The Trip--Day 2

For some unknown reason, I really didn’t sleep much on Friday night.  I’ve noticed that I don’t sleep well the first night in a different bed.  Such is the penalty for too many nights in my own bed, I guess.  Anyway, with my roughly 1 hour of sleep, I was up and getting breakfast.

Actually, there wasn’t much going on early Saturday.  Chad & I had discussed what we were going to give Mom for her retirement gift before he & Michele left to take a look at some spas in the area.  Of course, Michele had done some advance scouting and got things down to a few options.  I pretty much hung around the house and talked with the parents.  I did squeeze in a little bit of reading, but not much.

Since Chad, Michele, Rob, and I were going to the Red Sux-Tigers game that evening, we decided we’d leave early to get an early dinner before driving down to Detroit.  Rob was kind enough to drive up and pick us all up at the parents place a little after 4:00.  With that, we were off to T.G.I. Fridays, where we had a good meal.  I had my usual:  the Jack Daniels’ Flat Iron Steak.  I get it every time they have it.  I even got an extra serving of the Jack Daniels sauce that I was putting on both my steak and my mashed potatoes.  It cost an extra $.49, but since Rob was buying (punishment for years of losing Tiger teams), I decided to go nuts.

Since Chad & Michele got drinks, they got carded (Rob & I stuck with Coke).  I can understand it with Michele, but there’s no way Chad doesn’t look over 25.  Anyway, after dinner, the waitress asks them how they like living in Grand Rapids.  We had just been talking about GR prior to her coming back to the table, so we thought maybe she’d been listening in on us.  She came clean that she notice it on their drivers licenses, but for some reason decided to wait until we were done eating to ask about this.  She came to the realization that this might come across as a little stalkerish (it is), and kind of apologized for that.  Rob & Chad paid the bills, and we were off to the game.

Rob found a place to park, and we headed over to the stadium.  On the trip down, the skies had gotten darker.  Just after we got into the stadium, it started raining.  Don’t ask me how we managed to beat the rain, but we were glad we did.  The rain continued for about 40-45 minutes, which delayed us getting to our seats, but we managed to create a small cluster without getting in the way of people going by.

So we finally head to our seats.  The game started about 50 minutes later than scheduled, but once it got going, it moved pretty quickly.  Bonderman had a good start, and the Tigers were up 3-2 going into the bottom of the 8th.  Much to Rob’s chagrin, this was a save situation, and Todd Jones was warming up in the bullpen.  However, Magglio Ordonez hit a 3-run homer off of Julian Tavarez (who sucks, by the way, but since he pitches for Boston, that’s OK) to up the score to 6-2.  This removed the save situation, Todd Jones sat down, and Rob was immediately relieved.  He was even more relieved after Rodney finished things off in the 9th to give Detroit their only win against Boston in the series.

With that, we headed back to car and headed home.  The game ended just after 10:00, which is pretty freaking quick considering it didn’t start until a little before 8:00.  Rob dropped us off back at the parents house a little after 11:00, and then it was off to bed.  So ended day two.