Monday, June 14, 2004

Bad Traffic, Even Worse Baseball and Cheap Bowling

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, but yesterday was a flurry of activities for me. It started out as most Sundays do, on the way to church, except this time I wasn't playing, since I was meeting most of the DFWAAA for an early lunch before the 1:00 Rangers game. That meant I was only able to attend the early contemporary service. I got off to a late start, but I anticipated being able to get there well before the sermon.

A few exits before the High Five, traffic slowed to a crawl. Surely there wasn't construction on a Sunday....I turned on the traffic report and found out that there had been an earlier wreck in the construction area, which brought out a fire truck...which itself got rear-ended by an 18-wheeler. It appeared that I could still get on westbound LBJ, so I didn't bail from the freeway or anything.

To make a long story short, I was stuck in this mess for 45 minutes! It turned out that yet another link in this chain-reaction had blocked the LBJ ramp as well. Had I gone to church, it would have been about 2/3 of the way through the sermon. Sure, there are some weeks I don't get to play, but man, I hate missing it completely when I'm in town. I had also missed my coffee (expecting to get some at church), so I made a quick stop at the Starbucks in West Village (only one I could think of between where I was and Arlington).

After arriving at the parking area, I did a quick U-turn, as I found out that my favorite $5 lot for weekday games is a $10 lot on the weekends. The tiny little lot before that was $5 still, so I went for that (though I noticed on the long walk to the ballpark that there was a much closer lot for six bucks...but ehh, exercise is good.

There was a major change in the restaurant in right field, as Friday's didn't renew its contract over the off-season; taking over was something called the Rawlings All-American Grille. Not much changed inside; it's still a monster sports bar, basically, even if the menu is a bit different. Service for my part of the table was slooooow, but hopefully they'll get the kinks out before long.

We got to our seats in the third row of the upper Home Run Porch, and something was definitely amiss: one seat was totally covered in bird crap, and the one next to it was...wet? It wasn't raining; what was the deal? It was later explained to us that condensation from a cooling unit for the giant scoreboard on the roof must have been dripping into a leaky gutter; they offered to reseat our whole group, but we liked our location, so we dealt with it.

The DFWAAA game always seems to be a curse on the Rangers, and this year was no exception: they lost 13-2 to the Cardinals. It was 12-0 after three innings. Not a great outing, although it was a great hang, especially once people started to leave and the remaining members of our group could all sit together in the shade and away from the Chinese water torture coming off the roof.

Last night started the new summer Sunday tradition of Cheap Bowling Night. Jazzy G drove out from Lake Corinth Creek to join Dingus, Coop and myself at Starbucks first, then on to Bowl-A-Rama for the dollar game night. It was totally packed (next week, we're there at 9:00 on the dot, no excessive Starbucking allowed), but we did manage to get two games in before closing. Once I own my own shoes (soon?), it'll be cheap beyond belief.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Use your inside voice."--A sign in the West Village parking area, reminding late-night clubgoers that people actually live in those lofts up there.

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