Boots On The Ground: What I Did On My Summer Vacation

^{(I realize this is terribly late, but I promised myself I would post this before I wrote about my recent trip.)}

As one of DFO’s regular vagabonds, I write about some of my personal adventures. I like to think that it helps people think about planning their own vacations around what they want. There’s no shame in making yourself a priority. It’s why Seamus takes time to remind us most every week to keep ourselves going. Plus, unless it’s a pregnancy test, it’s okay to be late once in a while as long as you eventually finish the task at hand.

Every year, I try to get away on at least one sports-related vacation. This year, I was fortunate enough to have pulled off two. The first will be about my summer, and the second will be my trip to Green Bay.

Unlike last year, I wasn’t wrapping self-indulgence in a veneer of age-milestone’d respectability.

As is custom (since 1991), I spent most of the summer selling beer at my beloved Nat Bailey Stadium.

It is still enjoyable after 27 years, even though the stairs are getting a bit harder to climb. And the tips, even in the supposed “cashless economy”, still came in at a respectable rate. As litre_cola can attest, “Beer hawker” is still the only position that doesn’t use a point-of-sale credit/debit machine, so none of my tips are recorded. If I worked one of the beer stands, about 2/3 of my tips would be from credit cards, so they would be noted on my income tax statement. It means that I had a little extra money for having some fun.

That fun started on July 5th, when Paul McCartney came to town.

I gotta say – for a guy nearing 80, he put on almost a three-hour show, replete with smoke & lasers for the song I wanted to see live, “Live & Let Die”.

That’s a good way to get the summer started.

Of course, I had plenty of time for hiking with the dogs. Riga & Lambeau got to go to lots of places. They were tourists in their own town,

they ran the Capilano River Canyon,

they went for a retreat at Porteau Cove,

and during the ant spraying they hiked the Four Lakes Trail up at Alice Lake Provincial Park.

They do not want for attention.

But the big highlight was going to Ohio for my friend’s 50th birthday. Now, he’s a huge Cleveland Indians fan, and is working his way through chemo due to Stage-2 lung & colon cancer. That he made it to 50 is pretty damn good considering last year at this time he was entering his second month in the hospital because the tumor his GP didn’t know he had burst through his colon & spread his waste internally. The hospital first thought he had appendicitis.

So, for not dying, his reward was Ohio.

Being a good friend, I bought the plane tickets on points, and Expedia’d second-tier motel rooms for about $75 USD/night. Food would be purchased at either fast-foot joints we don’t have back home, or at pubs nearby to the stadiums. Game tickets we bought day-of, and we rented only the finest mid-size sedan Enterprise could offer.

We hit all of the sites. Dayton!

^{The Dayton shooting was one block south of here, three days after we visited.}

Columbus!

Akron!

Niles! (Technically, Mahoning Valley)

Lake County!

And, of course, Cleveland.

We did drive down to Canton to visit the Football Hall of Fame

but his cancer was bugging him & we had a long flight home, so we did Roger a favour & just hit the gift shoppe. But we did make time for a brief stop at Great Lakes Brewing for a pint of plane tranquilizer.

After the trip ended, it was back to the ballpark, and then back to school. But opening day at school was followed up by the opening date of Iron Maiden’s West Coast “Legacy of the Beast” tour swing.

Roadtrips are an essential aspect of life. As the great Gen-X philosopher put it,

Also, make sure to help yourself be happy. Sometimes, you have to do the thing you want because you need to do it, not just because it’s cool. Plus, as Seamus has reminded us, sometimes what we want can also help others in a time of need.

And now that this is finally done, it’s on to Green Bay!