July 17, 2004 - Bob
Pittsburgh, PA
We're in Pittsburgh -- got in late yesterday. We drove the 250 miles or so which, to us, is easy pickins at this point. Annamaria was still with us and she has a wonderfully calming effect on me -- she's my Bella, to be sure. We had to scramble around Pittsburgh looking for a campground (as we had no digs here) and eventually found one (after finding a Kinko's where I could plug in my laptop -- like I'm doing right here, the next morning).
It's a very different kind of site -- more of a mobile park than a traditional campground like we have been staying in. the people are very nice and the price is right ($16 a night).
We went into the Rock Bottom Brewery/Sing Sing last night to see Karl Bailey, a friend of mine through my sis (he's also a piano player/singer at the sing-a-long bar here).
He was amazing to us -- got us in, we met his beautiful fiancee, then he took about 5-10 minutes of the show and had the crowd singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. We taped it all -- good footage -- then he went on to pimp our cause a bit which I was amazed by. We handed out some cards and people seemed very into it.
We got back to the campsite late -- it's about 45 minutes out of town but there was middle of the night construction on a two-way road -- D'oh! We got to sleep about 12:45 and had to be up at 5 AM to take Annamaria to her train. It was very hard to say goodbye to her. I am taking a lot on in this trip and it really helps to have her around because she's such a good partner. We play together and work together very well and I simply enjoy her presence. She's got beautiful light about her.
So...off she went, on her first train ride in America (she's ridden trains in her trips to Italy, but never in the States).
I'll see her soon -- but in the moment, my heart aches.
I just got a call from the New York Mets -- they are going to give us a couple of tickets and field passes. That will help us greatly and I am deeply appreciative of their kindness.
It's funny -- I've only had two teams who really seemed to have not gotten it so far. One was the Tigers -- they never gave me any information until the day of the game when their ironically named "Tiger Care" representative, Tony Burns said: you've been talking to the wrong department (for the last several weeks -- would have been nice to let me know when I could have done something about it, eh?).
Their Media Rep, Cliff Russell did all he could and was very nice -- but it was last minute and a Yankee game. He actually did pull three media passes out for us at the last second, but by then we had already purchased tickets and were in the ball game. I do appreciate his efforts, though.
Another disappointment that day was that our local Parkinson Contact (not John -- another man who set us up with John) disappeared on game day after telling us where to go for a pre-party (we purchased a bunch of pizza and soda for people who never showed) and telling us he'd pick up the extra tickets we might have. Well...we left 10 tickets for him at Will Call and still haven't heard from him. We'll see. I would hate for us to have to eat that $180 -- but it wouldn't be the first time.
I don't mean to be doom and gloom -- there are a lot of wonderful things going on, too -- like John Trudeau, Maria Gebhardt (God Bless her for all the work she's putting in) and Karl Bailey, for example.
It has been a trip of peaks and valleys -- that's probably the best way to describe it. Can't know the sweet unless you've tasted the sour, eh?
I wear a yin-yang around my neck pretty much every day and it reminds me of this: balance and the interconnected nature of life.
"It all goes in," Stephen King once said.
"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans," John Lennon once said.
Wise dudes, I say.
Until next time.
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