After about four hours of weather related delays in New York last night, I'm finally back in Miami today. While I'm sure that most of you didn't miss me, I'm glad to have more regular access to the site once again.
Before I give a brief recap of my trip, I'd like to thank Craig for taking care of things while I was away. Thanks Craig! I really appreciate everything that you did to keep things in order in my absence.
So where was I for the past week and a half? All over the place actually. But since it's not Marlins related, I'll leave it below the fold. Click "read more" if you care to check it out.
On Friday the 5th I flew up to New York to meet up with Carolina so that we could head to Cooperstown for the weekend. This allowed me the opportunity to find my way from LaGuardia to Clifton, New Jersey (where Carolina picked me up).
As Carolina was quick to remind me (very frequently), I packed poorly for this 10-day adventure. As such, my bags were heavy (one carry-on, one check-in). This was particularly bothersome on days like the 5th, where I had to get myself around hot New York on the subway - which is particularly fun when you only half know where you're going and portions of the subway seem to be far enough underground to benefit from the heat generated by Hell.
Eventually I made it to Clifton, NJ and it was all worthwhile. Clifton was everything that I hoped and dreamed that it would be.
From there, Carolina and I headed to Cooperstown - actually, we headed to Mohawk - which was the closest place to Cooperstown that we could stay (well, the closest place that we could stay which met Carolina's specific criteria).
On Saturday we headed to the Hall of Fame, where we spent most of the day. Some of you may not know this, but my SportsBlogs contract requires me to visit Cooperstown. Not only that, but I also have to take a picture outside of the Hall of Fame (in front of the standings board) and I have to see if Cracker Jack deems me a future star or not. You've probably seen evidence of this already on other SBNation sites - as Dex posted such pictures after his trip earlier this summer. I'll post my evidence later.
On Sunday we visited Cooperstown's Farmers Museum - where we saw some townball played. A description of that requires pictures, so we'll wait to get into that.
On Monday I was back in New York City, where I saw some polar bears at the Central Park Zoo, took a tour of Yankee Stadium, a tour of Madison Square Garden (which is neither square nor does it include a garden), and a Yankees-White Sox game at the Stadium.
On Tuesday I headed to Baltimore, where I caught the O's and Rays at Camden Yards. On Wednesday, I caught another game (with first row seats), plus took a stadium tour and visited Sports Legends at Camden Yards. This museum is very new, but I would highly recommend it to everyone (I'll probably write more about this later too). While the museum doesn't house as many significant items as the Hall of Fame, everything is presented much more cleanly and the museum is very modern (as Sports Legends just opened in May). If you're ever in Baltimore, I'd highly recommend visiting the museum.
After doing all there was to do that interested me in Baltimore, I headed to Philadelphia on Thursday, where I checked out Citizen Bank Park, Lincoln Financial Field, and the Spectrum. I was only able to tour CBP, but it was a great tour (unlike the tour of Camden Yards, which quite honestly was horrible - solely because of a verbose - yet uninformative - tour guide).
Although I spent just under 24 hours in Philly, I did consume four cheesesteaks (three with Whiz and one with Provolone). Before my ateries hardened, I headed back to New York to meet up with what's-her-name. We ran around Connecticut on Saturday (the third state on this trip that I visited for the first time - Delaware and Maryland were the other two) and ventured into the city on Saturday night to see Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway.
All in all it was a very relaxing trip. I ran around a lot and saw a lot of things, but I also feel like I got pretty disconnected from the world (or as disconnected as you can get in Times Square and when you're reading multiple tabs on the subway each day). More details and pictures to come - probably on the other site - but I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm back for good - at least for now.