Our path thus far, over 3000 miles with a lot more to go.
http://tinyurl.com/ayxhm

View from our seats at Turner Field 

Bourbon on Bourbon St. 

Watching BP from the Astros Press Box 

What was Will Smith thinking?

You may be thinking to yourself, “Wow, this road trip Scott and Geoff are on is inspiring. I should go on a vacation too. Perhaps Florida.” Well you would be wrong. Florida might be a vacation for a Death Row inmate, and that is about it.

First off, there are spontaneous hurricanes. We were just driving down the road and it hit us. We couldn’t even see. Some of you may have heard the audio post I put up while this happened. I apologize for my language and that is why I erased it. Also, there are about 37 toll booths in a 10 mile span. They are all about $0.75. It is ridiculous. Can’t we just pay one flat fee?! It is as if people save up their change for an entire month just to drive to Orlando. The Florida toll booths are single-handedly keeping the US Mint in business.

I don’t want to complain now. I feel that must people who complain on their blogs are either living in their mother’s basement or wearing a mo-mo, possibly both. Day one in Florida wasn’t that bad, but this state is not all it cracked up to be. Northern Florida was actually rather beautiful, a lot of open fields, and, of course, everything is extremely green. We decided to go to the Kennedy Space Center because we had some time yesterday and lets be honest, rockets are cool. We bulldog it through Hurricane Jimenez or whatever, get out to Cape Canaveral, walk up to the museum, $30 ENTRANCE FEE!! Oh, I’m sorry, I thought my hard earned income which was taxed by the Federal Government was enough, I thought that I, as a tax-paying American, own part of this. Clearly I am mistaken. But it looks cool. If you can save up about $26.75 in quarters you might be able to drive out there and check it out sometime.

We left the Cape and drove down the coast to Vero Beach home of Dodgertown. It was a pilgrimage to Mecca for me. The town of Vero Beach was kind of run down but the facility was rather cool. They have about 6 baseball fields, and bullpens, and batting cages, and we got to walk through them all. Furthermore, the Vero Beach Dodgers, a Single-A team, had a game that night and we managed to catch a couple of innings. Minor League Baseball has an intimate feel to it which makes it hard believe that it is professional baseball. Real cool.

If it was the mid 1500s and I captained an elaborate ship from Spain across the Atlantic, risking life and limb of my crew and myself, I would have the determination of a mule. And when I landed on the tip of Southern Florida I would be overjoyed. I would get off the ship and start walking North in search of the Fountain of Youth. I would walk about 20 feet and turn around and say to my men, “Nope. It isn’t here. For the love of God, get back on the boat. We are out of here”.

To understand why I would have this response I want you to imagine something for me. Imagine taking your TV into your bathroom and turning on tele-novela as loud as possible. Now tear everything off the walls, graffiti a little bit, throw toilet paper and towels everywhere. Turn on the shower as hot as possible – make sure the door is closed. Now run in place for 47 straight minutes. Don’t just job, RUN. After that, pick up a book on Quantum Mechanics and begin reading it. Confused, irritated, frustrated, are you contemplating digging out your eye balls with a plastic spork?!? Welcome – to – Miami. Benvenidos – a – Miami. What was Will Smith thinking?

Hands down the worst town we have visited. It isn’t just the humidity, Georgia and Alabama were worst. There is construction everywhere, the same streets intersect each other, the people are snobby and hard to understand, and the 24 hour Fitness’s are only open 14 hours. Imagine that? So we are leaving South Beach, we are going to be camping in Fort Lauderdale – maybe its nicer, but I’m not holding my breath.

Hotlanta

So we work up in our hotel around noon. Actually it was 10, but the clock in the room was set 2 hours fast. So we freaked out because we had about 6 hours to drive with 6 hours til game time.
It wasn't until we were on the road for about 30 minutes that we realized the errors of our ways. Oh what a delight. There is only one thing worthy of talking about though. And if you watched the Braves/Giants game on TBS the Superstation last night you know what it is.

Here is the story. We wrote letters to all the MLB teams back in February. Some times got back to us offering to host us. A lady named Nancy from the Braves said we could meet with their VP of Communications. So I called in Houston to confirm. I got you voicemail. No call back. Sidenote: the Braves used to play in the NL West and beat up on the Dodgers. And they do that stupid tomhawk chop. I kind of hate this team and Nancy is not making it better. So I call again. About 5 hours before the game (we are about 4 hours away). So answers and felt real bad about not calling me back and said she had to get ahold of the VP and then get back to me - never mentioned anything about tickets. Remember, we already had an appointment with the VP. We were kind of freaking out though, because we probably were not going to get there in time to talk to him. As I'm cruising through the cotton fields of Southern Georgia (not literally, I was on the highway and they flanked both sides) I get a call. Game is going to start in about 1.5 hours. She feels real bad, but the VP can't meet with us tonight. We can set up a phone interview next week. But there are tickets under my name at Will Call. So we roll into Atlanta right on time. By the way, the state of Georgia has found a way to make it rain without clouds. All of a sudden we'd be driving down the road and ginormous rain drops would start landing all over the place. No clouds, just ridiculous humiditiy. You the humidity is too high when the air coming out of the AC vents in the car starts CONDENSING - it formed little water vapor fumes. I'm not lying.

Back to the story. So we get to the game. I thought Geoff was going to get stripped seached by security and we get through the gates. We find our section - wow - it is behind homeplate again. We show our tickets to the usher and her response was, 'Oh my!'. And then we just kept walking, down and down and down. I started to think that the umpires did not show up and they wanted us to call the game. The usher then takes a clean towel and wipes down our seats!! I guess that it standard when you are sitting in the owners' seats. I really believe that Ted Turner couldn't make the game so we got his tickets. I sat when Jane Fonda usually resides. First section, first row, first two seats. UN-BE-LIVEABLE.

Needless to say, we started becoming Braves fans. We were on national television for simply being baseball fans. And right around the time the waiter came to take our orders I felt like doing the Tomhawk Chop. And shortly after heckling Michael Tucker for being Barry Bonds replacement and having him hear me I wanted to stand up and cheer with Chipper Jones entered the game as a pitch hitter. So I did. I enthusiastically cheered for the Braves. Hell of a team.

Now we are in Gainsville, FL. on our way to Miami. At the Kinkos. We went to a Kinkos in Atlanta last night, but they close at midnight. I guess no one is really working that late anyway. Unless of course you work at the Waffle House.

Days 4 and 5

Well, we had every intention of posting sooner but we just moved into the South. And as you might imagine, they aren't too big on the internet in these parts. What they are big on is humidity. They love the stuff down here, eat it up, as if it was a plate of fried chicken and waffles.

Lets go chronologically. We got to Houston about 2 hours before the game. Funny thing about downtown Houston, there are no exits. None. I guess they just want you to drive around it and look at it. Which we did. After a series of U-turns we parked and headed towards the stadium. Minute Maid Park is another doomed stadium, a must in Houston. First thing we noticed about this place was the fans. It was Tuesday afternoon and there was a line around the block waiting for the gates to open. Insane. So we picked our tickets up at Will Call and when to the bar across the street to grab a beer before we went in. We had St. Arnold's Amber Ale, a Houston beer, a little fruity, but made be forget about the puddles of sweat in my shorts for just a few minutes. Which was nice.

So we go into the game and we met with the Director of Business Communications, his name is Todd. Where did he take us? The press box. We watched batting practice in the press box. Filthy. And Todd is the nicest man in baseball. So excited to have us, so enthusiastic about baseball and his franchise. After speaking to him, and the VP of Communications, we fell in love with the Astros organization. Quality baseball down there.

Just before game time we left the press box and took our seats. Right behind home plate, about 20 rows up. To date they were the best seats I've ever had. It quickly turned into the best baseball game I have seen in a while. Homeruns, double plays, steller pitching, and routy fans. I love Texas baseball. I think the highlight was the battle of the closers at the end of the game. With the Washington Nationals leading 6-5 in the bottom of the 8th the Astros with two outs have runners on the corners. The Nats bring in Chad Cordero, who is leading the Majors in saves, and he shuts down the Astros. Top of the ninth and the Nationals are threating to extend their lead and all of a sudden the lights go out. We throught it was a cruel Enron joke. Then all of a sudden Brad Lidge comes stroming out to an rocking tune. And the scoreboard reads, 'Lights Out Lidge'. It was hands down the best entrance any athlete has made onto a sporting field since Eric Gagne came out to 'Welcome to the Jungle'. What can I say, Gagne is the best.

Cordero got the save in heroic fashion. We met up with my friend Meghan from school and her friends. They took us over by Rice University and we hung out at some good ol' Texas bars. The special of the night, $2 Texas beers. Everything else was $5. This state has more pride than an Orange County homecoming queen. Furthermore, every establishment in Texas has at least 2 of the following; dart boards, pool table, mechanical bull, karoke, other random gaming board i have never even heard of before, and chicken fried steak. These folks are active drinkers. They have to be doing stuff.

Anyhow, we left. We were blessed enough to stay with Meghan at the Sickler household. It was so nice. Such a ridiculously nice family to let us stay even though they have 4 children and 18 puppies running around. So cool.

We left Houston rather early in order to get to New Orleans. On the way we had breakfast at the Waffle House - Grace, my boss at the chem library, would be so proud.

Let me take a moment here to talk about the Waffle House. Anyone who has visited the south clearly knows what I am talking about because they are more ubiquitous than stray dogs in Tijuana. It is ludicurious. In Alabama I saw 3 within 1 mile of each other. On one exit I saw a Waffle House next to a Waffle King. Now I love waffles as much as the next guy, don't get me wrong, but is there really a need for 2 seperate types of waffle resturants?!?! Are waffles being consumed at such an alarming rate that one resturant cannot support the demand?! If so, we have a problem in the Bible Belt.

Anyhow, we got to New Orleans early afternoon. Crazy thing is that about 60 miles of Interstate 10 is on stilts. We were just driving over swamps. It was rad. But, New Orleans. The Big Easy, the big sleazy. Not much more can be said. The French Quarter is so cool. This town is kind of like the party atmosphere of Vegas with the personality/hospitality of the Deep South. It was rather mellow, it was a Wednesday night and all. But Geoff and I did enjoy some Bourbon on Bourbon St. Yada yada yada

The trip through Texas

I think we left you at the Arizona/New Mexico border. Well we have come along way since then, both literally and, well, as a couple. We are now just outside of Shiner, TX on our way to Houston, more on that later.

New Mexico was rather uneventful. The countryside was kind of cool, they sell a lot of fireworks there. I was driving and all of a sudden we crossed a river and we saw a sign that said it was the Rio Grande. Pretty exciting, it just snuck up on us. It goes right through the middle of Las Cruces, home of New Mexico State University.

We were driving into El Paso and there are all these shantys, not a very nice town at all. And then just as Geoff was commenting on them we realized that was actually Juarez Mexico, it is like 30 yards away. It is insane.

It was there, at the New Mexico/Texas Border that Geoff took over the driving. He has been driving since. He plans on driving across the entire state of Texas, what a bad ass. And by the way, Texas is not small. In fact, it is ginormous.

So we were cruising along and had like 3/8 of a tank of gas. We decided to stop at the next city to get some gas. Little did we realize the next town was about 348 miles away. We pulled out our trusty AAA TripTix and it showed there was a small establishment called Roosevelt. We pulled in on fumes. Roosevelt does not boost a school, or restaurant, or more than 10 stationary houses. It does however have one functioning gas pump. Geoff fell in love with the town. Interesting story about Roosevelt; Alice Walker originally sent an application for a Post Office for the city under a different name, but the Post Master General, who was a friend of then President Teddy Roosevelt, decided to name the city after him because there was a military post there when he was a Rough Rider. So now the town is named after Teddy Roosevelt, not Alice Walker.

Speaking of Teddy Roosevelt – Rick Shook let us know about a little hotel in San Antonio where Teddy Roosevelt recruited the Rough Riders, more accurately the bar inside of the hotel where he recruited them. It is in the Menger Hotel – which is actually quite classy, far too classy for Geoff and me. It is right across the street from the Alamo, I recommend checking it out if you are in the area. But it is important to not that the bar does not open until 11AM and it is not smiled upon when you ask, ‘Hey, when does the bar open, I’m dying for some whiskey’ at 8:45AM like we did.

Backtracking a little bit, it is important to note where we stayed in San Antonio. We were hosted by Mr. and Mrs. Manship the two nicest people in the entire state of Texas, no, the entire WORLD. They are the parents of famed Stanford pitcher Matt Manship who I know from school. They took us to a tasty Texas dinner (I had the chicken fried steak) and they we crashed at their place that night. As if that wasn’t nice enough, they made us breakfast in the morning. Which included the best damn cantaloupe I’ve ever had. It was has if God came down and touched the cantaloupe before I consumed it. Delicious.

By the way, Texas has about 657 counties. They just hand these things out. I think it is possible to have a county named after us by the time we leave the state.

We left the Manship household this morning and headed to Downtown San Antonio. Real nice. The Alamo is rather small but I’ll tell you something, made me proud to be an American. Those studs held the Mexican Army off for 12 days without a single one of them dying before they got absolutely destroyed on the 13^th day. The Alamo museum also gave a real nice history of the Bowie Knife, seeing how Col. Bowie fought and died at the Alamo. Not to mention the story of how Davie Crockett did not get elected for a 4^th term as a Congressman so he told his constituents, ‘You can go to Hell, I’m going to Texas’. We need more Congressmen like that. We also walked the Riverwalk a little bit. Very cool. Yet not nearly as cool as ….

Shiner, TX. This town ROCKS! Why, well they have restaurants like Little Rudy’s with no signs, you just have to know it exists. And there you can get a $3.25 bacon cheeseburger the size of your head. We had lunch there while we waited for our free tour of the Spoetzl Brewery, home of Shiner Bock the #1 specialty beer in the state of Texas. The original brewmaster claimed to boil off the alcohol in the beer during Prohibition because they sold it has “near beer”. I guess he would tend to forget to do that. It is that kind of stuff that makes me love Texas. That and the cowboy hats they sell in Wal-Mart or the enormous high school football stadiums. What a delight.

We are on our way to Houston as we speak and rocking out to Led Zeppelin.

Us at the first game

Our path thus far. Don't be fooled, Texas is bigger than John Candy, especially in his later days. Check it out at http://tinyurl.com/a8huh

Crappy art at the Stadium, kind of scary too. I mean i didn't think it was possible to make Randy Johnson a weirder looking guy, but this young lad succeeded. 

This is the pool and spa in right-center field of Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, ridiculous. 

This how many seats were worse than ours 

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.