Put Baseball Trip '09 in the Books

Well, five days, four cities, three ballparks, two BBQ comas and countless beers later, BASEBALL TRIP '09: CINCINNATI, ST. LOUIS & KANSAS CITY has come to an end. Appropriately, it ended in spectacular fashion: We drove the ENTIRE 1,300 miles home from K.C. in one epic journey! Originally, we were going to stop over in Pittsburgh once again, crash and continue the rest of the way in the morning... but we fell behind schedule during the course of the drive and wouldn't have gotten there till after 1 a.m. By that point, we figured it made sense to just soldier on and get home as quickly as possible. Thanks to more bathroom/food/coffee stops and more general horseplay than usual, the ride took longer than it probably should have -- over 24 hours from the moment we left K.C. to the moment I arrived back at my apartment in NYC -- but it was worth it. The drive was fun, we got to see the sun set behind us and rise again before us, and as we passed through the cities we'd just visited, it allowed me to reflect on our many adventures: From the classic sandwich at Primanti's in Pittsbugh... to the 3-Way Chili, suspension bridge and awesome ballpark experience in Cincy... to the Arch, great BBQ and not one, but TWO Pujols homers in St. Louis... to the unparalleled glory of Arthur Bryant's, the beauty of Kauffmann Stadium and the Greinke-Kazmir matchup in K.C. The car rides were also memorable -- filled with good music, old school NES emulation, crossword puzzles (Murphy and I came within three clues of finishing the Sunday Times puzzle in the K.C. newspaper during the voyage home), snackage galore, and we probably listened to the "I Got Mail" Crank Yankers skit, like, 20 times and it never stopped being funny! (YAAAAAY!)

Now I just need to start sifting through the nearly 600 pics that I took during the course of the trips and get a nice, big photo gallery online. Stay tuned for that... but it may be a while before I'm able to recuperate from my exhaustion -- awesome as this trip was, it was not particularly RELAXING by any means, as we were constantly on the move and running on very little sleep -- in fact, at press time, I've been awake for over 33 1/2 hours and counting... but like Kenny Rogers and his titular Gambler, I am too tired to sleep. Argh. Soon, though, there will be pics... oh yes indeed.

(And hey, who knows, maybe this influx of blogging over the past few days will actually get me to start writing movie reviews 'n stuff more often! At the very least, I owe a HARRY POTTER 6 review... though I may wait a few days until I see it again in IMAX 3D before I offer up my thoughts, of which there are many. For now, know that it stands as my #1 movie of 2009 so far -- haters be damned!)