If you think coach is crowded, try the Tampa Bay Rays’ Tropicana Field! . . .

While the food at Tropicana wasn't the greatest (an understatement), the food at MOSI was great!
This is a Cuban Sandwich (L) and a hot dog with chili (R)

It’s been an interesting time since Houston. We’ve been chasing (or its been chasing us) the bad weather all across Mississippi, Alabama, the Florida panhandle, and down to Tampa. Everywhere we go it is raining. Even this morning (4/23/15) and for a couple of days before, and this is in the town that brags it has 361 days of sunshine. Well, it better be sunny for the next 361 days because it has rained for four days already in the Tampa area!

We’ve found a great RV park in Dover, FL, that is close to Camping World (Nirvana for us temporary nomads) and Costco (saves a lot of money on gas—about $.17 a gallon with our Costco rebate; at six miles to the gallon, that’s a LOT of money.).

Speaking of great deals, I found this book/activity, Baseball Pass-port (https://mlbballparkpassport.com/). It’s a book with four pages for each team: information about the team/stadium, a map of the stadium, a spot to get your Pass-port validated at each stadium, a place to mark the stats of the game you went to, and a place for notes, all wrapped up in a very nice leather-covered small ring binder. We’ve found it is a wonderful souvenir (although I am also buying a pin from each team). Almost as much fun as Cubby Bear is to bring with us.

And speaking of CB, he (I assume CB is a HE as there are, as yet, no women MLB players) now has a companion, thanks to the originator of the Pass-Port, Tim Parks. We had a minor glitch (very minor) at Tropicana last night and Tim arranged for a gift for us, a Gumby of one of the best Tampa Bay Rays’ pitchers, Alex Cobb. So now we have Cubby Bear and Cobb-y Boy, AKA, CB2 or CB-Squared

Before the game, actually the day before, we went to MOSI (Museum of Science and Industry) and had a great time including an IMAX of microscopic creatures who live on us. Yuck! But an interesting yuck!

Wandering around the Sarasota area. They seem to like statues of voluptous women.

Beautiful bridge over the Bay

Just what the airlines love, a 3D printer that can print a working gun!

Randy lying on a literal bed of nails! MOSI

Oh, yeah, the game: When you don’t really care who wins, it’s a lot of fun to watch baseball. The Red Sox quickly got up 5 to 1 by the 6^th inning, but a rally (or a complete meltdown of the Boston pitcher) in the bottom of the 6^th (six batters in a row got on base!) for four runs and 7^th (two more runs on three hits and a homerun) got the Rays to win 7 ­– 5.

We had a couple of the best seats we’ve ever had, on the press level (208, Row A, seats 3 & 4). We were one section over from the press boxes, a bit to the first base side of home plate. Great view of all the action! So far we’ve had good luck with both StubHub (http://www.stubhub.com/) and TicketMonster (http://www.ticketmonster.com/) although I like StubHub better because it doesn’t require me to CALL before sending the tickets, which TicketMonster does. I am also really enjoying scoring the games. I’m learning some new techniques at http://xtrabasehit.blogspot.com/2013/02/for-those-of-you-scoring-at-home.html. 

CB2 or Cubby Bear and Cobby Boy!

CB at Tropicana Field in some rare sunshine.

Towing an advertising banner over a domed stadium. Makes a lot of sense.

Welcome to Tropicana!

CB at our seats.

Tropicana doesn't have the best scoreboard in the MLB! We'll see the Marlins scoreboard tomorrow, it's supposed to be one of the best in the MLB.

View from our seats.

CB, are you having fun yet?

The rays who swim at Rays' stadium

The Tampa Bay Rays have an actual saltwater tank of rays (the fish, or maybe they aren’t actually fish, I have no idea, but they live in a tank behind center field). Not sure I really approve of this, but it’s there and there isn’t much I can do in any case. Miami also has a couple of tanks of salt water fish that PETA tried to stop, but the Marlins pretty much said, “Bppphhhttt” to PETA. It’ll be interesting to see!

We’ve been eating quite well until we got to Tropican Field. Randy had a Stuffed Potato that was, well, STUFFED, and he said it was pretty good. I had a Pulled Pork Nacho that was abysmal, especially considering it was about $10. There was about a tablespoon of melted (probably Velveeta) cheese on a huge amount of oversalted stale chips topped with pulled pork with no flavor whatsoever. Cardboard would have been more tasty. Nothing else. No sauce, no extras, no flavor.

Coupling the flavorless food with seats that rivaled coach in a small plane for (lack of) roominess, Tropicana Field is right now in last place. The location of the seats was great, but as jammed together as they were, the comfort level was hovering around