I'm in St. Louis now. We have an easy road day as we only have to make it to Kaufmann Stadium for tonight's Fireworks night Royals game against the Mariners. So, I have a few minutes to catch everyone up.
First off, I'll tell you, I think I have some kind of special gene that gives me incredible driving stamina. So far, I've done 100% of the driving and we're 1500+ miles in, counting my trip up to Boston for Dave's wedding. I feel fantastic. One thing that is helping is that we've gone running each morning, even for a little while, and I'm making sure I get a good stretch in at every gas stop. Gotta keep those legs moving.
Mere and I have been keeping ourselves occupied with our portable XM radio, which she has been conscientiously adjusting when it needs a change in the FM output signal. We've also had some really good conversation. She has a big book of questions and we had a good social media conversation yesterday. In fact, she took some notes on it which I will try to get her to post here.
Anyway... Out first official stop was the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Somehow, even though its only a few miles from NY, I've never gone. It was alright. I'm glad I went, but it didn't knock me over. What was really disappointing was the lack of rich media exhibits. MLB must have tons and tons of old clips that I've never seen before and I would have loved to see more of that. Show me more home runs by Willie Mays and highlights from Nolan Ryan's no-hitters from the 70's. At All-Star Fan Fest a few years ago, they allowed fans to get in a booth and call a inning of a famous game, and save the video. That would have been awesome. Its 2007... the Hall needs a serious upgrade for the future because little kids aren't just going to be enamored with old bats and balls alone.
In any case, though, Nate asked for a pic of Johnny Bench's plaque. I also got photos of other faves of mine: The lone Met Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan and Wade Boggs, because of Boggs doesn't swing, its not a strike.
The real story of Cooperstown, however, was the serendipitous discovery that Mere has all sorts of softball skills. There's a beautiful lake up there with a nice park and I had brought two gloves and a ball. We also bought a Wiffleball and bat while we were up there. She proved adept at hitting the wiffleball, but even more impressive was her ability to throw and field the softball. I thought I was going to teach her how to play, but she's a ringer.
I have all sorts of video on this, but unfortunately, all of the online video services have uploading limits. The ones that allow editing, JumpCut and MotionBox, do too. JumpCut even directs you to a shareware tool that allows you to chop up your video before uploading. I don't want to upload a big video, but I need to edit it down somewhere first. This should be located in the uploading tools of these services. I'm more than happy to edit it down to upload, but I don't want to have to use an entirely different set of tools to do it. Phanfare should do the same thing. I love their drag and drop uploading tool and that's a great spot for some additional tools.
So, instead, we have some lake pics... I'll edit the videos when I get back.
