What a week I had-it involved more time on the road than usual. Last Monday I did nothing but Tuesday was quite the eventful day. On Tuesday I returned to Tropicana Field to see the Tampa Bay Rays play against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Besides it being an interleague matchup and the Dodgers rarely playing in Tampa Bay, the two teams are among the best in baseball, for entirely different reasons. Plus, I knew there were some changes to Tropicana Field and I was intrigued. The actual game was pretty entertaining; a decent-sized crowd-by Tampa Bay standards-showed up, although of course a good amount of the attendance was Dodgers fans. LA won 7-3 in a game with a lot of hits and strikeouts. Clayton Kershaw was the starting pitcher for the Dodgers and while he's only pretty good now instead of great, he was tremendous against the Rays. A moment that looked bad at the time was when another LA pitcher (Pedro Baez) had the ball hit right back at him and LOUDLY bounced off his knee, but when I got home I saw the news it was only a contusion.
As for the new Tropicana Field, it has some new added areas, including a big change and more of a variety in food options. There is also a gaming room where I played a Rambo arcade game, of all things. Unfortunately, I do have a complaint; the park is now cash-free. You either use your card or exchange some cash for gift cards. I imagine more places will be like this in the near-future but for a place which has always had trouble drawing fans... this could be a problem. The fact that there are multiple different ways to order food (it depends on where you order it from) and unless it's something like ice cream from a small stand or a beverage from one of the bars it is done via an incredibly unresponsive touchscreen... it did not leave a good first impression. Ordering a ticket and paying for parking beforehand was easy as I just had to present my phone on those occasions... yet the horrid traffic there and back and not feeling 100% on this day meant it was a Tuesday of ups and downs. At least I enjoyed the game, if not some of the fans I had to be around.
I quickly recovered from that brief spell and the rest of the week up to the weekend wasn't that thrilling. I'll just mention that on Thursday I went with someone to the local Steak N Shake; aside from the restaurant apparently having its temperature at 50 degrees I had a fine meal. On the way back, though... the entrance on the main drag to the neighborhood I live in was blocked because of-shock of shocks-a car accident. Two vehicles smashed into each other pretty good-I did see a stretcher as I drove by, so that wasn't good. The only other things of note happened on Saturday, so let me mention what I did due to the fact that-again-I had to make airport runs.
I dropped someone off in the early afternoon then in the early evening I returned to that airport to pick up someone else. To me it was more logical not to return home for a few hours and instead do something else. That something else was “go to Daytona Beach”; unlike my past few visits there, I actually went to the beach-it's been years since I have been on one and taken a dip in some salty water. Naturally it was busy on this holiday weekend yet I still found cheap parking and on the way to the beach I went by a shopping plaza; in it was a Sloppy Joe's; yes, the famous Key West hangout has another location in Daytona Beach. I had a tasty lunch there which did include a tropical drink. The beach itself was nice and I was happy to experience that again after all this time. The rest of the day went fine, although I could have done without all the reckless people on the road; it was like being back in South Florida with how many people were flying by me and zooming through busy traffic going way over the speed limit. I was starting to fear that I'd have to deal with the aftermath of a crash but I was lucky this time.
By the way, to reveal more about myself... I don't watch much in the way of fictional television. I mean, the fact that I've even seen Stranger Things is somewhat surprising to me. Thus, I've never watched an episode of Game of Thrones; I don't subscribe to HBO and never thought of streaming it or purchasing season box sets. I won't even laugh at how badly the show ended as I know plenty of die-hard fans and I feel bad this happened only because the donkeys that run the show wanted to be done with it and wrapped it up as quickly and as dumbly as possible. It'd be nice if they never worked in the industry again... but things like this suddenly don't make me want to watch more fictional television, that is for sure.
Anyway, when I return next Monday... I have some ideas for what I'll be doing.
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