So why did the Rockies beat the Giants?. . .

McCovey Cove and the San Francisco Bay Sailboats. Baseball views don't get much better than this!

After finding time for an enjoyable visit with my old Roomie from nursing school, Helen, we headed for the San Francisco Bay area and the Giants and the Oakland As. And our luck finally ran out. Big time!

We pulled in to a Costco for fuel for the motorhome and couldn’t pull out (the very nice employees of Costco pushed us!) because it wouldn’t start AND there was a trail of colored liquid coming from somewhere under the motorhome. This is never a good sign. Nor, of course, is being unable to start the motorhome. We do have AAAPlus or something like that and they send a very large rig  to tow us somewhere. Where? We really had no idea nor did we care at this point as it was about 104 in the shade (40 for our Aussie friends who don’t need the conversion as they probably know the equivalents far better than anyone). The good news in this particular tale of woe is that this all happened about 10 miles from our daughter’s home. Also good news for THEM, they were on vacation. Not so good news for the Lordiers (our friends and Kathy’s in-laws) who were housesitting, we called and asked them to come wait with us and then take Randy back to the house. Why not drive ourselves? Pam had an appointment to get her hair cut by Carmella and WAS NOT GOING TO CANCEL! Anyway, $2900 later (we found this out much later) and several hotel stays in Southern California later, we got back to Ken and Kathy’s.

That was the first problem. Second was our cabin: our friends who were renting the cabin emailed us that there was a BIG lightning strike near the cabin and the TV doesn’t work. Sigh.

Third, our friends watching our house called that the refrigerator sprung a leak and water was all over the floor of our house. Sigh. And we thought we wanted to go home!

We’ll deal with all that when we actually GET home. Meanwhile we are very, very grateful for friends!

Before the baseball games we went to Sacramento and went to see the soon-to-be-closed-for-renovation Sutter’s Fort.

This helps keep me grounded, when I think about all my modern conveniences and how, in 1847 THIS is what a modern kitchen looked like!

And travel was in this, not a motorhome with satellite entertainment and air conditioning,.

If you wanted clothing, you MADE your cloth!

And cooked your bread (from the wheat you grew) in an oven like this.

The doctor's office at Sutter's Fort.

More modern kitchen appliances.

Your transportation might include this and you probably had to either make it or trade for it.

A grocery store meat department was this.

Capt Sutter (he wasn't really a captain, he just called himself that) slept here.

All the ranch/fort tools were made here in the blacksmith shop.

And it was protected by these.

You slept here if you were important enough to have your own room.

On to the Oakland game. Oakland Coliseum is far from the most beautiful venue we have been in. Very far! Aside from being the archrivals to the San Fran Giants (Aside: Never, never, NEVER say “Frisco” instead of San Francisco; San Fran is OK but San Francisco is better and “The City” ONLY refers to one city. The only Frisco is in Colorado.) after the archrival LA Dodgers, their stadium sucks. Not that I’m prejudiced or anything, but walking around the stadium after entering for a game is like walking around a really, really old building where you expect a mugger to jump out at any time. It is not a pretty ball park or building.

The Oakland game was a Throwback Thursday game and they were the Kansas City Athletics playing the Kansas City Royals. That was fun and we even dressed Cubby in the T-shirt they were giving away. At least the weather was fabulous. But not to the Bay Area residents, they are in the midst of a horrible drought and have to endure onerous water restrictions. When we lived here in the 70s, the drought saying was, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” At that time Jerry Brown was running for governor and that became his opponent’s slogan. It didn’t work.

Cubby in one of our KC Athletics' t-shirts.

Oakland stadium

Charlie O's mule/

Ah, but AT&T Park, the Giants’ home field, it so beautiful. It helps that it is right on San Francisco Bay, specifically McCovey Cove where the boats all hang out and the kayakers hope against hope that they will be able to retrieve a “splash hit.” There have been only 68 in the history of the park (about 15 years since they left “The Stick” [Candlestick], where it got so cold that baseball fans who stayed for extra-innings games got the Croix de Candlestick as a reward!), 35 by Barry “Steroids” Bonds and the most recent by Brandon Belt on September 25, 2014.

We had great seats to watch the Giants lose to the Rockies. Somebody behind us said, after that abysmal loss, “God must love weed more than gays!” And we were there on Gay Pride Weekend (which just happened to coincide with the Supremes' decision on gay marriage, so there was a LOT of celebrating going on!) so we got to hear the Gay Pride Band. OMG, Randy said it best when he said they were worse than the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra that used to play cacophonously discordant music for “Da Bums” at Ebbets Field (https://books.google.com/books?id=aKQ3CQYbYXkC&pg=PA350&lpg=PA350&dq=brooklyn+symphony+orchestra+ebbets&source=bl&ots=Twk63GA_U0&sig=lnMhvlBV_pbhdESnAPTS5eUx6D4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2RqXVaOKGsrgoATbvqbgCg&ved=0CF8Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q&f=false for a humorous overview of the Brookly Sym-phony).

The Gay Pride band.

The original Brooklyn (Dodgers) Sym-phony Band

Cubby and friend.

Cubby at the restaurant.

Part of AT&T Park

Only a couple of more games, Cubby, and you can go home to Mom.

At the entrance to the Giants' home field.

Still homeless, we drove to the LA area for the Angels’ and Padres’ games. We are definitely getting ready to go home. I can’t even remember who the Angels and Padres played or who won! But I DO remember the drive from San Diego after the game to Santa Clarita where we were staying that night. 130 miles took about four and a half hours through late afternoon LA traffic. How do people live and work with these horrible commutes?

Interesting entrance to Angels' park. There is a full size infield in the entrance plaza. That's home plate at the front right.

Cubby at Angels' park.

Pam enjouing the great seats! Except for the railing that obscured the view of the infield.

We didn't spend ALL our time at baseball games.

Cubby at his next to last game; at Petco in San Diego.

The San Diego Padres' mascot.

And so back to Sacramento for the 4^th of July holiday and to pick up our home and part with several thousand dollars.

All fall down...OK, only Randy falls down...

Ann Pisani and her favorite orangutan, Jill

Before heading West to the wide open spaces we were in Kansas City for a Royals game. Luckily for us, my friend Ann graciously offered to give us a tour of her zoo (she’s a docent, as am I), the Kansas City Zoo. What a gorgeous place! First, it’s HUGE. She reserved a golf cart to drive us around—and this was before Randy hurt his knee falling in Milwaukee. (Aside:  his knee swelled up so much he actually agreed to go to an urgent care facility where they removed about 130cc of fluid and “suggested” he use a cane. He’s much better now) The cart made it possible for him to tag along on the zoo tour; he couldn’t have made it otherwise. For that matter I’m not sure I could have made it! I think she said the zoo is a couple of hundred acres.

The highlight, for me, was seeing Ann and an orangutan sort of face to face (with a sheet of glass between them, of course) and watching Ann, clearly thoroughly enjoying herself, interacting with young zoo visitors and interpreting the orangutans, she was doing everything a docent is supposed to to! The other highlight was seeing the new gorilla mom and her baby. For those of you who are mothers, imagine having a baby that you DO NOT PUT DOWN, not even for a moment for weeks if not months. We human moms get a break when baby naps or sleeps during the night. Not the gorilla mom, she holds the baby in her arms the entire 24/7! Now that’s dedication.

Believe it or not, these are adult male lions.

Since National (or International, there’s some argument about this) Martini Day was coming up June 19, we needed to replenish our gin supply and the only place to do that was at Costco in Missouri, not Costco in Kansas (don’t ask, I have no idea why Kansas won’t let Costco sell booze). But what about vodka martinis, I can hear you ask. Oh, the horror! Vodka martinis? Oh, no, no, no!

We accomplished that very important mission and then spend a couple of very pleasant hours at Ann’s house. She remembered (how? I have NO idea) that we like Bombay gin martinis so she laid in a stock of Bombay and we had martinis on her deck. If I say it was a decadent afternoon, you won’t groan will you?

Some very convoluted planning enabled us to park our car at a Marriott, hop in Ann and Lou’s car to pick up Cory, their daughter, and head to the game and their extremely (to say the least) convenient parking for the Royals/Brewers game. Cubby of course came with us for his photo to prove he was actually at the Royals park, Kauffman Stadium. There’s an interesting article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauffman_Stadium  about the origin of the name. The weather was really hot and humid—we desert dwellers are not accustomed to that! Anyway, lots of fun to go with friends.

So, enough fun and frivolity, off to Denver. Not very memorable, I’m afraid. We drove, we went to the baseball game, and we left for our L---O---N---G trip to Seattle. Although I had no way of knowing what we would come across on this trip, I did NOT plan well for down time! The first part of the trip was great, across the south we had lots of time to do other-than-baseball stuff (like the airplane shop! And Udvar-Hazy Smithsonian Museum, and MOSI is Tampa). But this last bit across the West (Denver to Seattle to San Francisco to Los Angeles) is really L---O---N---G! We are really enjoying the baseball games, but we are ready to go home!

So Rockies vs Brewers may not have been memorable, but the Seattle Mariners vs the KC Royals was VERY memorable! First, we had fantbulous seats, front row on the Club level (same as the press box) on the first base side; second, we watched Mike Montgomery, a rookie, pitch a full-game shutout! You should have heard the roar when he came out to pitch the top of the 9^th (there were some who thought the Mariners would bring in a closer). Ten Ks (strikeouts for those of you not into baseball scoring) and no walks! He got in a bit of a jam in the first inning with 3 on, no outs. But he pitched out of it! A strikeout and a double play, five pitches, and he was out of the inning. He set down the next 17 batters and except for an infield error, probably would have set down 23 or 24 batters. A GREAT game to watch! The only other really memorable game on this trip was the Atlanta/Nationals. Atlanta up by 10/2 in the 2^nd inning, the Nats came back to win with a 2-out, 3-run homer in the top of the 9^th to win 13-12! It doesn’t get much better than that!

So now we’re heading south to San Francisco via our daughter’s house to celebrate Ken’s (her husband) 50^th (oh, that hurts that we have a son-in-law who is 50—not to mention a daughter who is 48) birthday. Then the last five games: Giants, As, Padres, Angels, and oh-how-I-hate-to-say-this, the Dodgers are our last game. And then home.