos have been awkward here because of the lighting level difference between the field and in the grandstand.  The suggestion of the person who took this one was to not have so much field in the picture, which worked nicely.

On the way out after the game, I saw lots of the displays that are attached directly to the brick walls of the ballback.  Memorabilia and other things, and this wall of all the major team records.  I had some time to spare until my booked dinner time of 6.30pm, because I didn't know how long the game would go on, so couldn't set it too early.  So I spent a while  just looking at things before finally leaving.

So that's 7 games that I saw the Giants play and they went 3-4 in those games, which was disappointing, but I did see Bruce Bochy's 2000th career managerial victory, and I have the pin that Angelique gave me in San Francisco that reads "Thank you, Boch!"

San Francisco Giants @ Boston Red Sox (game 2)

The middle game of this three game series was another night game.  It has turned rather chilly here this evening, so although I'm still wearing shorts, I've wearing a double polo shirt, my Giants shirt and coat (and two pairs of socks!)

It took 15 minutes to get into the stadium, as the staff are glacially slow at processing the queues through the security lines.

Today, I was in section M9 on the Green Monster, which is just to the other side of the lighting stanchion, which means that I had an unobstructed view to pretty much the whole field except, obviously, for the bit at the base of the wall.

When you first go up to the Monster seats, you get a little Monster stamp on your wrist so that you don't have to keep showing your ticket - it's a weird looking thing.

Today's starter was Jeff Samardzija, one of our better pitchers and it showed.  After last night's 15 inning game had used almost everybody on the roster, it was vital that the starters on both teams went as far as they could into the game to try to save the bullpens.

Happily, San Francisco managed to score 3 runs in the top of the 1st inning, immediately putting pressure on Jhoulys Chacin (and first names with an H in a strange would be a recurring theme in this game)  In the end, he didn't get out of the 3rd inning.  Meanwhile apart from a few walks, Jeff Samardzija gave up no hits until there were two outs in the 6th inning when Devers hit a home run.

After that, San Francisco added on a couple more runs in their 8th inning, and an extra 5 in the 9th inning, as we watched a procession of pitchers for Boston come and go.

There weren't very many Boston fans left in the stands by the time Jackie Bradley Jr hit a home run in Boston's half of the 9th inning, but there was an 11-2 lead going into the inning giving a level of comfort to which Giants fan are unaccustomed in recent times.

And so it came to pass that Bruce Bochy back the 11th manager in MLB history to have accumulated 2000 career victories, starting with 900-odd with the San Diego Padres starting back in 1995 up to the 1000+ with the Giants, including the three championships in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

A congratulatory message was displayed on the scoreboard by the Red Sox, in a series that has been hard fought, between teams that are out of contention this season, but in good spirit, not least exemplified by Carl and Mike Yastrzemski - Carl, dressed in his Red Sox uniform, threw out the first pitch to his grandson Mike today, in his San Francisco uniform, ready to lead off the game for the Giants.

There is a small chance that Bruce Bochy could finish his career in 10th place all-time, but the Giants would have to go 9-1 in their last 10 games of the season to get him past Leo Durocher, which is unlikely given the opposition in the final three series will be tough (and there's another game with Boston to go yet too!) 

Although it was a chilly evening, as already mentioned, the killer is the wind up on the Green Monster, as it is fairly exposed up there.



In part to get out of the breeze for a bit, I walked around some of the other areas of the ballpark and discovered other concession stands.  One was offering a portion of French Fries that had 0 calories - sadly, a mistake on their past.  I also found a green roof that the Red Sox had installed, where they grow the herbs and other ingredients for many of the concession stands around the ballpark.

It was not so cold on the train back to Riverside, but it was much colder when we got there and I had a 5 minute walk back to the hotel - it was only 8C/46F.

San Francisco Giants @ Boston Red Sox (game 1)

I spent half of the day asleep trying to get better, and then waited until about 6 before heading to Fenway Park for Tuesday's game.   This was first game of a rare 3-game series between the San Francisco Giants and the Boston Red Sox.  Since this is an inter-league matchup and not one of the 'natural rivalry' series, these teams only play every 4 years in the regular season.

I was sitting in the Green Monster seats - the seats on top of the giant green wall in left field, created so that the field could fit in the space available whilst making the difficulty of hitting a home run (over the monster) approximately as difficult as it is anywhere else.

I was sitting in section M10, which is the furthest away from the plate and in seat 1 of the second row, which has a somewhat obstructed view.  At first I thought I was going to be the only person in the whole section, but the front row had been taken by a business party of 10 who turned up late, and more people turned up as the game started.

I was glad I wore my coat, because it was quite chilly up on top of the wall.  In fact, I had my Giants top on and a polo shirt underneath that.  I shall have to do the same tomorrow night too.


Since I hadn't eaten anything all day, I decided to try a hot dog from the concession stand.  Fortunately the concession stand was between sections M9 and M10 so it took all of 5 seconds to get there!  It didn't make me cough, so I had a second one later in the game.

This game featured a homecoming of sorts of the Giants' lead-off hitter Mike Yastrzemski, whose family hails from the New England area.  In fact, his family name is a major part of Boston Red Sox's late 20th century history, as Mike's grandfather Carl played for Boston, in Left Field, for 23 years.  They were both out on the field together before the game.  And when Mike came up to bat to start the game, he received quite an ovation from the Boston crowd.  In the 4th inning, he hit a home run - and there was quite a lot of cheering even from the Boston supporters!

This game followed a familiar script to the games I saw in San Francisco.  The Giants opened up a nice lead (5-1) and then the bullpen gave it up to make it 5-5.

So the same struggled on at 5-5, and it was getting colder.  The 9th inning came and went, so it went into extras.  At the end of the 11th inning, I decided I could hang on until the end of the 12th inning to see if there was a result.  The 12th inning came and went, so I decided to leave, because it's a half hour train ride and 10 minute walk at the other end.  I caught the midnight train.  I was by no means the only person who had left - the train was full of others who had also left, and the stadium was already quite sparsely filled by the time I'd left.  Just after we set up, somebody called out "the Giants have scored, in the 13th!" and indeed we had scratched out a 6th run to lead 6-5.  I heard no more, so when I got back to the hotel, I went to bed as it was nearly 1am.

People on the concourses - (much) earlier on!

I set up my Roku streaming stick on the TV in my room this morning and, carefully to avoid finding out how many innings were actually played, started it at the top of the 13th inning, thus seeing how the 6th run was scored.  Unfortunately, Boston also managed to score a run in the bottom of the 13th, so it was on to the 14th.  And then the 15th inning.  San Francisco scored another run making it 7-6, as the stadium clock ticked over to 1am.  Yet again, Boston managed to put the tying run and winning run on base, but a line drive to Dubon finished the game and the victory was secured.

This was Bruce Bochy's 1999th career victory as a manager.  I would like to see the 2000th in one of the next two days, and we have Jeff Samardzija and Madison Bumgarner starting the next two, so there's a chance.

Travel day

I managed a small breakfast and then set off for the airport.  The metro tunnels in St Louis look old, and when the MetroLink system was built, Wikipedia says it was built on existing rail alignments, so they could be decades old - MetroLink itself has only been around about 25 years.

The first flight was to Washington, on one of the small ExpressJets.  I was worried I would have to gate-check my big bag, which wouldn't normally be a problem, but I have a very tight connection time in Washington (45 minutes technically, but 30 in reality giving that boarding finishes 15 minutes before the plane is due to depart) and that includes changing terminals from one side of the airport to the other.

However, the restriction on carry-on items (2 max) seem to apply only to Economy passengers, so I can take my large bag, laptop bag and backpack on with no problem.  In fact, the first class section was half empty anyway, so I was able to place all three in an overhead compartment.

Photo: Christopher Ziemnowicz (Wikimedia Commons)

Fortunately, the flight left St Louis early and arrived 10 minutes early, and the directions from the main terminal to the D concourse were easy.  The "buses" that are used here are quite odd - because they have to be able to raise and lower the passenger compartment in order to dock with the buildings, which are different heights in different terminals.  As usual, the gate for my onward flight was right at the far end of the concourse, but as I got there, they were just starting priority boarding, so there was "plenty of time".

This flight was only just over the hour long, but my ears are now completely clogged up and everything sounds muffled from a combination of the cold and the cabin.  I've bought some ibuprofen to try to help.

It took me 2 hours to get to the hotel from Boston airport - Silver Line (a bus, half an hour), Red Line and a Green Line train right to the end of the 'D' line that took an hour, and then a 10 minute walk up hill.  But it was free!  I had a dinner at the hotel, but couldn't really manage most of it, as the chips were quite salty and that made me cough a lot.

Milwaukee Brewers @ St Louis Cardinals (game 2)

The last game of this series is a day game, with a 1.15pm start.  I found another single seat that the website would let me buy, in the middle of a row, but it is only a row of 5 seats near the back of the club area again, next to the press box.  It was in the shade, which was good.

It's clearly not just me that has trouble buying individual tickets - the man sitting next to me asked me whether I had just the one ticket, and how I'd managed to buy it!

Not so good is that I now have a cold, and with the heat, I've not felt very well.

This was an exciting game, very few runs until the near the end of the game.   The biggest moment came in the Milwaukee half of the ninth inning, when training 4-3, one of their star players, Ryan Braun, was batting with 2 out, down to his last strike, and he hit a grand slam to put the Brewers in front 7-4.  This quietened the crowd down considerably.

When St Louis came to bat in the bottom of the 9th inning, they managed to score two runs, but that left them 1 short with a 7-6 loss.

I noticed that the 'M' was missing from the "BIG MAC LAND" sign in left field - I'm surprised it hasn't been replaced if it was broken.

The St Louis fans are widely considered the best, most knowledgeable in baseball - however, that doesn't stop them leaving before the game is over, or getting up in the middle of an at-bat or going down to their seats during an at-bat.  It's quite irritating when they block your view.

Milwaukee Brewers @ St Louis Cardinals (game 1)

I had managed to find a single seat on the end of a row for today's game which the website would let me purchase.  I've never been in the Redbird Club area before - I've either been in the normal seats of the Cardinal Club right behind the plate.

The club area is air-conditioned which was useful tonight (and will be vital tomorrow, with the temperature forecast to be 34C/95F tomorrow)

I had a superb view from my seat, of the field, the surrounding buildings, and the Gateway Arch.  The seats are really nice too, deeply padded and comfortable.

I got to see some of the best players in the game in this game.

Here's Yadier Molina, the Cardinals' catcher coming to bat.  Meanwhile Paul Goldschmidt didn't manage to repeat his 7 RBI performance from the previous night, and in the end, it was 2 home runs from the Brewers that secured them a 5-2 win to even the series at 1-1.

The game seemed quite short, but it was just 1 minute shy of 3 hours long.  Perhaps because I spent 1 inning having dinner on the concourse.

I was intending to taking the train back most of the way to the hotel, but I came out of the stadium on the wrong side, so walked back anyway.  Without the clouds tonight, and with it being the real full moon here, I was able to get a better photo of the moon under the Gateway Arch

Fortunately, there weren't hundreds of motorcycles to block the way, although you can still hear small groups of them charging around the city.

The hotel has free coffee available in reception, so I don't actually have to make it in my room, which is handy, as they have proper milk down there rather than the powdered creamer they leave you in the room.

Forest Park

I've stayed at this hotel before, and I shall probably stay here again whenever I next visit St Louis.  The breakfast is decent, yet free ("included in the price"), the networking works, and it's in a quite convenient place for Busch Stadium and anywhere else in the Metrorail network.

Today, I visited Forest Park, out to the west of the centre of St Louis.  I took the Metrorail west to Union Station to see whether it was any different to last time, and found that it was being completely redeveloped and was essentially a building site.  The fish were still there though!

After not staying long there, I continued the train journey to Central West End and walked the rest of the way.  There's adverts everywhere for a shuttle bus from the metro but a) it was from the next stop along; and b) it stopped running for the year on 2nd September

There's some lakes and trees, and some nice floral displays dotted around the place.

There are also winding paths throughout the park for pedestrians and cyclists, which seem to take the long way whereas the roads for the cars are direct!
 
I made it to the planetarium, but there wasn't really much there except a few displays of artefacts and interactive exhibits aimed at children.  I didn't have time to stay for the next planetarium show, as it would have finished too late for me to get back into town and to the ballpark for the 6.15pm start.

Some areas of the planetarium were closed for redevelopment too - there's an awful lot of that in St Louis at the moment.

So after a while, I returned back to the station, stopping in the shade of the trees to cool down a little from time to time.

The train was full of Cardinals supporters travelling to the stadium, even though it was still 2 and a half hours before first pitch!

It should be a 5 minute walk back to my hotel from the Metrorail stop, but it actually took 15 minutes today, because I had to wait 10 minutes to cross the final road (the hotel is just to the left of this video)

I only recorded 40 seconds of it - but this went on for a full 10 minutes, hundreds of them going past.  No sign of any law enforcement.

You can only get a vague sense of the noise from the video.

In the end, they did stop coming past - although there were a couple of 4-wheeled quad bikes that zinged past at even greater speed than the bikes.

Departing to St Louis

Today was a travel day, where I move back East into the Central Time zone, so I've now been in all 4 mainland USA timezones, if you count the couple of hours I spent on the ground in Denver.

The flight left slightly early and arrived about half an hour early, but I was so tired, that I didn't go to the ballgame tonight (St Louis won 10-0)

I have a digital key at this hotel - my phone unlocks the door when I am close to it and press the button.  I have a high-floor room, with an Arch View.  This is the view from my window at sunset.

After dinner, I returned and took some photos of the Arch all lit up.  With lights.  And the Moon, trying to poke out from the clouds.

The Gateway Arch is really very big - it doesn't look it in pictures, but when you're standing near the base of it, it is extremely big!

Thankfully, it had cooled off by the evening time, as it was quite warm when I landed.

There appears to be a gang of young people riding laps around the downtown area on very noisy motorbikes.  You can hear them a lot of the time.  None of them seem to be wearing any safety clothing, apart from helmets.  Almost they are mostly going around in groups, I just watched one doing a wheelie across the junction with the Eads Bridge, against a red light.


On a more sedate note, I've seen several horse and cart taxis around the place, with decorative carts.

Thankfully, the horses didn't seem to be spooked by the noisy motorcyclists doing wheelies past them at high speed - the coachman looked a lot less impressed.
 

Pittsburgh Pirates @ San Francisco Giants (game 4)

The final game of the series was a day game with a 12.45pm start.  I managed to miss the first half inning of this game again.  Being a day game meant that my seat was out in the sun, and today was really hot - the temperature in the shade was over 32C/90F.

I had lunch inside, and then walked all the way along the club level to the far end so have a look out over the bay properly.

On the way back, I stopped to chat to Angelique, the friendly usher I meet at the ballpark each year.  She's going to be working at the new basketball centre just down the road as well as at Oracle Park now, and sometimes doing the concerts (Sir Elton John is there this weekend, and she's going to see that, too)

There were really long queues for the ice creams, as you can see from the photo.

We had Jeff Samardzija pitching this game and he did OK, but gave up 1 run here, 1 run there and eventually it was 4-0.  However, the Giants fought back to 4-2 and had the winning run, in the form of Buster Posey, up to bat, but he couldn't get hit.

I did not hurry back to my hotel, as my dinner booking was for 7pm in Oakland, so I had plenty of time, but it still took 30 minutes to get to the BART station and I was lucky to get a train across to Oakland, because further back down the line, there was a medical emergency that closed the 24th St station and stopped things running for a bit.  In the end, I got down to Kincaid's just about on 7pm.  I like watching the sunset here (and at McCormick & Kuleto's at Ghirardelli Square as well as at Chart House on Pier 39)   Not so many boats arriving back at the marina tonight, but still a lovely sight.

I took the cable car on the way back again - they are closing the cable cars down for 10 days starting tomorrow in order to carry out maintenance on the Powell-Hyde gearing mechanism.  Unfortunately, the P-H gear that's being refurbished is the one that also drives the cable in and out of the depot, so none of the cable cars can function anywhere in the city, so I've been fortunate with the timing of my visit!

Pittsburg Pirates @ San Francisco Giants (game 3)

The third game of the series was another night game, starting at 6.45pm.  I managed to miss the first half inning of this game again, as it took so much longer than it should have done to get to the stadium.  I had an unexpected wait of 15 minutes for the Muni Metro.
 
This game never looked like being won, and it wasn't.

However, it was my final chance of the year to see the stadium at sunset and as night falls, and on a beautiful late summer evening, that is pretty.

 We are coming up to a full moon, and the moon looks much larger in the sky at the moment, so here's a view of it just past the right-field foul pole, looking out over McCovey Cove into the San Francisco bay.


This is one of the reasons Oracle Park, as it is now called after they bought the naming rights during the last off-season, is consistently voted one of the top stadia in all of the Major League Baseball stadia.


One of the strange things about this season is that although we lost again, there were still plenty of people smiling and having a good time, in the stadium, on the way out in Willie Mays Plaza, and on the metro back up to downtown.

The saxophonist was sitting outside, playing various tunes that took his fancy, including the usual Take Me Out To The Ballgame, but then he suddenly played God Save The Queen.  I don't know if he'd seen somebody who showed signs of being British, but he's really good.



Tonight, I decided to take the cable car back across the city.  It's much quicker than the normal buses because it's not going along congested roads or roads that are half dug up being improved.  I only had to walk a couple of blocks at the other end back to my hotel.  Usually, the issue is that you have to wait 45 minutes to actually get on one due to the queues, but in the late evening, you can almost always get on the first one.

The ride's a lot smoother on the cable car too, especially compared to the bone-shaking 47 along Van Ness Avenue, although that does stop right outside the hotel, which is handy.