Detroit Tigers - Comerica Park Centerfield

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

At the start of the season Karrie bought 2 tickets for $9 each for Detroit Tigers vs Seattle Mariners. We sat in left field, section 149, row 1.

(click to enlarge)

Being right behind the bullpens, we got to see all of the pitchers warming up, including Max Scherzer, the Tigers starting pitcher.

He pitched ok, but gave up a lot of hits and the Mariners scored a few runs.

Here's video of him warming up.

http://youtu.be/HSdf6wzVIMQ

The funny thing before the game was the rookie pitchers for the Mariners walking to the bullpen with their cartoon, little kid, backpacks.

It was a little cold and windy. But for the middle of April i wasn't expecting it to be 54 degrees.

Definitely the best part of the game was Miguel Cabrera's homerun.

It was coming right for us, flew over our heads and landed 5 rows behind us. You can't see our faces because right as the camera zoomed in, we turned around to watch where the ball went.

Jose Valverde warmed up a bit, but the tigers never came close enough for him to come in at the 9th inning for the save.
We got up in the 7th and walked around the stadium.

I stopped at one of the balcony's to try and get a cool picture of the ferris wheel. It sort of came out how i wanted, but not perfect. There was too much stuff in the way.

Here's the view from the upper deck. It's been a while since i've had tickets up here, i forget that they are not that bad of seats. But with left and right field tickets selling for under $15 dollars i don't see any reason to sit way up in section 238.

Anyway, it was a fun game to go to, even though it was cold and the Tigers lost.

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Travel Tips

Wednesday, 9 November 2011

Here's things i learned from the trip to Italy

• Best Place (outside) - Trevi Fountain

• Best Place (inside) - St. Peters Basilica

• Best View - all of Florence from Michaelangelo's Hill

• Best Square - St. Peter's Square at The Vatican

• Best Cheap Food - Panini's at many corner stores. €3 for a great grilled sandwich. As you can see Karrie and Jeff liked them as well, they are great food to eat and walk.

• Best Restaurant Food - Spaghetti. €8 from most everywhere

• Best Fancy Food - Ciampini Restaurant in Rome. Near the Spanish Steps

• Best Place for a Drink - all of the public drinking fountains scattered across Rome

• Best Bus (for us) - #62 - all around downtown Rome. Also the #175 which took us to the Termini train station and back.

• Most Fun - feeding pigeons in St. Mark's Square in Venice

• Biggest Surprise - A 3-way tie between the cooking class in Florence, the Catacombs in Rome and the Accademia Gallery to see the Statue of David in Florence.

Things i'm glad i brought:

• 2 camera's - especially in Venice when i took hundreds of pictures and my first camera battery died, luckily i had the backup.

• Backpack's - i had the backpack for carrying all the food, water, maps... I also packed the cloth backpack for other people to carry things they bought. Karrie also had her leather bag that held the important items.

• Money belt - i wasn't so sure when Karrie bought this but it was great. I kept the money and passports in there and i didn't have to worry about any pick-pockets. I really liked it.

• Power converters/adapters - Karrie and i each had our own 220v to 110v power converters and plug adapters. We would have had to buy them there because the plugs in the hotel were the weird Italian kind. The converters weren't perfect though. Lots of things like hair dryers and curling irons ran like they were on Low. But lots of things like my phone and camera chargers had writing on the back that said "working range of 220 to 110 voltages" so all i needed was the plug adapter, not the converter.

• Although most people spoke English, i'm glad we learned the first 4 or 5 chapters of "learn to speak Italian." It was just a few hours of a book-on-tape but it really helped knowing the basics. It was pretty easy and we weren't completely clueless when we got there.

Things i didn't like:

• Having to pay €3 for bottled water at every meal. They said they weren't allowed to serve tap water.

• Having to pay for bread at every meal. You didn't know that until after you received your bill.

• Having to pay to sit outside. The restaurants charged an additional "outdoor seating" fee.

• Tipping was also weird, no restaurants wanted tips. They all said that the tip was factored into the price of the food.

Things i wish i had brought:

• A watch - at home i don't wear a watch because i have my cell phone. But in Italy i either left my phone at the hotel or it was turned off, so the whole time i had no idea what time it was.

• Gel insoles - we did a lot of walking and my feet got sore after day 6 or 7.

• Better Maps - our maps were ok but it would have been nice to have one really good map with greater detail and bus routes in the 3 cities, Rome, Florence and Venice.

• It probably would have been better for us to buy the 7 day bus pass for €16 instead of having to buy individual tickets every time we decided to ride. It was a pain having to find a euro for every person, every time we rode.

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Cedar Point

Saturday, 28 May 2011

On Memorial Day weekend i went to Cedar Point with Karrie, her sister Kristina and Paul. We left at 6 am.

Because we were staying at the Sandcastle Hotel, at the northeast corner of the park, we were allowed in at 9am. Everyone else gets in at 10am.
The first thing we did was wait in line for an hour and go on the Millennium Force. It's a really great coaster. Super fast, smooth and that first drop is an insane 89 degrees down.

We rode several rides till 3pm then rode the shuttle back to the hotel and took a break. We went back out around 5:30. It ended up thunder storming around 8pm but we were ready to be done anyways.

Because of super long lines we never rode the Rapter or the Maverick. They both had lines close to a 2 hour wait. We did go on the Top Thrill Dragster. It said the wait was 1 hour but it ended up being closer to 1.5. It wasn't worth it. The ride lasted all of 8 seconds. It shoots you up a hill and back down.

The Gemini - aka The Rib Cracker

Park view from the buckets

My favorite ride is the Magnum. It's super fun and there isn't a long wait, at most 15 minutes. I rode it twice. It has the perfect combination of speed, hills and turns. Here's the view from the top.

View from down below.

This was the beach by the hotel. I don't know why there wasn't anyone swimming in the lake.

Other than the beach, staying at the hotel was a great idea. Great views of the lake and we got to drive home the next morning.

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Camping in the Manistee National Forest

Thursday, 12 August 2010

I went last weekend with my brother in law John who's walked the trail before. There were lots of other hikers, canoers and views of the river from high up.

Friday
we arrived at the trail at 6pm, hiked 5 miles then camped around 8pm

Saturday
we had all day to hike 15 miles, stopping for lunch and to fish in the river.around 2am it started pouring with rain and there was tons of thunder and lightning
it's hard to tell here but it rained so hard that my pack got a little wet, but was fine in the morning.
Sunday
woke up a bit sore but walked 5 more miles back to the car .

Typical part of the trail along one of the hills




Panorama views (click to enlarge)

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2,600 miles on a Honda - part 1

Monday, 9 November 2009

Leaving Adam's house my odometer read 18,598.8 I was kinda nervous and thought "There's no way i'm going to be able to make it all the way back to Michigan." But less than 1 hour later i knew i made the right choice. I was driving to Globe, Arizona which is at an elevation of something like 4,000 feet above sea level. Half way there the view was amazing and i stopped to take pictures.

I got really excited while riding on one of the mountain roads, i rode through a tunnel in the side of the mountain. It was the best bike ride of my life, until two days later.

I rode to Globe to visit my friend Laura who just got a job out there as a counselor for kids on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. The next day i helped chaperon for the all day field trip to the zoo, back in Phoenix. The zoo was actually really cool, they had pretty much everything except elephants.

The next day i was back on the bike riding to the Salt River Canyon. I didn't really notice it on the map but Laura said i would probably enjoy it. She was right. On the motorcycle it was great, with road switch-backs going right down the mountain.
That same day i made it to the Petrified Forest. I just assumed this would be old logs, that you weren't suppose to touch, lying on the ground. It was a lot better then that.



I was planning on camping somewhere near the park but it was too cold and no campsites were around. So i rode east on I-40 into New Mexico.

Here's some other pictures from the first few days:

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