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.

IMG_0896, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

89 and still lookin' good...

Good Morning Boston, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Day one...or two, depending on whether my cousins wedding in Essex counted. Great pics off Nana and Mere to be uploaded later. It is a gorgeous morning in Boston... If you're here, go for a run or something. I'm walking over to the car now to install the portable XM radio. You cannot imagine how psyched I am for this trip.



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Sent from my Helio Ocean

So we made a little change on the front end...  the Cooperstown day ends with a few hours to Ithaca, NY.   That will give us 5 1/2 hours to trek across Western NY on our way to the Tribe game in Cleveland.

So here's the map now.  Remember, all those west coast stops aren't actually stops.. they're just a way to get Google Maps to drive on the right road.

So, in terms of cities, stops and opportunities to meet folks...

We have a free day in Seattle on 7/11, both day and night.  Suggestions are welcome and we'll prob do some sort of happy hour type thing for the handful of folks we know in Seattle.

We're also free the night of 7/14 in San Fran.   We might stop in if anyone is hanging out after CommunityNext, but also, @caroliiine is going to be headed into the Bay Area that same night, so we were thinking of maybe doing a NYers invade the Valley thing, too.  Up in the air...

I also just ordered my radar detector.  That should come in by the end of the week...  vroooom.

We picked up a few audio books as well, and I'm thinking of dusting off my XM radio and resubscribing.  Does anyone have the car adapter for it?  Does it work?  I was pretty disappointed with the performance of the adapter for the iPod.

We also managed to avoid camping entirely...   Mere called Yellowstone again and found a hotel cancellation, so we don't have to sleep in the woods.  That would have been a lot of extra gear to carry around for just one night.

Tickets purchased for Royals game on 7/4 and for LA Dodgers on Monday the 16th.  Most expensive seat at Kaufmann was $32, not surprisingly.  At least I'll get to see Ichiro, b/c the Mariners are in town.  I hope King Felix pitches.

So, the route is pretty much planned out and so is the calendar, but that still leaves a lot of things that need to be done, like what we do at certain places, things to bring, etc.

We could use some help, so if anyone could help us out with the following, we'd really appreciate it.

1. Tunes - We'll need quite a lot of tunes on our trip, since we're spending three full days in the car, so if anyone would like to send over some mixed CDs, we'll check 'em out and give you a shoutout, plus a little review.  You can either e-mail me playlists or mail me CDs to 7423 Ridge Blvd., Apt. 1B, Brooklyn, NY 11209.
2. Western NY - We need to stop in Western NY on our way to Cleveland and we got a tip that Olean, NY has a decent place to say and that pretty close to St. Bonaventure and Allegheny State Park, so that looks like a go to me, but we've set out to spend a fair bit of time trekking through Western NY the next day and would like suggestions on places to stop along the 86/90 route west of Olean.  I'm thinking food, farms, nature stuff...  quaint little places that no one knows about, etc.  It seems like it would be a pretty quaint country drive if we found some nice places to check out.  Also, if there's a place in the Olean, NY area that you think is worth staying at, let us know.
3. St. Louis - What to do in St. Louis on a Wednesday morning?  Brunch?  Shopping area?  Something historic?
4. Sioux Falls, SD - Where to eat lunch?
5. Yellowstone - Best place to camp out and also where to go to buy a lightweight tent for two without breaking the bank, since its probably the only time we'll need one.  We're going to spend  a day in Yellowstone.