Take me out to the ballpark. . . : April 2015

It’s been an interesting couple of days since Miami. We are being chased by storms and mostly avoiding them, certainly here in Atlanta. We had a couple of beautiful days culminating in a slightly rainy but absolutely fabulous game, Braves vs Nationals on April 28, 2015. More on that in a bit.

An overview of our costs might be interesting—at least to me, we haven’t looked at what this is costing us overall. Our mileage when we left Tucson was 60,883 and this morning it was 63,585 or 2,702 miles. We’ve bought $1025.75 in gas or 460.79 gallons, at an average price of 2.226/gallon. The least we paid was in Tucson $2.01, the most, in Tampa, was $2.479. $594.11 for campground fees plus we stayed in a hotel in Miami for $169 so our housing so far is $763.11 or $44.88 per night. Our food was about $150 so our total cost per day so far (not counting those wonderful baseball tickets, of course) is $114.05. We have all the comforts of home and we don’t have to unpack!

While we were in South Florida, on our way to the Marlins game, we stopped at a State Preserve to see live alligators on the hoof, so to speak. They were sort of trapped by low water in the narrow basins along the highway so we could safely get up close and personal. We were on a walkway, separated from the wee beasties, so I was content.

Such a sad story!

Close.

Closer.

Too close!

Since we have been to other Presidential Libraries we decided to go see Jimmy Carter's. It was to me, quite pretty and there was a lot of information about Carter and his family (but interestingly, not a single mention of his brother Billy and "Billy Beer." We still have a [probably rotten] can of Billy Beer) and Randy was much more impressed than I was. I think Carter was President at the wrong time. A lot happened during his tenure and not much of it was good. So much for politics.

In Atlanta we decided to go to the Botanical Gardens. Which made me wonder why it is the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Denver Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden but the New York BotanicAL Garden (among many others) and yet it is the Atlantic BotanicAL Garden. It is, however, the United States Botanic Garden so perhaps that should rule? I got a good description here http://thegrammarexchange.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/340600179/m/7541047034 about the differences between several -ic/-ical words. I don’t think they have any relationship to icky.

The Atlanta BotanicAL Garden was very nice but would have been much better two weeks earlier or a month later. All the spring flowers are gone and they are just now planting the summer flowers, so definitely an intermediate time. On the good side, the weather was fantastic: cool, sunny, wonderful.


Humongous doors, all metal and glass.


Love this sign!


Orchids, orchids, and more orchids!

A great pet, no mess to pick up! and no, I'm not talking about Randy!

She'll be a lot better looking when her plants grow out!

We somehow managed to get ourselves lost in the parking garage, however. Now stop laughing, it’s not hard to do. First, the floor you drive into is the 5^th floor but there is no sign saying that. We drove down and down to find a parking space and found one on the 4^th floor. We went round and round about 23 times so how were we to know that we had come just one floor from the 5^th to the 4^th? We saw the elevator with a big “4” and were very proud of ourselves for remembering that number for an hour and a half.

So we saw all the wonderful in-the-making projects at the Atlanta BotanicAL Garden, managed to skip the gift shop (there is, you know, a finite amount of space in our RV, more of course than on a plane, but it’s a still a good excuse to not spend money), and actually find our car again—on floor 4. We were as bit confused that the admissions were on floor 5 but by the time we got back to the car we had conveniently forgotten that minor detail. We backed the car out and went left. And kept going. Down and down we went, round and round we went—oh, nevermind, most of you don’t remember that song anyway—but we never saw an exit sign. Oh dear, we thought. Maybe we missed a turn? How could we miss a turn IN A GARAGE? Nevertheless, we turned around to go back where we came from and lo and behold, there were the EXIT signs! How did we miss them? Well, we missed them because THEY ONLY FACE ONE WAY! If you are going the wrong way, you don’t see an EXIT sign. It was about now that we realized that we had been corkscrewing our way down to the center of the earth via the parking garage at the Atlanta BotanicAL Garden.

Being the elderly folk that we are, we went back to our motorhome to refresh our batteries before the baseball game. Thusly refreshed we went forth to do battle with the Atlanta rush-hour traffic. Not too bad, our home-away-from home was parked to the south of Atlanta (McDonough to be exact) so it was only about a 30 minute ride. We parked close to the field—our baseball bible (The Ultimate Baseball Road Trip) tells us that Atlanta rarely sells out, tonight was not an exception and we got the cheapest parking yet, $10 and a block from Turner Field (by the way, I am not including baseball expenses in our "expenses" because, well, just because).

We never did find the front of the field because we walked by the Media Only Entrance and Randy asked where we should go to get in and they let us in there which just happened to be about 25 feet from the doorway to our seats right behind the Atlanta dugout. Did our usual, wandered around looking at the food, got some free towels somebody was giving away (usually if there is a freebie, it’s a bobblehead), got a hot dog (mine was awful, Randy’s was passable), some beer (passable), and a pretzel (passable).

Turner Field, never did see the front!

I've never heard of beer ice cream!

Cubby Bear

Probably somebody famous but I don't recognize them!

Our dinner.

Cubby Bear from our seats.

The Game. Wasn’t supposed to be much except that the Washington Nationals ARE the defending National League East champs (Giants beat them en-route to their thrilling, 7-game World Series win; just thought I’d remind you of that tiny little detail). By the end of two, Atlanta was leading by 9 – 2 by virtue of absolutely shelling the poor Nats pitcher in his first MLB outing. I’m pretty sure the Nats manager (Matt Williams, former Giant, just thought I’d remind you of that little detail) left him in for two (TWO!) innings just to see how he’d handle being shelled! He faced 11 batters in the second inning, giving up SEVEN runs and SIX hits. At one point the scoreboard showed his ERA as 43 (!) before the official scorer realized that four of the runs were unearned. But still, he is probably still shell-shocked! Both teams scored in three innings, and one team or the other scored in all but one (8^th) inning. When Atlanta’s closer came in (12 – 10 Atlanta) his record was four walks and 12 strikeouts and he did strike out the first batter. It went downhill from there. Single to center, walk on a 3/2 count, HR. The tomahawk got chopped, 13 – 12. Too bad for Atlanta, but a great game for us even if it did rain. We stayed to the bitter end. The couple sitting next to us were very confused. They couldn’t figure out which team we were rooting (sorry, Aussie friends!) for.

Some of you, at least those considerably younger than Randy and I, are thinking, “Who the heck is Lady Bird?” Lady Bird, wife of LBJ (who the heck is HE?), took as her First Lady mission the beautification of highways, primarily by the removal or banning of billboards. Well, driving from Tampa to Macon (Short aside: Did you know there used to be a minor professional hockey team named the Macon Whoopees? They played for an incredibly long time: 2001 – 2002. ) there was a two-mile stretch (merely the most egregious of many similar stretches) of 39 double billboards. That’s one every 135 feet, almost two in the length of a football field. ‘Nuff said.

We had a nice time in Tampa but in order to add to our growing list of baseball parks, we drove the Jeep to Miami for a Marlins game. But while we were there, we HAD to go see Atlantic Models (www.atlantic-models.com). Randy is an airline pilot, nevermind that he’s retired. If you mention the words ‘airplane,’ ‘airport,’ ‘airplane museum,’ ‘model airplanes,’ pretty much anything with the word ‘airplane’ or any variant thereof in it, he wants to go. When Ken "Pops" Popelas told us we HAD to go to the Airplane Store in Miami, well, we HAD to go. Not so much for the models in the store (mostly made in China, but very nice) but for the custom models made in the back in several workshops. They take great pride in doing EVERYTHING themselves, in house. They made the airplane bodies, they paint them, they print the decals, they do it all. And they aren’t just your ordinary models. If you want a United paint from 1981 on a DC-8-62, they will make it from scratch. If you want a PanAm Clipper from 1937, they’ll make it from scratch. It will have the correct engines, it will have the correct paint, and it will be absolutely authentic, right down to the correct landing gear for that particular model of airplane.

They have only two machines in the workshop: a drill press (for making the hole for the stand) and a fine saw (for removing the detritus from the model after it comes out of the mold). Everything else is done by hand. OK, OK, they have their own printer for the decals, I suppose that counts as a machine? But they design their own decals. Their models are in the board rooms of airlines all over the world. They even have made a 43-foot model for a Brazilian company. Of course they had to cut the nose and tail off because, even though there are 45-foot shipping containers, Brazil doesn’t accept any larger than a 40-foot container. But nobody knew that until they had already made the 43-foot model. So, they chopped off the nose and tail and sent those separately.

The owner and President (she and her husband drew straws to figure who would be President).

That's a full size cockpit in the background.

This is the 43-foot model to be sent to Brazil.

Some models hanging to dry.

Had to have pics of United planes, especially in the old livery.

They originally made a half-size nose to hang on a very large wall somewhere. Lots of people wanted one, but said it couldn't fit on their wall or their wives wouldn't let them. So they made a quarter size model,. Still too big. So they finally made these.

This was signed by Fred Smith, founder of FedEx.

More models drying.

One of the approximately ten full-time workers. These are the skilled workers who sand the models to make them ready for paint and decals.

Our guide was the general manager of Atlantic Models, here he's showing us one of the molds.

Another worker getting the model ready for paint and decal.

Adding engines

Almost ready for finishing touches.

Taped up for paint details.

Adding decals. All custom made in this shop.

Another decal worker.

This was a concept airplane that was never build because there was no place for it to land. It is true to scale with the 747 on top of it.

These are model bodies they may never be able to use.

Beautiful Southwest paint!

Talking flying with the general manager. He knows more about airplanes than anybody I or Randy has ever met!

Randy ordering his models.

All in all, a FANTASTIC tour. Thanks, Pops, for suggesting this to us! Randy has ordered two models: a United DC-6 from the 1960s and a T-29 from his US Air Force career.

Oh, yes. We also went to a baseball game. Cubby Bear met a friend, a police officer, Officer Marin. We met another couple doing all 30 games this summer. They, however, are flying from city to city. Or area to area. They were driving the next day to Tampa and then flying on to their next game. They also are staying with friends and family at many of the cities. We, of course, think we’ll have more fun driving! We did introduce them to the Baseball Pass-Port. The Pass-Port is our best souvenir, along with the pins we are buying at each stadium!

On to Atlanta and the Braves’ fans and their tomhawk chop! So sensitive.