I’ll pick up from where I joined the trip – San Francisco. I flew in on Friday, the 25th and we started the Cali leg in style, going from the airport to the 21st Amendment brewery right down the street from AT&T Park. We had a solid lunch/dinner and some quality beers with Andy’s cousin John. The four of us went over to another bar called the Tavern, where Sox fans were all over. I’d say it was about 60/40 between Giants and Sox fans. Pretty cool feeling being out here on the west coast and still in good company. The game itself was great, it ended up being a 5-4 barnburner. Unfortunately, the Sox comeback in the 9th came up a run short and we saw Pedroia go onto the DL. All in all AT&T was a nice park. There were slides in the Cocacola bottles in left field, while right field was home of the famous McCovey Cove. It was a surprisingly cold night and the breeze off the cove made Panda hats a popular choice. The Giants first baseman Pablo Sandoval’s nickname is Kung-Fu Panda.
After the game we went out to the bars near the stadium and had an interesting night. After being at the bar for a few hours Andy realized he had left his shirt/sweatshirt at the stadium. So he decided to head back to look for it. Meanwhile, every single one of our phones died. Eventually I went to go look for him and when I couldn’t find him Ben and I decided he would wait at the truck for us. So we went back to the parking garage to find Andy waiting by the truck. We ended up crashing in the truck for the night (a first for the trip).
*Ben loses his glasses *
The next day we woke up in complete disarray, but managed to find an awesome bar in San Francisco called McTeagues to watch the USA-Ghana match. It was packed, and the bartender was dressed up as a referee and gave the one Ghana fan there red cards for being too obnoxious throughout the match. After the game we checked out the rest of the city. The hilly streets were exactly how I pictured it from playing Tony Hawk Skateboarding on N64 all those years ago. We went up to Lombard Street which is the famous crooked street on the hill. People were peeling out trying to get up the ridiculously steep hill in the stop-and-go line of traffic. Unfortunately it was overcast and crappy weather, so we couldn’t see the Golden Gate Bridge or Alkatraz too well.
We got in contact with Jen’s friends who lived in Sonoma, so we made the trek up to wine country for the night. We stopped at a store to grab some wine for dinner and when the cashier asked Ben for an ID, he said and I quote “Where are you from? Is that in Canada?” While trying to hold back some laughs I gave him mine too while we explained it was next to New York on the east coast and he says “Oh you’re from there too.” Austin, Casey, Mary and company put us up for the night and fed us a great dinner. Thanks for the great hospitality and the place to camp out!
Sunday we drove back to the bay area to check out the A’s game at the recently named McAffee Colliseum. The stadium was huge, as it is the home of the Oakland Raiders as well. Overall it was a very plain stadium. Nothing to spectacular to see. We were treated to another great California baseball game as the A’s squeaked out a 3-2 victory over the high powered Pirates offense (sarcasm). Actually, there were just as many errors in the game as runs scored (5) and it was an ugly game yet entertaining between two of the league’s worst teams.
The first pitch at the game was thrown out by a sophomore at a local high school who had a crazy story. A few weeks earlier he had collapsed in the middle of a basketball game and his heart stopped. A parent there knew CPR, and tried to revive him until the paramedics arrived. His heart had been stopped for seven minutes before the paramedics arrived and used a defribulator to revive him. It was amazing to see him standing there on the mound after hearing his story.
After the game we tried to get in line to run the bases but it was for “little kids only.” Kind of a bummer, but instead we started the drive down route 1 to LA.
*Ben drops a pen between the seat, finds glasses *
We found a campground at the Manresa State Beach, which turned out to be a popular area for summer camps as we soon found out.
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