Start of the trip

8/8/2005

I will try and post more frequently because the length of this post is simply ridiculous.

Officially today is Day 3 of the trip. But actually it is really just the end of the first day, the first 52 hours day. It all started at Hero’s in Fullerton, or should I say the Los Angeles Hero’s of Fullerton. Our unofficial sending off party was a delight. We got to the game around 6, parked across the street and hoped the fence to get in. Supposedly Fouts needed the help of Heather, a sight to see, a 300 lbs. man getting pushed over a fence surrounding Angel Stadium by a 21 year old girl.

Tim Mead, the VP of Communications for the Angels, hooked us up with some unbelievable tickets. Here is the exchange at the Will Call window:

OC Will Call Lady: How did you purchase you tickets (i.e. Visa, Mastercard, etc.)

Geoff: We didn’t. Tim Mead gave them to us (blatant name dropping)

OC Will Call Lady: Yeah right (a similar response this women would have given if asked if a lady shopping at South Coast had real breasts)

OC Will Call Lady: What is your last name?

Geoff: Weeks

OC Will Call Lady: (Looking at the tickets and realizing Tim Mead did, in fact, give them to us) Uhh, enjoy the game.

Geoff: Thanks. And tell Mr. Mead ‘Thank you’ if you see him.

This reminds me of another amusing OC story which occurred the day before we started. Geoff and I were walking out of Quizno’s and a girl was getting out of her car next to our Road Warrior.

Scott: I saw you checking out the mini-van.

Girl who wishes she was Marisa Cooper for the cast of Fox’s hit show The OC: Yeah…

Scott: It’s pretty cool, huh?

Girl who wishes she was Marisa Cooper for the cast of Fox’s hit show The OC: (real sarcastic tone) Yeah …

Needless to say those four years at Stanford University made me real smooth with the ladies.

Geoff snuck Romo into our section and she watched the game with us. Fouts, Jill, Heather, and Kim Kelton joined us in the 9^th inning. It was a delight. The Devil Rays won 6-3, real nice game. However Geoff has probably seen 130 games in that stadium and I have seen at least 20, so nothing extremely special minus the fact that it was Game One.

We toasted with some Johnny Walker Blue Label, said our goodbyes, threw on “I Wanna Rock” by Twisted Sister, and we hit the road. We got into Vegas around 3 AM. We took a quick victory stroll on the strip. Geoff then went to sleep while I hit up the San Remo. The problem with playing $5 Blackjack at 4 in the morning in the San Remo is quite obvious – you aren’t exactly gambling with royalty, or even educated people, or even people with teeth. I sat inbetween an exact replica of Milton from Office Space who even mumbled to himself and Juan Sanchez who had a bit of a gambling problem. Mr. Sanchez’ gambling problem was that we was horrible at gambling. He was playing 2 hands and he would get the same hand, say 14, and he would hit one and stand on the other – guaranteeing he is going to lose at least one of them. That is why he visited the ATM three times, that is why he asked the pit boss for a line of credit, that is why the pit boss told him he had to wait til morning, and that is why ol’ Juan wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

So I left at 6 AM hopped in the van and began to rock. We crossed the Hoover Dam a little after sunset, it was glorious. Weeks woke up around 8:30 and took over til Phoenix. By the way, the city of Phoenix is not exactly the crown jewel of Arizona. Geoff’s Uncle Kenny met us for lunch at Cooperstown – a bar and grill about a block from the Stadium that is owned by no other than Alice Cooper! How rocken’ is that. Too make it even cooler they were playing Guns and Roses Sweet Child o’ Mine when we walked in and all the employees there wear black eye makeup under their eyes just like Alice Cooper did. I had a “Tommy Lasorda Burger” and a Bare Knuckle Stout. Believe it or not, the hamburger was 326 lbs. of beef and fat just like Tommy Lasorda. Delicious.

So we walked from lunch to Bank One Ballpark, or BOB. It is a domed stadium with air conditioning, which is a good thing in Phoenix where the approximate air temperature was 167 degrees. We asked for the cheapest tickets. We are, after all, on a budget and I am, after all, the son of Rick Shook. They delivered by giving us the two cheapest seats in the whole stadium. There were only 3 rows behind us, and they were all empty. I have a nice picture of this I’ll post soon. The show was action packed by the crowd really sucked the life out of the building. Similar to when I saw Neil Diamond play at the MGM. The Diamondbacks hit 4 homers, Craig Counsell went 5-for-5 and stole 3 bases, Vargas, their pitcher, threw 6 perfect innings yet because no one was into it we almost fell asleep. This would have been a problem because we would have probably fell out of our chairs and rolled off the upper deck, the slope was that steep. The Diamondbacks beat the Rockies 9-3.

At the stadium some guy was handing out coupons for free hot dogs at Circle K. Most people were throwing these coupons on the ground. Geoff and I were much too smart for that, and so we begun collecting them all. My boys at the ol’ San Remo would have been so proud to see me picking up trash off the floor in an attempt to get free Circle K hot dogs. Now, neither Geoff nor I are native to central Arizona, so we aren’t exactly familiar with the locations of the nearest Circle K. So we called information. I don’t think they really liked it when we asked them to give us the address for ALL of the Circle K’s in Phoenix and Tempe, as a matter of fact she hung up on us. Still determined we started cruising Phoenix looking for our free dinner. We did not have to drive far, there are about 234 Circle K’s in the area. We went to one, got our free dog, ate it in the car as we drove to the next one, repeat. It was glorious. However, we were getting kind of disgusting, so Weeks came up with the brilliant idea of taking showers at the 24 Hour Fitness. It was kind of necessary seeing how in the 5 hours we were in Phoenix we sweated about 3 liters each. So we showered up, Geoff took a shower long enough to rival Tyler Mobley, and we left. We made friends at the Radio Shack, almost partied with them last night, but instead hit the road to Tuscon.

Tuscon, first off, is not much nicer than Phoenix. However, Amphitheater High School has a glorious baseball field with a Diary Queen next door. I guess the Diary Queen is the cool place to hang out on a Sunday night if you are 17 years old and your live in Tuscon, remember that. Anyhow, Geoff noticed some stadium lights and so we went to check them out and saw a baseball game. We stopped to the American Legion baseball game, high school age kids. We watched about 4 innings. The opposing team, sponsored by Kentucky Fried Chicken (I’m not making this up) had a centerfielder who would not pass the Rafael Palmiero test, that is to say he was juiced up. He pulled a curveball on the outside of the plate about 430 feet. Stud.

We decided to leave Tuscon so we would be closer to San Antonio. We drove for a couple of hours, took a brief stop in Bowie, AZ. I think we were the two people alive in that town. And then stopped for the night at the rest stop in San Simon on the Arizona/New Mexico border. The nicest rest stop ever, there wasn’t even one guy who tried to sell me something while I was going to the bathroom.

Today we are off to San Antonio. We are planning on seeing the San Antonio Missions play, a minor league team, but we just realized we lose 2 hours due to time changes and we may not make it. We will have to just keep on rocking.