Day 36 – Dallas, Day 1

Miles traveled: 240
Hours on Road: 4
States covered: 1 –Texas

It had been decided the night before that Chris would also come to Dallas to help take care of my nephew, Matt’s, wife, Tracy, while he entertained us. Tracy had come down with shingles that turned into viral meningitis, and though she was out of the hospital and on the mend, she was in no condition to take care of herself, much less their two small children, Jude, age two, and Talula, six months. We would follow behind Chris’s Mini, so I asked her ahead of time to keep in mind my delicate driving state and not put the pedal to the metal, which is her tendency. She promised she’d be good. And she was. In fact, a couple of times I moved into the passing lane to signal her that it was OK to pass the slowpoke ahead of us. We had excellent teamwork on the drive.

Along the way we stopped in West, Texas, which is not exactly in west Texas; it’s closer to central Texas. We stopped to pick up kolaches, Czechoslovakian pastries with various fillings, from dinner-type to sweet. Chris always stops on her drive to Dallas to buy a special cookie for Jude. The gas is also especially cheap at this stop; only $2.56 a gallon.

We arrived at Matt’s around 3 p.m. We went straight there rather than check into our hotel just in case traffic was bad. We called the hotel to let them know we’d be there very late (very late, as it would turn out). Talula was lying on the floor, rolling all over creation when we got there, and Jude was just waking up from a nap. What sweet kids. We hung out visiting for a while, and headed out to the baseball game around 5 p.m. It was exceptional luck that the Red Sox happened to be playing while we were there. We haven’t seen get Red Sox play in Boston in years -- tickets are too hard to get; we’ve gone to other stadiums to see them.

The kids and I were blown away when we discovered where we’d be sitting. Matt got us tickets in the Lou Gehrig suite where we had the option of viewing the game from the seats outside located on the first balcony overlooking homeplate, or from the air-conditioned room right behind those seats. The suite provided all the food and drinks we wanted: hotdogs with all the fixins, buffalo wings, cookies, brownies, fruit, soda, beer, wine, water. As if the accommodations weren’t enough, the view of the field was spectacular. Parker was able to get amazing photos of the plays. And to top it off, it was one of the most exciting games I’ve ever seen. The Red Sox got three homeruns in a row: Big Papi, Adrien Beltre, and JD Drew. In another inning the Rangers got two homeruns in a row: Michael Young and Josh Hamilton. JD Drew got another homerun later on, and Jed Lowry of the Red Sox also got a homerun. The game went into eleven innings, until Nelson Cruz got a walk-off homerun. It was unbelievable – eight homeruns in one game!! We couldn’t even be upset that the Red Sox didn’t win.

At one point I noticed that Parker had the camera trained on Big Papi but he wasn’t taking a picture. I casually asked him if he’s just looking through to check out Papi. He turned around to tell me that, no, he wasn’t’ a stalker, he was waiting to photograph Papi spitting on his hands and slapping them together. The exact moment he turned to tell me that, Papi spit on his hands and slapped them together. I felt so bad!

Because of the length of the game (four and half hours), we didn’t get to our hotel until around 1 a.m. We tried to park the van in the hotel’s parking garage, but with the bubble it wouldn’t fit. We parked on the road and went to our room, and all of us except Parker fell directly asleep. He played on the computer for a while.

All in all, an amazing day.

For corresponding photos, go to:
http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=1975658027/a=2740108027_2740108027/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/