If you recall, we recently spent some time in New England.  The first activity we took in was a baseball game at the legendary Fenway Park.  My friend Jay secured some tickets for us from StubHub, and though they were located in the second to last row, we were all excited to see the stadium.  I was prepared to see lots of history inside the stadium, but I wasn’t ready for just how small it really is.  Despite being in the top rows of the outfield, we still felt close enough to the action.  We spent about half the game in our assigned seats, and the other half of the game walking around the park and taking it all in.  Here are some pictures from our experience.

After three years, I feel that the Mile High Music Festival has finally worked out most of their kinks.  The layout of the stages was by far the best yet, with very little sound bleeding.  We never encountered any lines at the concessions, parking was easy, and the traffic after the shows was light.  We took advantage of the new reentry policy to grab jackets and extra chairs when needed.  Everything seemed to go very smoothly.  The only thing I would change now would be the lineup.  There were definitely some good shows, but also some disappointing ones.

Dave Matthews Band was obviously one of my favorites of the weekend.  The set wasn’t full of rare songs, but was a good variety of the hits and a couple of surprises as well.  Other good acts from Sunday included Weezer, Jimmy Cliff, Ozomatli, and Danielle Ate the Sandwich.  I was excited to see My Morning Jacket, however I didn’t feel their live show is as good as their studio recordings.  Train was also fairly good, and thanks to Doni’s obsession with them, I was able to get very close for a few songs at the end.  The Drive By Truckers also provided a decent set.

Saturday wasn’t as good of a day for me.  Things started off very strongly with The Motet.  However, I was not impressed with One EskimO or Nas & Damian Marley.  ALO and Amos Lee put on good sets, and after a rough start the Steve Miller Band put on quite the show.  Phoenix was another that I didnt’ particularly care for.  And Jack Johnson was as to be expected, good for a while but playing a bit too long.  Rusted Root didn’t sound very good either, or maybe it was just a bad spot for us in the back of the tent.

Overall it was a good weekend.  I’m sure I will return again next year, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed for an even better lineup.

The Mile High Music Festival is back for its third year.  This time our friends Doni and Phil are coming back to Denver for the festival, after taking last year off.  Just like last year, I have put together a spreadsheet guide for myself, which breaks the entire day into 15 minute increments.  This definitely helped last year, and I’m hoping the same is true for this year.  Though I can’t tell for sure, it looks like they have expanded the festival back to its original size the first year.  This should definitely help eliminate some of the sound bleed from last year.  The lineup is also spaced really well so that neighboring stages aren’t playing at the same time, except for the Wolf Stage and Bison Tent.  I hope this doesn’t become a problem like it was last year, but at least there appears to be a street between them packed with booths.  I’m really looking forward to this years lineup.  Obviously I enjoy the headliners, and there is a lot of midsize talent to entertain the days.

Before leaving on our trip last Thursday, I had a hockey game on Wednesday night.  I also had another game last night, ending the regular season.  We should have won both games but came away with only one win, which was from last week.  In that game we faced off with the fifth place team in the league, while we sat in fourth place.  We had beat this team before with a final score of 7-4 and this game would be very similar to that one.  In fact the game ended with the same exact 7-4 score.  I managed to get one assist in the game while playing back on defense.

Last nights game was against the second place team, who we lost to earlier in the season 6-2.  Last night we took it to our opponents early on and had a nice 3-1 lead at the end of the second.  Unfortunately our scoring ended there and we allowed the other team to score three unanswered goals, resulting in a 4-3 loss for our team.  We actually played pretty well against them, but in the end we couldn’t escape with a win.  The loss secured our position in fourth place to finish the league, while a win could have bumped us up to third.  We will play our first round playoff game against the team that we beat the last week.  I will miss the game, but hopefully the team gets another win so I can play next Sunday in round two.

We are back from our trip to New England.  I have plenty of pictures to post, but that will have to wait for future days.  We didn’t get in until late last night and I am already back at work with no time for picture processing.  Instead I’ll provide a brief recap of our trip and then elaborate more when I have some pictures ready.

Last Thursday morning we caught a very early flight out of Denver and over to Nashville.  Here we had a three-hour layover which nearly bored us to death, before catching another two-hour flight to Providence, Rhode Island.  We flew for free on Southwest Rapid Rewards, so we couldn’t be too picky about our flights.  The important thing is that we made it, and were somewhat rested.  The second flight was a bit delayed, forcing us right into hush hour traffic around Boston.  Fortunately my phone helped us to avoid some major traffic spots, allowing us to arrive in downtown Boston just before the Red Sox were set to take on the Cleveland Indians.  After meeting up with some of our friends, we rushed off to Fenway Park to take in the game at this famous stadium.

That pretty much took care of our first night in Boston.  On our second full day we got an early start out on the Freedom Trail, and walked through many historic sites.  The trail is only supposed to be two and a half miles, but it felt like we walked a lot farther than that.  We didn’t make it all the way out to Bunker Hill, but we did visit the nearby USS Constitution.  After touring the old ship, we stopped for the first of many great meals at the Tavern on the Water.  From there we decided to take the ferry back over to Boston, specifically Long Wharf.  It was a short ride, but worth not having to backtrack on foot to the hotel.  Later in the evening we stopped at a variety of places: The Tam for $3 beers, Rabia’s Ristorante for an excellent dinner, and Cheers where everyone knew our name.

Saturday we all headed out of Boston and toward Newport, Rhode Island with stops along the way to check out Harvard and MIT.  Harvard was cool to see, but I feel like we could have skipped MIT.  After we eventually made it down to Newport, it didn’t take long for us to start exploring Thames Street.  After walking the full strip, we decided to get a reservation for ten at the Brick Alley Pub & Restaurant.  I think this was my favorite meal of the trip, and I bet others would agree.  After dinner it was off to the Gas Lamp Grille to see the wedding party and have a couple of drinks.

Sunday was the big wedding day, but before that event, we took a tour of Newport’s most famous mansion, The Breakers.  This “summer-house” was incredible!  I especially liked seeing the billiards room and the large kitchen.  It was an amazing house.  Some others in our group decided to tour another mansion, but I had my fill of lavishness in just one.  Kim and I decided to have a nice lunch overlooking the harbor at the Marina Cafe & Pub.  Before too long it was time to get ready for the wedding out at the beautiful Belle Mer.  Needless to say it was a lovely wedding and a great time with wonderful friends.

Monday was a bonus day for us along with our friends Tracey and Kevin.  We left Newport before noon and took the long way over to the town of Mystic, Connecticut.  I was hoping for a scenic ocean side drive, but it didn’t quite work out that way.  It was still neat to take our time through a variety of small villages and towns.  Our first stop was for lunch at Mystic Pizza.  I will admit to never hearing of the movie with the same name before last week, but we decided to check it out anyway.  It definitely wasn’t the best pizza in the world, but it is fairly good and definitely a popular place.  After that we visited the Mystic Seaport, which took up the rest of the day.  I was blown away by the amount of things to see at the Seaport.  Later in the evening we had another great meal at the The Captain Daniel Packer Inne.

Tuesday we explored the boardwalk in Niantic, Connecticut enjoyed one last meal at Dad’s Restaurant, and were back on our way to the Providence Airport.  This wrapped up a tiring, scenic, and fun vacation, adding three more states to my visited states list.  Congratulations again Karen and Aaron.  I hope you are enjoying your honeymoon!

I love these short work weeks!  Tomorrow I will be catching an early flight out of Denver up to New England.  The reason for the trip is that my friends Aaron (Weeba) and Karen are getting married.  I’ve known Weeba since late 2001.  Back in the day we both made many trips to various cities and states to see O.A.R.  In addition he was even the manager of our college band, DuckFood.  We traveled together to lots of different places and have tons of great memories.

With this trip I will be adding even more to my list of visited states.  Rhode Island will become number forty-four, Massachusetts will be forty-five, and Connecticut will be forty-six.  I’ve really been looking forward to this trip for awhile.  I will finally visit Boston and spend a couple of nights there.  We will also spend a couple of nights in Newport, Rhode Island and finally near Mystic, Connecticut.  After this I only have four more states left to visit before seeing them all.

Over the weekend I played my first round of golf in a long while, likely since last summer.  My good friend Ken turned 30 on Saturday and a group of us decided to play a round of eighteen on Sunday to celebrate.  I woke up on the west side of town, at Kim’s parents’, just before six that morning.  That’s my normal wakeup time for a work day, but it wasn’t a work day and the time difference made it four in the morning Denver time.  Fortunately I had planned ahead, and already had a borrowed set of clubs and shoes from my dad in the trunk, so I just had to drive to the other side of town to the Hickory Woods Golf Course.

I arrived ten or fifteen minute before the supposed tee time.  It turns out that Ken and his brother-in-law Bryan had told everyone a time twenty minutes ahead of the real tee time.  Well guess who the only late ones were?  That’s right, the birthday boy and the event planner.  I quickly found another good friend, Jon, and then met up with others who would be playing in the group.  Soon enough we were on the tenth tee and were on our way.  I quickly realized that this course was going to be a little tough for me, and I was glad I brought along plenty of extra balls.  The fairways were all pretty narrow and the holes were filled with rolling terrain.  I had some decent shots, and managed to escape the back nine feeling alright.

From there we moved onto the front nine holes, and immediately I was struck with how different the two were.  The front nine was very wide open and relatively flat.  This suits my playing much more, as I was able to lose very few balls, and I even managed a couple of legit pars.  I even had putting attempts for birdies a couple of times.  My worst hole was number one, which I had a quadruple bogey on, but the rest were all triple bogeys and lower.  Compare that to the back nine, where I had numerous quadruples, and nothing close to a par the whole time.  Regardless of the score, I had a great time, and I was excellent catching up with all of my old friends over a nice morning and afternoon.

I attended my first baseball game of the season on Friday evening as the first place (central) Cincinnati Reds took on the first place (east) Atlanta Braves.  My mom bought a group of tickets earlier in the week, which was fortunate since the game did sell out.  It turns out that it was many of the group’s first game of the season, and the first for my mom in years.  I think she has only been to Great American Ballpark once before, and it’s been open now for over seven years.  I’ve been to more games than that, and I haven’t really lived near Cincinnati since shortly after the ballpark opened.  Either way, we all had a blast rooting for the home team.

We arrived at the stadium in the second inning, and after watching the scoreless second, the scoring started in the third.  Atlanta went on the scoreboard first, but the Reds quickly countered with three runs of their own in the bottom of the third.  The Braves added a couple more runs in the fifth and followed it with another in the sixth.  Down 4-3, Joey Votto came to the plate in the eight inning to deliver a solo home run to tie the game.  Things were looking up for the Reds, including a great catch by Chris Heisey that robbed Brooks Conrad of a home run of his own to end the top of the ninth.  After a scoreless bottom of the ninth, we were off to extra innings.  The tenth started off great for the Reds, and they quickly had two outs on the Braves.  But that’s where it all went south, as the Braves eventually scored a couple of runs before getting their third out.  The Reds managed to get a couple of guys on base in the bottom of the ninth, but eventually two strikeouts and a pop fly were enough for the Braves to claim victory.

The Reds went on to win the other two games of the series.  Unfortunately, St. Louis just won three in a row, and the Reds are now half a game out of first place behind the Cardinals.  I’m hoping to catch another Reds game next month when they come to Denver to take on the Rockies.