Baltimore: Day one

This was the plan: Be at Zack's place by 10am. That's what he told me on the phone the night before, "We need to *leave* my place by 10:45am! I wanna get an early start." So I woke up at 8am, left my apartment at 9 ayy emm to leave time to get two shots of wheatgrass juice and stop at Fairway to pick up a bunch of healthy snacks (rice cakes, freshly ground peanut butter, organic apples and oranges, and organic yogurt) for our 72-hour trip. I got to his building at 10:05am (or so). I buzzed his place and I should've known something was up 'cause it took him 30 long seconds to buzz me in. Apparently I woke him up. It was 10:07am. And then there's the intense baseball prep that that goes on before any baseball trip, so we didn't end up leaving his place until around 11:30am. Yes, folks, it took him 90 minutes to get ready. What's with men? I can be ready in ten minutes, is all I'm sayin'.

We borrowed his mom's Volvo station wagon and headed south on 95. I drove. I love to drive. I used to own a Mini Cooper when I lived upstate and would drive all the time even when I had nowhere to go. So I drove and we listened to my music (most of the way). Well, technically it wasn't *my* music, we were listening to Pandora, but I chose most of the stations. I promised Zack that we wouldn't listen to Rhianna. That was his only request. We always listen to Rhianna...'cause I really like her, but I have to admit, Pandora does tend to play the same Rhianna songs over and over, so I took a break from her. We listened to a Cat Power station instead (which sucked beyond belief), and a DJ station (that Zack chose) which was painfully chill, and a few other soulless stations. Finally I was like, "I can't take it anymore. I need some Mary J Blige or Method man. Jesus!" So he put on a Method Man station and I got happy. Thirty minutes later, we got tired of that one, too and put on some Mary and then stuck with her until we got to Baltimore. "Mary!"

We arrived at the Holiday Inn around 3:30pm. I sat in the car while Zack checked us in. This process should've taken only a few minutes, but there was a rather large group of high school girls (an actual girls volleyball team) checking in at the same time. So I don't know if it was because they were all needing rooms asap or if Zack was just dilly dallying in the lobby to gawk at the scantily clad young ladies, but either way, we were delayed. Finally we made our way upstairs and as soon as we walked into the room I smelled cigarette smoke. I was like, "Uh, no. We need another room." Zack needed to confirm. He claims to have a good sniffer, so he stepped inside and took a couple of deep breaths and eventually agreed that the room was unacceptable. I called downstairs and told them the situation and in 30 minutes or so (after removing the three tissues that I'd put in the trash and going back downstairs to exchange the keys) we were finally in our new room...which also smelled/smells like cigarettes, BTW,  but we didn't/don't even care at that/this point. I was hungry and needed to get a veggie burrito stat. We quickly got ourselves together and rushed out. We had to be in front of the stadium by 4:20pm to be the first in line. The gates open at 5pm for BP. We were there by 4:30pm.

I'm gonna be taking a bunch of pics on this trip. You know me, I like to take pics. I convinced Zack to let me do them in black and white for a day. I'd been to a number of games with him in the previous couple of weeks with my new camera, but this would be the first time I'd be shooting monochromatic-ally. So without further ado, here are some of my shots from the day:

 

That's it for day one. Tomorrow? Ethiopian food and then our second game. This time I'm taking pictures in color. Yeah, that's right, color.

Stay tuned...