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.