The Phallic Road Trip

For the first time since San Francisco, we have been able to sleep in and not worry about check-out times. We lost Chris about an hour ago, who left us to head back to New York after his 10-day jaunt with us through California.

It’s about noon now; in a couple of hours, we’re going to hop on the freeway and head down to San Diego for tonight’s game against the Mariners.

We got into Los Angeles late yesterday afternoon, after fighting the notorious traffic here. It took us a little over two hours to get down the 101 from Santa Barbara, where Chris and Justin battled it out at In-N-Out, with Chris topping Justin: 5 Double-Doubles to 4 1/2.

It was a rough car ride for Chris, who slept some in the back seat. We checked into our hotel here in downtown LA and relaxed for about an hour, before catching a cab to Dodger Stadium.

For what is supposed to be a hot weekend, we had the perfect night for baseball at the park, with a high of 75. The stadium is almost 50 years old; with the heavy concrete feel, it reminded us of Shea in New York and Kaufman in Kansas City, both also built in the peak of suburban growth in the 60s and 70s.

I missed the wider concourses, filled with more concessions and bathrooms, found at the newer stadiums, but don’t see any reason to replace the stadium in the near future.

As for the game, the Dodgers scored early, with a Russell Martin solo home run in the 1st, from which they never looked back. With two more runs in the 5th and a three-run shot from Ethier in the 7th, the Dodgers won 6-0, with their pitchers having struck out 14. Had we been in Toronto, we would’ve definitely got some free pizza.

We headed back to the hotel after the game, where we found Chris, Oz, Eddie and their friend, Jason. We then made our way a couple of blocks down the street to a pretty quiet Irish pub for a few drinks; we weren’t dressed for or feeling like doing anything fancier.

While the traffic coming in yesterday afternoon was rough, we’re hoping it’ll be a little better now that it’s the weekend. We’ll probably get back a little after midnight tonight. Tomorrow, we’re going to try and head out toward Oz’s neighborhood, though we’re not sure yet what we’ll do. Monday is our game in Anaheim; Tuesday, we leave for Phoenix.

Should be hot, but at least these games are at night.