This weekend has been filled with exploration and adventure. We've been doing little projects around the house as well as exploring Duluth.
First, Friday night we successfully changed the swing chains from our swingset. The old ones were rusty and nasty, giving anyone who tried to use them lovely rust stain. So now we are ready for my cousin and two of her children. They will be coming Monday night and staying for a week.
Saturday morning I had the hankering to go garage sale-ing, with the dual purpose of seeing parts of Duluth I had never seen and finding some good recyclable household items. With our trusty map we went to about ten different sales and bought a wide variety of objects: a casserole dish, glass vase, two tupperware pie-piece containers, clipboard with pen-on-a-chain, a wall clock,
The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: Eastern Region (Clay says I never read labels before I buy...I guess he's right), plastic snow sled with rope and a bundt pan. All for $19. What a deal.
On our adventure, we ran into Wade Stadium, home of the
Duluth Huskies. The Duluth Huskies are part of the
Northwoods League of the Summer Collegiate Baseball Association (
SCBA). If you have ever seen
Summer Catch, with Jessica Biel and Freddie Prinze Jr., you'll know a little bit about SCBA. The Stadium is really nice, and we were able to walk out into the stands to pick our seats...Row 1, Section A...right in between home plate and first base. But the game didn't start until 7PM, so off we went to take our spoils home and watch Grease.
So at 7, we headed back down to the stadium. The game was great, and we learned a lot from our seat mate, Stig. He has been coming to these games since the 40's, when Duluth had a minor league team. He has had the same season ticket seats for the past 13 years, and he told me he was over 80. The concession stands were great, and being so close to all those young, collegiate baseball players allowed me to focus more on the game. The starting pitcher and catcher were from UCLA, although they didn't seem to hear my shouts of "Go Bruins!"
One funny thing is when they promote the "Beer Batter". If a particular opponent, at a particular time, strikes out at a particular time, then it is 1/2 price beer for the remainder of the inning. This causes the crowd to chant "beer, beer, beer, beer" (somewhere in there I heard Homer Simpson). The funny thing was Stig was chanting with the best of them. He told me he only gets one beer a game, so he tries to wait to see if the Beer Batter strikes out. Well, the 4th Beer Batter did actually strike out, and as soon as the umpire's arm went up for the last strike, Stig was gone, poof. He was fourth in line he told me after he came back.
The game ended in spectacular fashion as it was tied at the bottom of the 9th. With players on 1st and 3rd, our batter bunted and the player from 3rd ran in and scored, although how he did it was beyond me because the ball was only a couple of feet from the plate after it was bunted. This, I was informed, is called a squeeze (why, I don't know). Free fruit popsicles on the way out sealed a fabulous night.
To be continued.........................
