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Last summer, while in Chicago, I went to the top of the Sears Tower, 110 stories into the sky. From there I took this picture of Grant Park where Lollapalooza was going to take place later in the day. 15 months later the same scene turned into one of celebration for Obama and the Democrats.
As mentioned a couple of days ago, I had the opportunity to attend a Blue Jays game in Toronto last summer. The above photo is of two former Oakland A’s players (as the A’s have been “my team” since the 70s).
Miguel Tejada and Matt Stairs are shown here in different uniforms talking about their old glory days in Oakland. Stairs had just hit a double and Tejada was playing short. Had Tejada pulled a hidden ball trick he could have tagged Stairs out!
Fast forward to this season and Matt Stairs finds himself on the Phillies. Last night he crushed a ball in Los Angeles for a two run homer to give the Phillies a 3 games to 1 lead over the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series.
Once we are back in Japan next year you can count on daily entries dealing with only Japanese things. Until then, however, I will mix in some other travel pictures and stories (as I already have with Denmark, Paris, Chicago, Norway, Sweden, etc.)
Today’s travel adventure happened last September. I flew to Toronto on a red-eye flight. This made for a spectacular scene from the air as my plane approached the airport with the sun having just risen. I had a great time in Toronto, catching a Blue Jays game, seeing Rush at the Air Canada Centre, and adventuring around town.
My real reason for being in Canada was to teach in Windsor. I drove to Windsor under terrific conditions. The Ontario countryside was beautiful and relaxing.
Anyway, I’ll see what else I can share with you from my Canadian experiences on later dates.
I have a few decent pictures from our day in Washington D.C. this past summer that I’ll put up here from time to time. The above is of the magnificent sunset from our hotel room. We didn’t realize until the next day (since it was an unplanned trip that happened only because we missed our flight to Copenhagen) that we weren’t really in Washington D.C. at all. We were in Virginia.
Despite loads of positive energy coming from the Windy City due to having two teams in the post season, the Cubs having the best record in the National League, and Obama poised for a landslide victory in next month’s election (if you don’t believe me check out intrade.com), the Chicago teams both struck out in the first round of the playoffs.
I took the above picture at the aforementioned Cubs-Mets game last August at Wrigley Field. I believe Cliff Floyd is striking out. Although it may look like I had a great seat at the game, it was actually quite horrible. I was behind a pillar way down behind the bullpen 30 or so rows back. I just got lucky on this picture as most taken at 12X zoom, without a tripod, while the subject is moving, come out quite blurry.
The 756 in the background on the guy’s t-shirt is in reference to Barry Bonds’ chase of the home run record at the time. He hit #756 later that day. I remember watching it on TV back in my hotel room.
As previously mentioned, I had the chance to catch both the White Sox and the Cubs at home last season while on a business trip to Chicago. Ted Lilly pitched for the Cubs that day and he pitched this season on the day the Cubs clinched their division.
Last night the White Sox won a one game playoff with the Twins 1-0 to make it to the playoffs. And who was pitching? John Danks, the same guy who was pitching on the day when I saw the White Sox play at home last year.
Who hit the game winning home run last night? Jim Thome.
He did the same thing the night I saw them play last year against the Indians, and I happened to be lucky enough to be snapping a picture at the same time.
Will it be an all Chicago World Series? We’ll have to wait and see.
Did you watch yesterday’s game? The above picture almost looks like it came from that game (since Ted Lilly is on the mound as he was yesterday), but a careful look at the background shows Rickey Henderson in a Mets uniform coaching first base. The Cubs clinched their division title yesterday against the Cardinals–not the Mets. I took this picture last summer when I was in Chicago.
The Cubs are looking to win their first World Series in about a hundred years. They’ve completed step one. Now they’ve just got to get past three more teams–easier said than done. But this year seems promising. It has a little extra magic that past Cubs playoff teams didn’t seem to have.
Stay tuned.
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