Two Days and a Near Death Experience

Greetings from Rockville. It is a town near Baltimore, Maryland. I would like to start by summarizing our travel day on Thursday.

As some of you may know, I am on an East Coast trip with my friend, Erik. The trip was inspired by our desire to catch a game at Yankee Stadium before it gets torn down following this season. From there, it was decided that we would also make the trek to Boston to watch a game at Fenway Park. After that, we filled the blanks with several sight-seeing options, which I may reveal as the trip progresses.

As I mentioned earlier, a majority of Thursday was spent traveling. It began with an hour delay and continued with turbulence. When we were in the process of landing, a larger plane in front of us was landing slowly, so the large plane behind it had to land slower. Because of this, we pulled up the landing gear, hit the throttle, and increased our altitude to avoid getting into their jetwash and crashing. At the time it happened, none of us as passengers knew what was going on and we were afraid that we were going to hit something. The only way I can explain it is as if you are driving a car at night and you doze off on the road, then wake up, flip out, and swerve across the road. It was a bit terrifying, to say the least.

After that jolting moment, we started talking to the girl who was sitting in our row, and it turns out she grew up in Philadelphia, our last destination before we leave. We gathered some tips from her on places to check out while we are there. She was a charming and surprisingly intelligent woman, having earned her MBA in finance at ASU. Another woman I spoke to on the way to the baggage claim graduated from Illinois and coincidentally grew up in a town right next to my father's home town. She travels a lot for Boeing.

The next obstacle was the rental car. We spent about ninety minutes waiting in line at Budget Rent-A-Car. It was ridiculously inefficient and unacceptable, especially since it was about three in the morning Eastern time when we departed, with about an hour drive to our lodging at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. The room only had a double bed, and they had no roll out cots available, so we reluctantly shared the bed, since we already had such a long and grueling start to our trip.

Today, we spent most of the day in Baltimore, which I must say is a beautiful town. I was thoroughly impressed with the city. We walked along the pier and the downtown area, came across a racy female street performer, and purchased tickets to the Baltimore Orioles/Washington Nationals game, which was a last-minute decision because it was pouring in the morning and still lightly drizzling in the early afternoon.

Camden Yards was gorgeous. It really fits the personality of this town. If it were in downtown Phoenix, it just would not fit in. I regret that my pictures cannot truly capture how awesome the park is. The people there are surprisingly kind, which was refreshing. We ended up purchasing some Orioles merchandise from some upstanding individuals across from the ballpark.

The game itself was a jovial experience. It is interesting to observe the local fans' traditions and cheers. They actually have this song that sounds like it is from the 1970's disco era which I found to be quite entertaining. Additionally, I have noticed that a lot of East Coast teams' fans have cheers where they spell out the experience. The Orioles won the game, so we were treated to fireworks at its conclusion.

For how poorly our trip had started the previous day, today actually turned out to be a rewarding day. I am glad that we decided to spend the day in Baltimore on the chance that we would go to the Orioles game. It really became more than just going to a baseball game. I would definitely make a return trip to this town and stay a little longer. Our stays in each town will be abbreviated since we have so much in our itinerary.

Because of our lack of sleep from last night/this morning's travails, I will close here, surely to your delight. Tomorrow, it's off to Washington D.C. to tour our nation's capital!