Drive for the Cure Baseball Trip

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Nashville Recap

July 17

What a trip it has been. We have traveled all over the central and eastern parts of the United States and traveled to 15 ballparks in a mere 19 days. A feat I truly never believed possible. However our trip was not quite over. We headed to Nashville for one more night of fun and to celebrate Nate Daddy's b-day. One of his best friends Preston lives there (by the way Preston is about to make it big as a singer/songwriter look out for his stuff) so we decided Nashville was a good place to finish our trip.....great decision.

As we closed in on Nashville, we planned to stop at my favorite chicken place Bojangles Chicken and Waffles! Yes that's right Bojangles. I not only love the name but the food is really good. I had talked it up all trip and was worried it would not live up, but my worries found deaf ears as Nate and Collin loved it just as much as I do. Preston met us there and after we finished our delicious and of course healthy meal, we headed to our hotel. Turner again graciously purchased our hotel room for us which was a suite in the Hilton right downtown. It was a great room with an awesome view. We knew at that moment we were in for an epic trip.

We dropped our luggage off and headed out to see some of the town with our tour guide Preston. We went to meet his manager at a studio. We passed by some famous studios and rolled up to one that looked like a house remodeled to be a studio. As we entered we got to me the guitarist that played the famous song "Wipeout". He was supposedly one of the best surf guitarists ever. Felt cool meeting a guy like him. We then met his manager who was really nice. We found out later he had worked with artists like Trace Adkins and Brooks and Dunn and had several gold and platinum records under his management. We got a tour of the studio and learned a lot about the ends and outs of the sound quality and production techniques that goes on there. It was a unique experience that none of us had seen before.

We left there and went to Preston's house for awhile. He has a mini recoding studio in his basement, so of course Collin had to play down there. It was a lot of fun. Preston played drums, I played the tambourine, Nate played some shaker thing, and Collin played piano and sang. We had some fun jamming.....I think we had a platinum sound.

We headed back to our hotel to suit up for the night....we had to look good for our last night out. We all got dolled up (we aren't women Josh.. but I won't change it cuz you get mad when I do) and headed out to dinner which landed us at Margaritaville. We all ordered margaritas and settled down with some great food. Preston got a chicken sandwich that definitely was a mix of rooster and ostrich as it was the biggest piece of chicken we had ever seen. The food was great and even got a 20 dollar donation towards our Parkinson's efforts by a man sitting down next to us who had asked what we had been doing.

Towards the end of dinner two friends of a girl Collin and Nate knows met up with us to go out. There names were Jewel and Meg. They of course loved our suit attire and were excited to go out with us. We went to our first bar and saw a couple enjoying some passionate extra curricular activities that were borderline appropriate at best especially at 10 pm. We decided to move on and found a great place. There of course was live music everywhere and this bar had a cover band playing. We worked our way to the front which turned out to be great cause the singer preceded to jokingly....well kinda jokingly.... Make fun of our attire (everyone besides us where in country bumpkin clothing) he even pulled Nathan up on stage. When he asked Nathan what he did and the response was nothing right now, the man had a field day. He began singing a "real man of genius" Bud Light commercial, making fun of us and Nate. It was hilarious and Nate was a real good sport....we all didn't mind cause the singer bought us all a free drink called a Fireball. We danced and sang for a long time and then came the most unbelievable thing I have ever seen. The singer asked his old 80 year old man friend to come up on stage. They began to play a song and the old man started dancing in a way that really should turn your eyes away but for some reason you can't. It's like when you come up on a bad wreck and you know you need to look away but your eyes won't let you.....yea this old man was that wreck. Between all the crotch grabbing and body rubbing was some dance moves that would send women to therapy. It was ridiculous and a sight to see. We of course all got pictures and Meg even danced with him a little.

After that we knew it was time to move on. We went to a karaoke bar next that had maybe 15 people in it. We all sang a ton of songs with Nate and Preston rocking a great rendition of "I Believe in a Thing Called Love". I think Nate needs to get a physical check after singing that high! The Texas Trio (that's us) got up and sang Sweet Caroline and had the bar rocking....well okay we turned a few heads but we all were rocking so that's what matters lol. We finished the night at that bar and officially closed the book on an epic epic trip. It was a great finish to the funnest three weeks of my life. We woke up the next day filled up in Bojangles and made the 13 hour trek back to Houston, Texas. We all have been blessed from above as we made the whole trip with no car problems and we are still best friends! Back in Houston and reflecting on what has just inspired in my life, I just want to say summer 2012 will go down in my book as the best summer of my life! Thanks to everyone who has followed our blog, thanks to everyone who made this trip possible, and thanks to everyone who has donated to our cause!

My (Josh) list of favorite parks-

Boston (Fenway Park)
Baltimore (Camden Yards)
Chicago (Wrigley Field)
Pittsburgh (PNC Park)
Texas (Ballpark at Arlington)
Cincy (Great American Ballpark)
St. Louis (Busch Stadium)
Washington D.C. (Nationals Park)
Philly (Citizens Bank Park)
New York Yanks (Yankee Stadium)
New York Mets (Citi Field)
Detroit (Comerica Park)
Houston (Minute Maid Park)
Milwaukee (Miller Park)
Cleveland (Progressive Field

Collin

1. Fenway Park
2 .Wrigley Field
3. Camden Yards
4. PNC Park
5. Yankee Stadium
6. Great American Ballpark
7. Comerica Park
8. Busch Stadium
9. Nationals Park
10. Citizens Bank Park
11. Citi Field
12. Minute Maid Park
13. Miller Park
14. Progressive Field

Nate

1. Fenway Park
2. PNC Park
3. Camden Yards
4. Comerica Park
5. Busch Stadium
6. Great American Ballpark
7. Wrigley Field
8. Nationals Park
9. Yankee Stadium
10. Citi Field
11. Ballpark at Arlington
12. Citizens Bank Park
13. Minute Maid Park
14. Miller Park
15. Progressive Field

Josh played this place up the whole trip. It was prettay prettay good

At Preston's recording studio- old school ways to do things

New school way

Drums

View from inside the recording area

Mic

Nashville had this replica of a famous Greek building. Was pretty sweet

Josh was fascinated with the complimentary robe and slippers haha

Mileage on the way to Nashville

SUIT UP!!

Singing a little karaoke

Singing some Sweet Caroline

Mileage on the way back to Texas

The "Bat" Building

Originally had the sweater vest on before turning to a coat

Rocking the sweater

Broadway!

Margaritaville

You can't not get a margarita at Margaritaville. Just not right.

Cincinnati Recap

July 15-16

Baltimore was a lot of fun and Camden was my second favorite stadium behind Fenway. A must visit for baseball fans. After Baltimore, it was time for our last baseball stop of the trip, Cincy. Like the Pirates, the Reds have sucked for so many years but are actually in first place this year, so we were excited to see them. We honestly knew nothing about Cincy or the Reds, so this was to be our first impression pretty much. Living in Texas I forget that there are huge cities that are on the borders of states. Cincy was one of these as Kentucky was literally a two minute drive from our hotel and stadium, which came in handy later.

During our 9 hour drive we got to see the best scenery of the trip. I had remembered a state being beautiful when I traveled in high school but I thought it was Delaware which was way off cause you can drive through Delaware in 20 minutes. It was Maryland that I had remembered. Awesome mountain and water views with beautiful forests. A great drive for sure. We pulled over at a lake to take pics and ended up going on a little bromantic nature walk on this trail. We walked for about 30 mins then we were on our way again.

We got to our hotel which again was so nice thanks to Turner....she has gotten so many awesome deals and paid for a lot so Thank You Turner.....and we had the rest of the night to just hangout cause the game wasn't till the next day. We decided to go to the hot tub which was fairly small but when you have traveled for 18 days straight as 3 bros we figured what the hell we are allowed some bro'ed out time in the hot tub. We hung out there for awhile and at one point Nate decided it would be a good idea to jump into a 4 foot deep pool as a 6'3 man doing his rendition of a childhood can opener. Although receiving a respectable 7.5 on my splash meter (I'm qualified since I have judged so many splashes as a lifeguard growing up so clearly that was a fair rating) Nate, as I figured, hit his back on the floor of the pool. When he came up, he played it off real well, but he wasn't fooling me I know it did not feel good. Bro no girls around so you can exclaim pain when pain clearly entered through your back muscles and stopping in the space where your brain normally resides but clearly went on vacation if you thought it was a good idea to do that ridiculous move in a 4 foot pool lol! (Nate here. It didn't hurt at all. But my back did bounce off the bottom of the pool). Okay done with my rant we left the pool, got changed, and headed out to explore Cincy for a bit.

Apparently Cincy turns into a ghost town on Sundays after 7. Literally everything was closed down. We walked and found this cool little square area where I guess the city was projecting the game up on this buildings wall. It was really cool and I think was done for the homeless people...seriously. We watched a little of the game and then headed to find some drinks for before the game tomorrow. We could not find anything except for the bouncer of a strip club, which I realized the next day but not at the time, offering us 24 beers for 48 dollars. We graciously declined and found out the great state of Kentucky's curfew is a couple hours later than Ohio's, so we headed to our car and drove 2 minutes to Kentucky where we found a gas station. We picked up our drinks and then as we were getting ready to leave we noticed a magical place just sitting there with its open sign lit up in pink and blue neon colors....it was a WHITE CASTLE!!!!!!!! None of us had ever eaten at one but all, since Harold and Kumar's adventures, dreamed of it. We ordered 4 sliders each and quickly chomped down the best fast food burgers ever. Definitely lived up to the hype White Castle nice going! We headed back across the bridge and got more news as we turned on the TV in our room. Tommy Boy was on which Nathan had unbelievably never seen. We watched and laughed till around 3 and hit the sack.

The next day was our final baseball day. We were sad to know our trip was rapidly coming to a close. We woke up and caught up on our blogs from Boston and NY and then headed down the street for some famous Ohio Chili. Apparently thanks to Collin's random fact knowledge Ohio has the best chili in the world....this I could not believe. I mean Texas Chili is pretty great. We went to Skyline Chili to test out the so called best chili. Collin got two chili dogs and Nate and myself got this huge chili spaghetti bowl topped with a mountain or plethora of cheese.....that's right chili spaghetti. It was so good and definitely one of the best chili's we had ever had. However we were saddened and disappointed when we found out President Obama had been in just a mere 2 hours before us. Our nice waitress explained how they had so many secret service guys around. They checked all the buildings in the area and thourghly searched Skyline Chili restaurant. Wish we would have gotten to meet him. We did see him on TV for one of his campaign stops. He was literally right down the block from us.

We went and hung out in the hot tub for awhile then headed to the game. I was stunned to see how awesome the stadium was. I really liked how it was setup. Had a river boat in centerfield stands and was located on the river which provided a great view and setting. The game was pretty slow compared to the Baltimore game with all the runs scored in the first three innings. The Diamondbacks won 6-3. We took several pictures and realized we had done it! 15 games in just 19 days. A feat that was just an idea one year ago but now was a reality. We felt pretty awesome at that moment knowing we just made a lifetime worth of memories in a mere 19 days. Blessed that we were able to take such and awesome trip. We headed back to the hotel and just relaxed as we had a big day planned in Nashville for Nate daddy's birthday.