I’m now home, after a good flight back from Chicago to London Heathrow. We pushed back from the gate exactly on time, and arrived over London seven hours later, then did the usual trick of circling for a bit before landing 30 minutes later. I just caught a Heathrow Express and the underground was OK, but there are so many flights of steps with no sign of an escalator or lift.

Only 5% disc space left on my PVR, so I watched last week’s Strictly Come Dancing to clear enough space for more recordings, as I’m going to pop home for my birthday tomorrow.

The final game of my road trip was to see the first game of the Minnesota Twins visiting the Chicago White Sox. Unfortunately for the White Sox, it was more of the same ineffectiveness at the plate as they got shut out by the Twins 7-0. The Twins put runs on the board in 6 different innings, and the White Sox never really looked like they were going to do anything. After not really chatting to people much during the other games in Chicago, I had a long chat with a lifelong Chicagoan called Rita who was sitting next to me who was at the game with her daughter and husband. She was full of useful information and was interested to hear all about my roadtrip. Occasionally, a White Sox player got a base and got a brief ripple from the crowd, but there was more excitement in the pizza race (which the sausage-topped pizza won - sadly, this was a video screen event, not an on-field live-action one)

The Twins looked sharp and they are serious contenders for the AL Central. The White Sox appear to have a great many of the necessary pieces, but they’re just not fitting together right now. In his postgame press conference, which is shown on the big video screen after the game, which I think is a great thing to do, Ozzie didn’t really have much to say. It’s clear that he’s disappointed that things aren’t going well, but he was defending his star players tonight, in particular Jermaine Dye and Paul Konerko.

The game seemed to go very quickly, perhaps because we were engaged in doing something more interesting than watching the White Sox go down 1-2-3 in an inning again. After just over 2 and a half hours, quick by AL standards, the game was over and my roadtrip is over, and that’s quite sad, because I have to fly home tomorrow evening and go back to work on Monday. I could easily spend the entire season travelling around the US, watching games, staying in swanky hotels and eating in restaurants every night. Sadly, I just couldn’t afford it.

Ozzie’s press conference on the impressive main scoreboard:

One fan’s take on the situation:





(it reads: “Wait Till Next Year”)

On Monday afternoon, I went down to the Museum of Science & Industry and found that they had the brand new (well, it was brand new in April) Harry Potter exhibition on. It is closing next week and moving to Boston for a few months. Eventually, it’ll land in London, but Warner Bros is paying for it, so it’s starting in the United States, although somewhat oddly for an American museum, all the staff involved in it are either British people who have come over specifically to run the exhibit or are ex-pats who still possess a strong British accent. According to the ex-pat lady orginally from near Liverpool, this was something that JK Rowling herself had insisted upon, to maintain the whole atmosphere of the stories and films.

If you’re into Harry Potter, you’ll like it; if not, most of it won’t have any meaning for you. It’s packed with costumes and props from all the films, although the guide explained that some of the props have had to be given back temporarily sometimes as they need them for re-shooting some scenes from the final two films that are heading into post-production now. As you would expect, you’re not allowed to touch many of the things, but you can sit in Hagrid’s chair and you can try to get the quaffle through the hoop. The tour cost $13 plus $5 for the audio tour, which is probably worth the extra as there are lots of audio commentaries. There is no photography allowed whatsoever, though, except for the Ford Anglia in the museum’s entrance hall:

This evening, I dined at Harry Cary’s Italian Steakhouse. I liked it so much last year that I went back. Just like last year, it was raining! I had booked plenty of time in advance and I noticed some people were being turned away at the reception desk because it was full. It is critical to book this restaurant at busy times, and they have a lot of busy times. My only complaint would be that the courses come too quickly, sort of the opposite to Morton’s steak houses where they come with longer gaps to allow you to appreciate each course and prepare for the next. I managed to drag out looking through the dessert menu for 15 minutes to try to introduce a delay so I could manage the dessert. The food itself was excellent, as expected, and even though I ordered the smallest steak that they have - a 9oz Filet Mignon - it was plenty big enough!

I had my photo taken with Harry, and seen lots of the memorabilia, although with so much of it on the walls around the restaurant’s seating area, you can’t really walk around and look at it all, because people are sitting right there eating. There are lots of pictures of famous people standing next to Harry in the lobby, even one of then state senator Barack Obama. They have a completely separate bar area on the other side of the entrace lobby, and just as I was leaving, they started playing Take Me Out To The Ballgame incredibly loudly. The bar was packed, but I couldn’t tell how many people were joining in as the audio had clearly been turned up to 11!

This was a Sunday afternoon game which meant there wasn’t much time to do things in the morning before going to the game, so I did some shopping, although I forgot to buy any sun blocking cream as I was worried about sitting out in the open for a day game. I need not have worried, because it clouded over by the start of the game, and in fact, it started spitting with rain towards the end of the game - although it stopped mostly later, at least until I got back to my hotel room, wherew I switched on the TV to watch the end of the Chicago Bears game and saw it was pouring - it’s hard to tell with the lack of view out of my hotel window!

Not nearly as many runs tonight with Tejada going for KC and Garcia for the White Sox (who was the the starting pitcher in the one game the Sox won in Seattle last week) This game was close throughout, although the Royals managed to put a run on the board in the top of the first inning, another in the 3rd and the White Sox put their run on the board in the 4th inning (winning medium-sized coffees at Dunkin’ Donuts for lucky ticket holders with a DD logo on their ticket - which I didn’t have)

It was the same old story for Chicago, and not unlike the problems that the Giants have been experiencing. The White Sox loaded the bases in two innings and managed to get one run in total. Admittedly, Josh Anderson’s catch to bring back a ball that was going over the fence was a game-saver, and I did feel sorry for Freddie Garcia who pitched 8 innings, giving up 2 runs and picking up the loss. This game was over in 2hr40, which was a good job given the weather closing in so soon after the game.

One nice feature of games here is that the post-game press conference with Ozzie Guillen is shown on the scoreboard, and people are invited to stay to watch it (and then firmly asked to leave shortly afterwards!) He didn’t have much to say about today’s performance except to praise Garcia’s tremendous performance and lamenting that they wasted it. However, he didn’t compare his players to equine dung tonight. The seats in the stadium are quite narrow compared to the club seats I’ve been in at the other places. Plus, even the good seats near the front of the bottom deck are simply plastic, with no padding to make them more comfortable.

Having just seen the White Sox play a three game series against the Mariners (and lost 2 of 3), I wasn’t sure what to expect from them at home. They got beaten badly on Friday by the Royals (11-0) too, so there were a lot of frustrated players on the field this evening. The final score does not truly represent how the game went. Although the White Sox posted the 13-3 victory, the Royals were level in this at 3-3 until the inning that contained the grand slam (that the Royals really should have been out of before anyway). After that there was a six-run inning with people hitting for run, taking out that frustration.

It took me a long time to find the Ticketmaster booth to get my tickets for the games in Chicago, and when I finally did find it, it would only give me the ticket for today’s game. So I’ll be visiting it twice more too.

The stadium is nicer than I expected, but as a measure of how good so many of the MLB stadia are nowadays, I’d have to rank it as 5th best that I’ve been to this year - i.e. bottom. It’s not bad at all - it’s just not quite as good as the others! It is easy to get to, though, and the area is kept neat and tidy and seems to be well-organised, so it’s a nice place to come.

Pleasingly, the after-game fireworks started just a couple of minutes after the teams had left the field, so there wasn’t long to wait, and I didn’t have to move seats to see it. It was a long display and far superior to the pathetic display in Washington DC a couple of weeks ago. Great combinations, and a lot of large rockets as well as the loud ones. It really rounded off the day nicely.

Up at 5.15am this morning, as I knew I had to leave the hotel at 6am to make sure I got the light rail link to the airport in plenty of time to check my bag in. I went to leave the hotel to walk down the hill to the station, only to find it was raining! So I got a chance to test my new jacket. Since I hadn’t felt it necessary to pay the hotel to print my boarding pass, I was just checked in without the pass, but that’s OK, as you can reprint it at the airport anyway on the bag drop counter. The train was on time and the connector bus from Tukwila to the airport waited for us all before taking us to the terminal. There was virtually no queue for the bag drop, and so I was able to repack my jacket into my hold baggage and go along to security. Since the flight was due to leave at 8.21am, I had to be boarded by 8.10am at the latest. However, the queue at security was very long, although it was moving, but it took half an hour to get through security and then more time to take the shuttle train to the gate area, but I arrived in plenty of time - 10 minutes before the departure time.

Typically, with the Royals @ White Sox game to go to this evening in Chicago, there was a delay due to a fault in the engine. Fortunately, this time, the engineers did fix it in 15 minutes and after a 45 minutes delay we were on our way. So I should have around 3 hours to get to the hotel (it’ll take an hour on the metro train) and then down to Comiskey Park (well, U.S. Cellular Field) from the hotel, which is the same line so won’t take very long. I’ll need to fit in dinner at some point too, as breakfast wasn’t available at the hotel before I left, and with no time at the airport to even grab a snack, I arrived desperate for something to eat.

The game finished over an hour ago, and I’m now back at my hotel, still buzzing.

On the way back to the station, whilst standing at the kerbside waiting to cross the road, I found myself standing next to somebody else wearing a San Francisco Giants hat. We got talking, and he turned out to be from the Bay Area originally, but had moved to Seattle and is a season-ticket holder at the Mariners. We chatted for ages as we waited for the trains to come and he insisted that I accept a hift of the brand-new Mariners scarf that he’d just bought. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so now I have a great Mariners scarf too.

Even once I’d got back to the hotel, I was still feeling elated from the exciting end to the game - Mariano Rivera doesn’t blow saves very often (he’d converted 36 in a row, and not blown a save opportunity since April, in fact) and I saw on the television highlights that when the home run was hit he couldn’t do anything except spin around to watch it sail over the fence and say “Wow!”

Today was a really great day. I met some really nice, friendly people and saw some fantastic sights too. I would like to return to Seattle again, perhaps in a couple of years when all the construction around the stadium area has been completed, and also try some trips out to Mount Rainier and perhaps even across to Victoria in British Columbia, neither of which I had time to do during this visit.

After the White Sox left town, the Yankees arrived. I’m only seeing a single game of this series before flying to Chicago early on Saturday morning (for the Saturday evening game between the Royals and the White Sox). The Mariners had their ace Felix Hernandez going, and the Yankees got off to a fast start with one in the first, then a sac-fly in the 6th for a second run after the Mariners had tied it up. It was good to see Derek Jeter play. Of course, I didn’t see Jorge Posada play as he’s serving a suspension for starting that brawl in the recent Blue Jays/Yankees series.

For tonight’s game, I was sitting in section 233, immediately to the third base side of the broadcast booths, so I had a good view down onto the game. The lady in charge of my section, Jenelle, was very friendly and chatty and I told her all about my holiday where I’d been so far and where I was still to go before returning home next week. The four guys in the row in front of me were consuming many beverages and becoming rather rowdy, but she kept them in check. Jenelle also gave me the game notes pack issued by the team before each game, containing notes on all the players, the team’s standing and the opposition’s standing, together with the breakdown of the two starting pitchers for the night. Later on, she also took my photo after the game was over. I was sitting next to an old guy called Joe who was wearing a Mariners sweatshirt, but was a Yankee fan having grown up with the Yankees.

After last night’s walk-off RBI single in the bottom of the 14th inning was witnessed by a fraction of the initial 16336 crowd, nobody left even with the Yankees up 2-1 going to the late innings. Tonight, Mariano Rivera on the hill, Yankees lead 2-1, first two batters strikeout, Rivera’s converted 36 straight save opportunties, game over?

After Mike Sweeney came on to pinch hit against Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the 9th, with two out, and got a double, I called Ichiro to hit a home run. The whole place erupted as Ichiro hit the first pitch he saw from Rivera over the right field wall for a walk-off 2-run home run. Nobody had left, and still nobody left as the cheering continued for ages as everybody had gone completely nuts. Eventually, announcements had to be made urging people to go home! Felix Hernandez deserved the win for his excellent complete game effort, giving up just the one run. Undoubtedly, the best atmosphere I’ve experienced at a game this year.

On Friday, the game was a night game, so I had plenty of time to see different sites that I had tickets for via my CityPass. I started off by booking a restaurant overlooking Elliott Bay for 5.15pm to give me time to have dinner and then get down to Safeco Field in plenty of time. I walked along the waterfront instead of taking the monorail, moving inland to 1st Avenue on the advice of a local who indicated that it would be better to do so than continue along Western. The day was hot and sunny, which came as much of a shock to the locals of Seattle as the rain in San Francisco had done to Bay Area natives. With the clear day, I thought I’d use up my third ticket to visit the top of the Space Needle. I came out of the North-facing elevator and today, the mountain ranges were visible. There was one mountain larger than the others, which I assumed must be Mount Rainier. I took plenty more pictures of the range and the views. Then I started walking around to the East and South facing sides of the observation deck, which is when I saw the real Mount Rainier towering into the sky, dwarfing the other hills around it. The snow was clearly visible near the summit and so I was able to take lots more photograph of it. It really is a stunning sight and I’m really pleased that I went up to the top again to see it.

When I came down again, I went into the Science Fiction Museum which is right next door. It was surprisingly small, I thought, and there was little sign of anything non-American there. There was one diagram of a babel fish and the interactive spaceship database actually had Red Dwarf in it. There was one photo of a dalek, but nothing else, as it was mostly dominated by Star Trek and Star Wars.

For the latter part of the afternoon, I’d booked myself on the 1 hour long harbour cruise to do a circuit of the bay. I got some more good pictures during this, and the guide was informative. I managed to get to the restaurant just 10 minutes after I was supposed to be there, but that was OK, as I’d already let them know earlier in the day that I might be a little late if the cruise didn’t get back on time. I was able to sit having dinner looking out over Elliott Bay as the sun was setting, which was beautiful. Again, dinner didn’t really go as quickly as I would have liked it to, so I had only 25 minutes to get down to Safeco Field to see the Yankees @ Mariners game. On the way to the light rail station, I walked through the famous Pike Place market, and saw the original Starbucks, founded 38 years ago. I’d also remembered that you could get into the rail station from 2nd Avenue instead of having to hike up the hill to 3rd where the main entrance is, which saved me some time. As it was, I only missed the first inning tonight, but this also turned out to be a cracking game.