BIB2002 Trip Report by Kevin
BIB2002 Day 1 Nancy (Kevin’s wife) had these parting words for Kevin as he left the house for his annual male-bonding ritual “Now don’t do anything dangerous. When you four guys get together, you’re none too bright…not one of you.” Truth is, if the three musketeers’ rallying cry was “All for one and one for all.” The rallying cry of the Brothers in Baseball would probably be, “All for fun and none too bright”. Bold planning for the 2002 Contraction Tour (editorial note: doesn’t “contraction” seem more like a term that should be used when the league “gives birth” to a new team than when it gets rid of one?) had everyone but Scott arriving within two and a half hours of game time (or so we thought – more on that in a minute). Given our checkered history of delayed and cancelled flights, this may not have been the wisest move (remember, “none too bright”). In looked even less wise to Kevin when he arrived at his departing gate in Cincinnati to find out that his commuter flight was overbooked by one…and he was the one. Thankfully, some greedy soul wanted a free flight bad enough that he coughed up his seat at the last minute. Still, a flat tire kept Kevin on the ground long enough to make sure that things didn’t run too much like clockwork once everybody arrived in Burlington, Vermont. BIBs are always thinking of their brethren. Gerry showed up with souvenir bags for everyone, chock full of memorabilia from the 2002 All-Star game in Milwaukee. Mark had a little surprise for everybody too…he’d shaved his back. Mark’s last official act of BIB 2001 as we left for the airport from the parking lot at Turner Stadium was (for reasons still unclear) to pose shirtless for pictures of his remarkably forested back, while parents shielded their children from what they undoubtedly thought was the first urban Sasquatch sighting. So here we were, in the parking lot of the Burlington airport and Mark is shirtless again…aw, the symmetry of it all. But we digress… Centennial Field, home of the Vermont Expos, was only a few blocks west of the airport, so we got some verbal directions from the parking lot attendant, exited the airport, and headed due east (again, “none too bright”). By the time we came full circle after what must have been a 15 mile drive to go a few blocks, we found all kinds of people walking to the game…way too many it seemed for a minor league game that was still an hour away. We spent another 20 minutes or so driving in circles around the ballpark trying to find a place to park, before we gave up, parked a mile away, and boarded a shuttle from the University of Vermont Hospital parking lot. When we finally arrived at the park, the reason for all the “early” arrivals became apparent. A suspended game from the night before was being played already, so we walked in to find a game already in progress (in the third inning, I think). Centennial Field has existed since 1906. The grandstand currently in use was constructed in 1922…and the seats felt like it…sort of a chiropractic purgatory. Lackluster defensive play by the home team Expos and zero runs scored offensively (at least while we were there) completed the painful trifecta as the Expos fell twice to the Lowell spinners 9-2 and 4-2. The highlights included the 1,000,000th fan in attendance since Vermont became part of the Expos’ system in 1994 and a mildly amusing Loch Ness Monster-like mascot named “Champ” (so named for nearby Lake Champlain). We never saw the end of the second game in Vermont, as we needed to make it to Pont Claire, Quebec at a somewhat reasonable hour. This trip was going to be complicated by the fact that none of us was too damn sure just where the hell “Pont Claire” was. Oh sure, we knew it was in Quebec, and we knew Quebec was in Canada, but beyond that, the best we had to go by was some general notion of Scott’s that “It looked like it was between Montreal and Ottawa” (all together now…”none too bright”). The drive northwest, through some back roads and tiny little towns in extreme northeastern New York was classic BIB. We passed a carnival with a live band playing and a concession stand that advertised “Fried Dough”. Isn’t usually called “Elephant Ears” or “Funnel Cakes”? Yeah, we all know what it really is. But God bless’em, these New Englanders just call it what it is. Makes you wonder if they advertise honey as “bee barf”. As we approached the Canadian border, we could smell the forest fires that had been burning for some weeks in Canada. Mark was doing all the driving for this trip and did a great job, but for two little incidents…and the first was about to happen. Mark was the one who had designated this the “Contraction Tour”, in part because we were going to see the Expos before they got contracted, and in part because we were all planning to lose some weight before this trip. Counting the 37 pounds that Mark dropped leading up to the trip, the total BIB weight loss across all four of us was, well…37 pounds. With his new slimmed-down physique (not to mention aerodynamic back), Mark was a self-assured, confident, cosmopolitan sort of guy…until we pulled up to the border check booth, occupied by a strikingly attractive and personable young blond woman. Then, Mark turned into Barney Fife on a bad day. Like a shark sensing blood, she played him for all he was worth. She asked why we were crossing the border. Mark mumbled something about baseball. She upped the ante by asking if we were professional baseball players (look at any of the pictures on this web site and tell me if that seems even remotely possible to you). Mark made some sort of Neanderthal, guttural sound. Then the piece de resistance: she asks how many people are in the car (like she can’t see the four of us). Mark blurts out “Just me and four of my friends.” Then she asks what’s in the trunk (perhaps wondering if that’s where Mark’s imaginary fourth friend is hidden?). Mark says something like “our stuff”. Mercifully, she let us go on before Mark broke into a torrent of flop sweat. It turns out that Pont Claire is a western suburb of Montreal. But, of course, we had to spend an hour driving around Montreal before we zeroed in on our hotel. Kevin is a crappy navigator when he’s reading directions in English. Give him a map that’s in French and he’d have to show a marked improvement to be crappy. BIB2002 Day 2 One staple of all good BIB trips is what we like to call the Power Breakfast. Friday morning’s was at the Country Market Truck Stop on the way to Ottawa. We all clogged our arteries with bacon, eggs, and sausage, while Mark regaled us with tales of his previous night’s discovery regarding French Canadian television: the nude infomercial. The rest were frustrated by the fact that of 47 cable channels, only 5 included English dialogue. Mark, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less how many of the 47 even had dialogue. There must have been plenty to drink at breakfast, since it seemed like as soon as we hit the road again, Kevin needed to stop. We pulled off at some trashy gas station in the middle of nowhere with bars on all the windows, but, as luck would have it, their restroom was out of order (or so they said). The other BIBs tried to tell Kevin to just go out back of the place, but the female attendant with enough video monitors to secure the Pentagon gave Kevin a serious case of stage fright. There was no way Kevin was getting back on the highway in his condition and the next best option was across the highway at a “Park-and-Ride” adjacent to a cornphield. Now, you may point out that “cornfield” has no “P” in it...let us assure you that this one now does. So Kevin, after far too much consternation for a simple mission of bladder relief, goes behind a parked pickup truck, and to the shock of us all in the car, he disappears! I guess it just goes to show how much a “man” Kevin is…he just can’t stand up and pee like a Real Man. First stop once we arrived in Ottawa, under suspiciously grey and rainy skies, was the National Gallery of Canada, where we saw several Rembrandts, our fill of contemporary art (no, we don’t get it), and a whole bunch of “Inuit Art”, whatever the hell that is. Going back outside afterward meant everybody but Mark, who’d brought raingear, needed to purchase umbrellas ($7, Canadian). Bring umbrellas with us?!? Are you kidding? All for fun and none too bright, remember? No matter, we were planning to take the Duck Tour of Ottawa anyway. Ducks, for the uninitiated, are those amphibious vehicles made famous by the Wisconsin Dells. They are the kind of tacky, off-beat, just-a-bubble-off-plumb attraction that we seem naturally drawn to (see Underground Seattle Tour, 1999 and La Brea Tar Pits, 2000). They can operate on land, on bodies of water, with bombs and bullets flying around, but not, it appears, in the rain...they were closed for the day. Next best option was a double-decker ride through downtown Ottawa. Aside from having a really attractive tour guide that we feared might render Mark’s motor skills completely inoperable (a la the “border babe”), we got some really nice views of the Parliament building and a chance to experience a taste of what BIB trips will be like in 2040, when we are dragging our walkers on every tour bus we can find. We hopped off the bus long enough to just about literally run through the Museum of Civilization…entire history of Canada in an hour and fifteen minutes, eh? The rain had not let up when we bailed out of the bus tour to grab a beer and a few chicken wings at one of our favorite BIB restaurant (and we use that term loosely) chains. While waiting for our food, we watched the rain pouring down and contemplated the unthinkable: our first-ever BIB rain-out for that night’s Ottawa Lynx game. It was clear that at the very least, we were in for a long rain delay, so we headed to the Keg Steakhouse for a rare legitimate meal. It was from there that we called to get the news that the game had, in fact, been cancelled. And what does a BIB do when the game is cancelled? Head directly to the park, of course. Now you might think that a locked up ballpark would not offer much for us to do. Think again. Fortunately, Scott had remembered the name “Barre Campbell” as the individual on the Ottawa Lynx staff who had secured our free tickets. Well, Barre must be one powerful son-of-a-gun in the Lynx organization, because we quickly found that, even though he had left the park when the game was cancelled, the mere mention of his name could get us about anything we wanted: Issue: Park is locked up? Resolution: “Excuse us, but we’ve come all the way from the states, and Barre said we could get in to see the park and take a few pictures.” Issue: Never got our tickets from will call as proof that we’d been to the park? Resolution: “I’ll bet Barre wouldn’t mind if you stayed a few extra minutes and fired up the printing press so we can have our little souvenirs.” Issue: Scott really wants a program and you didn’t print those either? Resolution: Barre would probably just give us the master. And so we headed back toward the Montreal Hilton for the evening, freshly printed tickets and program master in hand, as Scott contemplated building a small shrine to Barre Campbell on his mantle back in Virginia. For the first time in BIB history, we’d been rained out and now with only one game left, we still hadn’t seen so much as a run scored by a home team. With so little baseball to discuss, the conversation along the way turned more sophomoric than usual (note that on a scale from “Three’s Company” to “Face the Nation, our “usual” would rate somewhere around “Gilligan’s Island”). This was not a good thing, because part of the trip was through a one-lane road construction zone in which the left shoulder was replaced by miles of rubber posts spaced about 10 feet apart to keep you from pulling a Dukes of Hazzard number into the actual construction. So somehow, the conversation turns to bachelor parties and a one-upsmanship contest to see who can recount the most lewd act they’ve seen performed at one. Well, something must have rung Mark’s bell, because all of the sudden we see (and feel) “THWUMP, THWUMP, THWUMP, THWUMP, THWUMP.” Just the kind of sound you’d hear if….oh, I don’t know…like maybe if you’d VEERED OFF THE ROAD AND WERE BEATING THE HELL OUT OF THOSE RUBBER POSTS THAT WERE THE ONLY THING SEPARATING YOU FROM CERTAIN DEATH! Fortunately, Mark’s recovery here was far more graceful than in the border babe incident and we arrived safely back in Montreal. BIB2002 Day 3 Day 3 began with a power breakfast (what else) in some downtown Montreal underground dive we stumbled upon. As official trip planner, Scott is also generally the one in charge of choosing eating establishments. As a public service, we pass along a couple of his rules of thumb that you may find helpful. First, under no circumstances should breakfast be eaten in a location where the menus are not heavily laminated. Second, when selecting a barbecue joint, the quality of the barbecue is directly proportional to the human-like characteristics of the pig outside (and there is always a pig outside). So, for example, “pig standing upright” means good barbecue. “Pig on all fours” means lousy barbecue. “Pig dancing a jig while appearing to derive the quadratic formula” means excellent barbecue. Most memorable trait of this particular breakfast location was the waitress, who was a dead ringer for the Frau Farbissina character from the Austin Powers movies. A great waitress, and really charming…in a drill sergeant sort of way. Breakfast was followed by a lengthy walk to Notre Dame Cathedral. Following a short tour there, it was off to the old port and the Museum of Archaeology. The museum tour began with a very difficult drill…at least for one of us. We sat down in a theater in alphabetical order…Gerry, Kevin, Mark, Scott (no, we don’t always do that; it just worked out that way). The tour guide then instructed each of us to pick up the headset on our right and put it on in order to hear the English translation of the introductory material. This was apparently the difficult part, as Kevin found himself without a headset and destined to listen to the French version, until Scott realized which side was his right. We followed the archaeology tour with a walk to Jacques Cartier Plaza for lunch. Along the way, we happened to pass Chris Berman on the sidewalk, though, sadly, he did not bestow any of his famous nicknames upon us. Gerry then made the tactical error of suggesting that we dine al Fresco. He even attempted to wrest control away from Scott by selecting the establishment…one with sissy little paper menus (not a speck of lamination). We were actually seated and had received our menus before we decided that the service was not up to BIB standards. A good 5 minutes had passed without anyone taking our order…not an environment conducive to the Olympic speed eating and vacationing for which we’ve become so famous. We left our table behind and found another restaurant more to our liking (read “big clown food and beer”). While everyone else was finishing lunch, Kevin decided that he absolutely needed – right now – to buy souvenirs for the family. There was some suspicion among the BIBs that just because we were on Jacques Cartier Plaza, he thought he could pull the wool over Nancy’s eyes by finding something for less than $10 Canadian that had the word “Cartier” on it. This was an unfortunate decision on Kevin’s part, because his ill-timed shopping spree, coupled with Gerry’s al Fresco false start had left us behind schedule. Scott, resuming his rightful place as BIB disciplinarian, and the closest thing we have to adult supervision, pointed out that it was getting dangerously close to 3:40pm, the appointed time for our Olympic Stadium tour and we still had to hike back to our car (something like 15 blocks away) and then drive. We made a mad dash for our car, and got there about 3:00pm. Since Olympic Stadium is about 15 minutes way by car, one would think we had it made. Unfortunately, we were working with directions supplied in broken English by the hotel concierge (by the way, “concierge” is French for “idiot like us masquerading as know-it-all”). Complicating the whole thing was that even though we generally knew what direction we needed to go, we had trouble translating that into Sud/Est/Ouest/Nord quickly enough to hit turn-offs. As it turned out, we arrived with precisely 1minute to spare and came flying into the parking lot like the Griswolds arriving at Wallyworld. The stadium tour left a little to be desired, punctuated by the guide who presented himself as something of a baseball authority but had no earthly idea how the wildcard playoff system worked (damn French shouldn't have anything to do with Red-Blooded American Baseball!). He pointed out that, while the Expos had little hope of winning the division, he thought they could somehow get to keep playing after the season by coming in second. Scott volunteered the word “wildcard”, thinking that maybe he had just drawn a blank. The guide responded with what could best be described as a Vulcan Death Stare. The highlight of touring the facility, however, had to be the trip to the top of the 45-degree inclined tower that overlooks the stadium from a height of 556 feet (exactly 1 foot taller than the Washington monument, for trivia buffs). There is a nice observatory at the top where you can read about the history of Montreal and purchase tacky souvenirs. One level below that, accessible by a stairway, is an essentially unmarked lounge that nobody seems to know about. Kevin, Scott and Mark found a couch, propped up their feet and relaxed for the first time all day, taking in the view and waiting for Gerry, who Kevin had seen upstairs and told to join them when he was finished buying tacky stuff…or at least Kevin thought that’s what he’d told Gerry. What Gerry recalls is Kevin pointing down and saying something like “meet you there”. Gerry assumed “down there” was “all the way down there” and proceeded back to terra firma, sans fellow BIBs. After about 20 minutes, the three at the top wondered where Gerry was. After another 10 they realized he obviously had left and was probably lost. It was only about another 10 before they mustered the initiative to actually go find Gerry. The Expos’ game that night was against the Florida Marlins and we had great seats behind the plate. The good news was that we actually saw two hometown runs scored; the bad news was that the Marlins scored 7. Tomo Ohka pitched for the Expos and dug himself a 5-0 hole after 1 inning. Perhaps most disappointing was that we felt deprived of the true “Expos experience”. Thanks to $5 seat and $1 hot dog promotions, there were over 19,000 in attendance, several times the usual Montreal crowd size. There were a couple of interesting items that we noticed about the stadium. First, the foul poles: they’re red with white maple leafs from top to bottom…never noticed that on TV! Second, the fan defense is absolutely pathetic. Nobody appears capable of catching a foul ball. I guess it’s part of the Canadian upbringing...after all, what father would instruct his kid to catch a puck on the fly, eh? After the game, it was a relatively short drive back across the border to Plattsburgh, NY for the evening. Along the way, we began planning in earnest for next year’s trip. Since Florida is looking like a logical next trip (what with the D-Rays possibly on the rocks in the near future), the question came up, as it does every year, of whether we should perhaps allow wives/significant others on the trip. Typically, the vote is 4-0 against, with the only commentary being a universal reaffirmation that we’re called the “Brothers” in Baseball for a reason. Being open-minded sorts, however, we did take one step toward a more progressive direction this year. Scott suggested that perhaps the women could participate by driving us around so we didn’t have to find parking, bringing us hot dogs, that sort of thing…essentially as indentured servants. We all applauded Scott for his out-of-box thinking and then voted 4-0 against involving the women. BIB2002 Day 4 We can probably skip the part about the power breakfast, right? You already assumed that. From Plattsburgh, we headed for Lake Placid where we had every intention of paying $30 to ride the bobsleds…until we found the surrounding roads closed due to an Ironman Triathlon. We quickly retreated, fearing that any of that physical fitness stuff might get on us if we weren’t careful. The trip through rural New York wasn’t a total waste, though, as it gave Gerry a chance to tell us a story about how an attempt on his part to be neighborly ultimately resulted in a SWAT team on his lawn and police searching his house. No sense relating the whole story here – just believe it. This is the kind of thing that can happen only to one of us. Some folks get together once a year and talk about how their kids did in school or soccer. We get together and compare notes on who had the most grotesque injury or illness (Kevin…surgery to remove a cyst on his inner thigh) or who came closest to a felony conviction (Gerry, hands down). From there, we headed east, back toward Vermont. We decided to take a ferry back across Lake Champlain to Burlington. It felt like anything but July as we endured a stiff lake breeze along the way. Once back in Vermont, we headed directly to the Ben and Jerry’s factory tour in Waterbury, VT. The combination of quirky tour and free ice cream found us in our natural habitat once again (a relief, following the close call with that triathlon nonsense). One tip: do not have a milkshake at BandJ's...never, ever...'nuff said. After Ben and Jerry’s, we headed back to Burlington, where we all had late afternoon flights awaiting us. But there was one more meal opportunity and we made it count, finding a cool seafood joint right on Lake Champlain. With that, it was back to the airport where we all said our good-byes for another year and hoped to goodness that a baseball strike didn’t dork up our plans for 2003.
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