Westward D'oh

First, more photos from DC


The Smithsonian - American Indian Museum
Smithsonian - Air and Space Museum

Nationals Park - Home of the Washington Nationals


The game was fun, although not surprisingly the Nationals were killed by the cubs. It was one loss in a four-game sweep by the Cubs. Utter domination. Harden didn't even pitch spectacularly for the Cubs and the Nationals still barely appeared to be in the game. As you can see above, the sunset was spectacular. Just beautiful colors in the sky.

Before I finish up with DC, I just want to thank Caitlin for putting me up for the week and taking me around town in the evenings after work. It's always nice staying in a city where someone knows the layout and can show me around. On top of that, I had fantastic food all week. Turkish on Monday, Greek on Tuesday, home cooking Wednesday, Cuban on Thursday after the game, and Himalayan on Friday. I'm going t0 miss DC, no question.

After DC I headed to Pittsburg for all of 4 hours. Thankfully, that's just enough time to park, enjoy a ballgame and fireworks, and head out of town. Because it was cloudy and dark, I didn't get a great view of Pittsburgh, but the ballpark was fantastic. Easily one of my favorites on this trip. PNC park, home of the Pirates, is built right along the river, so that homers hit to right field can fall into the river if hit hard enough. On top of that, the view of the downtown skyline at night was a perfect backdrop to the latter innings of the game. The night was then made complete by Matt Capps closing out a 2-0 victory over the SF Giants. Woo-hoo. I've got photos of PNC locked up in another camera (along with other assorted shots). Hopefully I can download from that camera soon and post them up.

After the Pirates game, I headed straight for cleveland. Not the original plan, but the Pittsburgh La Quinta was booked up and Cleveland was only 2 hours away. It worked out because the Indians game the following day was a day game anyways.



Proogressive field, home of the Indians was dissapointing. On a Sunday afternoon, attendance was barely more than a third of capacity, and in a bland stadium to boot. This place didn't seem to have a lot of character, just a billion luxury boxes squeezed in. At least there was a guy beating a large drum in the outfield, and a couple of people sporting Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn jerseys. One even had the matching glasses.

I didn't see much else in Cleveland before packing up this morning and heading west, to Chicago. Great news right? Making progress, about to go catch a Cubs game on Tuesday. I was in great spirits, until I realized that I had misread my manic scribbles that I call my schedule. Instead of heading to Chicago, I should have been on my way to Detroit. The cubs won't be in town until Friday. I had been planning to go to a Tigers game, but in my haste, went straight to the windy city.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do. I still might turn around and head to Detroit. I'm going to see if I can modify my reservations here in Chicago (made them with points). If not, I'll probably just stay longer here and sightsee.

And hey, maybe it'll give me a reason to stay in that super fancy downtown La Quinta. Looks pretty slick, and it's almost next door to the Sears tower.