Where's Norton?

Melvin and I are mostly a pair but other folks tour with us from time to time. I welcome the company of any one of them again in the future. That said, not every itinerary suits every companion.

We arrived at a destination halfway through our abbreviated trip to Pennsylvania that made me think of a friend who has traveled with us twice. I turned to Melvin and asked, "Where's Norton?"

Where's Norton? At Exit 12, in ¾ of a mile.

White Sands (italicized and not)

For our birthdays, Watson gave both Melvin and me copies of White Sands; Experiences from the Outside World, the most recent collection of essays by Geoff Dyer.

front jacket image
photograph by Theo Anderson

It was an informed choice (public thank you) since Melvin and I have both read a good deal of Dyer's writing and we have visited about half of the places featured in the nine essays in his new book.

An Editorial Meeting in My Mind

As I considered various themes for a post on our Memorial Day weekend trip to the Gulf of Mexico—loosely speaking—it occurred to me that I was pitching story ideas to myself.

"5pm editorial meeting,"
from "How the Guardian is Made" (2 April 2014),
courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd. through Open Licence.

Eventually that became the theme; the Rickwood Classic special edition; three longer features and four shorter ones—at least conceptually!

Something, Sometime

"Easter in October" is not a thing. (Well, maybe for some.) Likewise, "Christmas in August" is not anything either.

Image credit: The Colbert Report

"Christmas in July," however, dates back at least as far as 1933. And (the weather notwithstanding) Melvin and I delighted in our first Christmas in July ballpark promotion in 2010, at Progressive Field.

My niece, her boyfriend and I went to the Brooklyn Cyclones' "Christmas in August" promotion last night. The team's inability to stick to a meme was not its only failure.

Ecumenical

The first of four games between the Mets and the Yankees will be played tonight, two in Flushing and Wednesday and Thursday in the Bronx. Today also marks this year's trade deadline, with the Yankees sellers for the first time since 1992 and the Mets bolstering its line-up. This adds an interesting twist to the annual crosstown interleague games.

In recognition of this week's home-and-home series, I offer this photograph taken by Kevin on the subway in May.

Nineteen-Thousand Words

or, all of the images (at the standard rate of, "a picture is worth a thousand words") but none of the text from the unpublished post,

"South Atlantic Slutlife"

I recently found the pictures in an online directory but have no desire to rewrite the spontaneously deleted record of four days of a 2014 trip to Georgia, South Carolina and Florida.

A disparate collection, I wondered (and have now discovered) what the images would look like without any narrative. Ignore my self-indulgence.

We Interrupt Our Radio Silence

I really thought that after a while this blog would write itself, and yet it just sits there, cursor blinking, acting like it's all "what?" and I'm all "you know what" and it's like "no I don't u r so wyrd"...

Anyway, we've been focused on scheduling issues lately, rather than coverage of our recent trips. For reasons largely beyond our control, we've decided to scale back the large trip we had slated for later this month.

• Reading Fightin' Phils
• Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs
• Harrisburg Senators
• Altoona Curve / Pittsburgh Pirates
• Erie Sea Wolves
• Toronto Blue Jays
• Buffalo Bisons
• Batavia Muckdogs
• Rochester Red Wings
• Auburn Doubledays
• Binghamton Mets

As small consolation, we will make it to the Williamsport Crosscutters, though Rob has seen them already.

We now return to our irregularly programmed schedule.

Comparatively Speaking

Someone once said to me, "Everything isn't a competition," and I have adopted the saying as my own. It can be said in jest or as an admonishment or somewhere in-between.

On 4th Avenue South, between Al Lang Stadium and Tropicana Field.
Some phenomena are more quantifiable than others.

Everything isn't a competition but Melvin and I do make comparisons when we are on the road. Often the first conversation of day begins with the question, "How's the shower?" That was true of our May trip to Florida as well.

The Forecast Calls for Frustration

Our Florida road-trip was generally a success and a pleasure. The prominent exception was Wednesday, when thunderstorms soaked most of Southern Florida. A USGS rain gauge in Manatee County, south of Tampa-St. Pete, measured 7.52 inches of rain over a six-hour period. Wind gusts reached 45 mph.

Screen capture courtesy of the Palm Beach Post.

Unsurprisingly, both our 10:30 am and 6:35 pm games were rained out. Equally unsurprising was how the teams showed a lack of consideration for their fans—or indulged in absurd optimism, if you prefer—by waiting until the last possible moment to call the games. This is not the first time this has happened to Melvin or me but we still fell for the trick.

The Modern World

In the modern world, All-Star Game balloting begins 18 games into the season and lasts for 68 days. Fans (or whomever) can vote up to five times in a 24-hour period, so a particularly obsessive and well-organized voter can cast 340 ballots. As if the whole production wasn't absurd enough already.