NAGAAA World Series wrap-up

Friday am: Had to be up early to make the long drive to our fields for the 7:55 game against Tampa. It was foggy and cold - we haven't been up this early to play and weren't really prepared for the temps and wet fields. We had a rough first inning and eventually fell behind 14-3, but came back at the end to make it a somewhat respectable 20-15 loss. Not really the way we wanted to go out as we did not play well at all. It's always disappointing to lose when you know you could've played much better. I had by far my best game of the tournament, at least in terms of hitting, but it wasn't enough. Too bad it took me that long to wake up and start hitting, as we may have done a little better had I not sucked most of the tournament.

Afterwards, most of the team went to the other fields to watch our B teams play. I stayed behind to watch C games and socialize with out of town friends. Inevitably, beers were purchased (before noon) and it turned into a rather long day. Some of the details are lost, others are better off being forgotten, but it was a lot of fun to hang out and watch games, socialize and meet some new people.

Friday night was the block party, preceded by beer and food at the Hilton - shocking to see us there, I know. The block party was decent, nothing exciting except for getting swept up by the Madison crowd and taken to a bar. After escaping I think Chris and I went to yet another bar, but the details are somewhat fuzzy and that may have been a different night. It's all starting to blur together now.

Saturday, most of us went out to the championship games to watch the Edge and Swingers play - the Edge finished 4th in C, the Swingers were 3rd in D. After a couple hours of watching games, I was pretty much over it and left, but not without chatting up the Austin C team and deciding I would most likely go down to their tournament in May. Seems like it would be fun to go somewhere new and check out the city, so plans are underway to do just that.

I thought about checking out early and head home on Saturday afternoon, but sloth caught up to me and I stayed. That was a good idea - the closing party was OK but the bars afterwards were a blast. We drank, danced (some of us shirtless in a cage) and generally had a great time. I believe it was some time after 2 when I finally got back to the hotel.

Beyond that, not much to report. We are looking forward to Columbus in '10, hopefully we'll qualify for the tournament now that the team has had a taste of the fun/craziness that is the World Series.

Photos are on the way.

NAGAAA World Series Day 3/4

We wound up winning our first game in bracket play yesterday (barely) by coming back and scoring a couple runs in the last inning with 2 outs. That took us a matchup against a good hitting Seattle team, and we just didn't hit well enough to stick with them. The loss put us in the loser's bracket with an 11am game today (Thursday).

Between our 2nd game yesterday and this morning, we went over to the host hotel for 'a beer'. Since they had a special buy one pitcher, get a free pizza it wound up being 5 hours of beer and pizza. Lots of fun. Our waiter was quite friendly. We were quite friendly. All in all it was a good night.

Somehow we all managed to get up on time and make it to the hotel lobby this morning. We had just one game at 11 against Phoenix, and as is becoming all too routine, we had a close game which we pulled out in the last inning. That sets us up for a potentially hellish day tomorrow (Friday) as we play at 7:55 am (leaving the hotel at 6am), and have the possibility of playing 8 games in one day if we keep winning. I'm not thinking about that right now.

We also went to the Mitchell Domes this afternoon - 3 domes of plants/flowers near the hotel. It turned out to better than everyone expected so that was good. Afterwards some of us went back to the host hotel bar, others went out to eat, and I am just now getting to my room and headed to bed. The alarm will be going off in approximately 8 hours. :(

NAGAAA World Series Day 2

Quick update and then I'm off to our team dinner: we won our only game of the day and finished pool play 2-1. I would guess we'll wind up somewhere around the 15 seed out of 50 teams.

More to come later.

Latest update: we wound up seeded 20th and have our first game at 10am. We are leaving the hotel at 7:15 am - the fields are approximately 30-40 minutes away and that will give us time for a warm-up/batting practice before the game.

Backing up a bit: last night was a good time at the opening ceremonies and beyond. I can't really say as I watched the entertainment since the people attending were entertaining enough. At some point I realized my entire team had left - I figured this out as I wandered around looking for them in a somewhat enebriated state. After a number of text messages I located them (at a bar) and left. That was slightly tricky as I didn't know where I was going but managed to safely get back to the hotel and hang out/drink/socialize for awhile before heading off to bed. We played at 1:15 today so we had plenty of time to recover.

Our game today was our best so far, and we are hopefully peaking at the right time. Afterwards most of us hung out watching games and socializing some more. The last stragglers made it back to the hotel around 6pm and had a quick shower before heading off to our team dinner at 6:45. We are now back at the hotel and getting ready to call it a night.

It sounds like we are playing a team that went 0-3 in pool play so it should be a manageable first round game. Beyond that, nothing will be easy. I'm excited to finally get to the real tournament games and get this thing started.

NAGAAA World Series Day 1

Our day got off to a bit of a late start, which is always a good thing in softball. Rather than getting the 7:55am game like our poor roommate (Orlando from Tampa) we were fortunate to have games at 12:20 and 2:30 this afternoon. That allowed us to stay out a bit late last night and enjoy some adult beverages and socializing. I joined the Edge (the other Minneapolis C division team) at a great restaurant called Elsa's for dinner, as my team hates me and tries to avoid being seen with me in public. Somehow I convinced my teammates to meet me at the hotel bar later (probably because I promised to buy them beer) and we would up having a good time. Dan and I were amazing at darts and won by a lot. I won't divulge the final score as it's a bit embarassing for the losers (Jay and Jason) if everyone knows they lost by about 200 points.

On to softball: we had a good warm-up/practice which didn't really carry over to the first game. After falling behind 4-0 after one inning, we played Nashville Fury even the rest of the way but lost 7-3. Not many games will be won if we score 3 runs, so hitting will have to improve if we're to do well.

Game two was close (5-5) until we went ballistic and scored 9 runs in the 5th inning. Our defense held them to 3 runs over the next 2 innings and we won 14-8 to finish the day at 1-1 overall. Tomorrow we play at 1:15 against Philadelphia TBD.

We're off to the opening ceremonies in about 1.5 hours. I'm pretty sure there will be more adult beverages consumed and more stories to tell, although I doubt many of the stories will be suitable for this blog. I'll stick with the basics as that's safest for all involved.

Updates on other Minneapolis teams: really, who cares? If you're reading my blog you shouldn't care about them. :)

No photos from the day. I was hoping to take some shots of a few other team/players that I'm friends with, but was busy playing and our schedules didn't really mesh very well so I have nothing. Perhaps when bracket play begins I'll be able to get my camera out.

Off to get ready for the ceremonies.

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

One thing I love about my new apartment is the location: it's close enough to downtown I can walk there, it's near the Wedge so I'm in the middle of lots of stuff, and there aren't drug dealers and prostitutes prowling the streets and alleys all day/night. Now I just have random hippie people wandering the alleys, but those don't bother me. :)

I walked to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden (next to the Walker Art Center) today. I've been there before but hadn't paid much attention to it as I was only there for the mini-golf that time. It's an interesting place, although the roving gangs of schoolchildren this morning detracted a bit from the experience. I was mostly able to keep away from them and really enjoyed wandering around and taking my time to look at things.

The north end has a small garden/walkway area which was pretty cool. Not a lot of sculptures down there but very pretty nonetheless.

One of the sculptures slightly south of the garden area:

The famous/iconic spoon with cherry:

At the south end is a rectangle formed by marble topped benches, each with a different inscription. Some are a bit bizarre, but I laughed out loud at a bunch of 'em. They're so random that they catch you by surprise. I'm still laughing because they're just so random and kind of stupid - but that's what makes it so great.

I think these 2 are linked in a way.



This one is serious, timely and oh-so-true.

And this is one is just kind of random. Not much more I can say about it.

Since the Walker is only 10-15 minutes away on foot, I'm sure I'll get down there again on a routine basis. More photos are here.

Green Day concert

Not really a trip but definitely an adventure. Thanks to Bryan's friend who couldn't go, I got a free ticket to one of the best concerts ever.

After the four of us had dinner at Buca, we walked over to the Target Center and took our spots on the floor. The opening act was The Bravery and were actually pretty decent, with a lead singer who sounded like Robert Smith from the Cure. Their 30 minute set seemed much shorter than that.

After a 30 minute break to change out the stage and stuff, Green Day took the stage and went crazy. I don't even remember all the songs and the order, but they were awesome. One of the more political bands around, they've still retained their sense of humor (unlike Bono and U2). They pulled random fans onto stage to sing and play guitar and just generally enjoyed themselves up there. Even the obligatory covers they did ("Let's Go Crazy" by Prince, "Shout", "Stand By Me" and others) were fun and entertaining instead of distracting and indulgent. The show lasted about 2.5 hours, including a 40 minute encore, and I believe they could've played awhile longer without dragging things out.

I don't have photos - not much point in that as a concert is all about the music and the moment and a few random snapshots can't convey that spirit. If you ever get the chance to see Green Day live, go for it.

SW Minnesota road trip

Pipestone National Monument is (and has been) a sacred place to Native Americans for hundreds of years. Wonder how they feel about this sign prominently displayed less than a mile away?



Let me backtrack a bit: I made it to the prairies of southwest Minnesota finally. I love the wide open feel of the prairie with its never-ending skies.

Before I got there, I made a quick stop at Fort Ridgely State Park as it was on the way. The Minnesota Kite society was supposed to be flying some huge kites there - those plans seemed to have been cancelled due to high winds. A (Civil War?) re-enactment group from Sleepy Eye was on hand, camped out and doing cultural demonstrations and such. I was bored.

South of there, I stopped in at the Jeffers Petroglyphs site. As always, petroglyphs and other rock art interest me. This site has over 2000 petroglyphs, most of them very hard to see in broad daylight. When the sun is lower in the sky, it creates shadows making the outlines easier to spot. Of course, I was there in broad daylight so I struggled to see them. Even with a tour guide pointing them out, and in some instances tracing the outline with a stick, it was hard to see some of them. This is a bison petroglyph:


She was good, and very helpful and believable, so I took her at her word that the spot she was tracing really was a bison or thunderbird or whatever. The hike around the rest of the grounds was nice - the sun was out and it was a beautiful day with some nice fluffy clouds that cast some occasional shade.



Onward to Blue Mounds State Park, home of Minnesota's only bison herd (at least in a state park). It struck me as funny every time it was mentioned (and it was a rather frequent occurence) that this was the only state park in Minnesota with a resident bison herd. I think most people understand that a bison herd is a pretty unusual thing to have in a state park anywhere.

After setting up camp in a nice shady walk-in site, I took off on a 4 mile hike to try to spot some bison. I saw a tick (on my leg), some birds and a few bunnies, but the bison were safely out of sight. Nevertheless, it was a good hike, about 2 miles to the visitors center where I took a break in the shade. A nice woman warned me of some approaching storms. The skies went from this:


To this view of the visitors center about 15 minutes later:


To this about 5 minutes later:


Not even halfway back to the campground, it started to rain a bit, off and on. Not a big deal for me, but I hadn't put the rain fly on my tent so I ran back as best I could carrying a camera, camera bag and water bottle. It was a nice workout and the tent was mostly dry.

Other than some drunk people deciding to leave the campground at 2am, it was a nice quiet night. I declined to get up early to shoot sunrise and was thankful I slept in as the clouds and bison were non-existent. I did eventually spot some bison off in the distance - I had hoped for photos of bison babies frolicking on the prairie, and all I got was this.

Heading up to Pipestone National Monument, I stopped and took some photos of a few bison on a neighboring farm. At least they were somewhat cooperative.

Pipestone NM is (as I said above) a sacred place for Native Americans. It contains several quarries used to produce pipestone (surprise) which is carved into pipes (shocking!) and other ceremonial items as well as artwork. There's a nice trail to walk and see a few quarries as well as rock formations. The visitors center is actually more interesting than the outdoors as they have cultural demonstrations - people are working on pipestone, carving it into art or other things and available to answer any questions. I declined to ask how they felt about Jesus being Lord of Pipestone.

I left Pipestone and settled on Flandrau State Park for my Sunday night stay. After deciding I wanted to pay the extra $6 to stay in the modern campground with a shower building and water from the tap (as opposed to the rustic campground with no showers and a hand pump), a ranger came around and informed everyone one of the water mains had broken and they were shutting off the showers and drinking water. He *hoped* the toilets would continue to function until the could fix the system the next day. Yay for no showers!

I just sat around getting some sun and reading, then went into town for some food and water. Nothing exciting or eventful, just a relaxing evening doing nothing.

You can see more photos (3 separate albums) here.