The Baseball Road Trip

1 Comment Written by Mike on July 6, 2008 – 4:31 pm

Wow, it’s been a pretty hectic couple of weeks. After Lake Tahoe, Aman and I set about on the absolute worst leg of the trip: Tahoe to Seattle, to Denver, then to Minneapolis. Well, after several days of driving 700+ miles (including one in which we traveled 830 miles), we’re alive and conscious in Minnesota. Surprised? So am I. At this point, the worst travel days of the trip are over and we get extended rest in cities. Tomorrow, for example, we don’t have a game AND don’t have to travel, leaving us a day to take care of all our shit (renewing visa, getting a passport, uploading photos, etc.). I’m not going to lie, I’ve never been so happy to be out of a car for a single day.

We’ve seen a lot of America so far, and it’s pretty damn hard to believe that we’re already over halfway across it. Our first new experience after Tahoe was Oregon. Oregon is not very exciting. Coming up from I-5 North, we mostly traveled over rolling hills and long mountain stretches. It sounds great and scenic, but after spending time in Tahoe (REAL mountains) and driving through the burning hills of Redding and so forth, we were done with mountains. I do not want to see a mountain ever again. It was during this time that we decided it would be best to turn the music off for as much as the trip as possible. Up until that point, our handy Zune was on at all times (no iPods here!). While playing music quiz games ala High Fidelity were fun, we came to a realization that the trip was about random conversation as much as anything, and that it was too easy to zone out with music playing at all times. Since then, it’s barely been on and we’ve haven’t had a dull moment in conversation.

Back to Oregon! The state was mostly uninteresting until we came to Portland (which, unfortunately, was all the way at the far end of the state). It was a pretty interesting place. Full of hippies and indies that couldn’t make it all the way to Seattle, it was a nice liberal town that seemed to be a small scale mix of San Francisco and Berkeley. While there we checked out the world-famous Powell’s Books, supposedly one of the largest bookstores in the world. Aman was adamant in affirming that the bookstore alone was worth the trip and I can’t disagree. After staying the night and checking out the store in the morning, we had to set off for Seattle. We were already beginning to feel the wear of so much driving, but believe me, it would get worse. Seattle, though, was no big hike; only about 200 miles. I have a whole new relative scale for long distance trips. 400 miles? No problem, it goes by like nothing.

We stayed with Daniel in Seattle, a very awesome CouchSurfer who was gracious enough to give us a place to sleep and give us some great recommendations for the town. We met up with Aman’s friend Frank that same night, and then went to see the Mariners play the Blue Jays at SafeCo Field. The park was awesome (pictures will reaffirm this), and we had a good night of wandering around afterwards. Later in the evening, Aman and I met up with Daniel and his friend Chris at the Hopvine Pub. We shared a couple of (good) beers and some good stories. The next morning, we grabbed lunch at the Coastal Kitchen, and set off on the long journey to Denver.

If I had to rank cities I’d like to live in so far, Seattle tops the list. It was a beautiful looking city, and the people were very friendly. It seems to have a good deal of nightlife and lot of good food, which is a nice plus. On the downside, it is chock full of indie hipsters at every corner. I’m not sure I could manage that, even after being told that I would “fit in perfectly”, a revelation which is slowly destroying me. Aman is keeping track of indie points I gain and lose during the trip (using Macs is a +1, enjoying mainstream music is a -2). The only other city I’d consider living in so far is Portland, but we’ve definitely been to some interesting places that are great for a visit. More updates with follow, and I’ll get you all caught up to where we are now. I’ll also let you all know when the new pics have been uploaded to Flickr.