We left Philadelphia this morning for Washington, DC with the primary
intention of seeing the Nationals host the Florida Marlins. Good to
get the boys to DC before the city self destructs. Or maybe it
already has? Anyway, after lunch we did a nearly four hour
introductory walk of the east end of the city. Those pictures should
be posted Wednesday night.

Tonight was game six of our Baseball Tour 2011. Our final game was an
11-2 blowout of the Nationals by the Marlins. It had some great
hitting and pitching by the Marlins (a three hitter) and some terrible
pitching and no hitting by the Nationals.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this trip, I purchased all of the
tickets online before our departure. Tonight’s seats were Row D but I
was unaware that Row D in our section is the first row behind the
visitor’s dugout. So in spite of some row fours and fives in other
stadiums on this trip, these were our closest seats as demonstrated by
a few of the pictures. And between being there two hours before game
time to witness batting practice and our first row seats, Ryan and
Logan walked away with five major league baseballs.

So concludes the games of our second tour. With only two years under
our belts, we have seen twelve games in seven cities for 108 innings
without a postponement or even a rain delay, have seen a nine run
inning, a grand slam and a three run homer in the same inning, a fan
on the field, ejections, a three hitter, great plays, lousy plays, a
praying mantis on a hat and many more potential memories. And the
boys have garnered a mere 11 baseballs for their memorabilia
collection. I’m still 0 for 62 years.

Thanks for following us. A little on our tour of Washington tomorrow.

It is hard to believe that today was game five of our six game
Baseball Tour 2011 with only our game in Washington, D.C. tomorrow
remaining. We arrived at Citizens Bank Park today two hours before
game time to watch the teams warm up. With Philadelphia ace Cliff Lee
on the mound we were expecting a Philly victory but he gave up five
runs and ten hits in but four innings to allow San Diego to prevail
5-4. I do love one run games as the outcome is nearly always in doubt
until the last out is made. So for me, this was a good baseball day
plus being a bit cooler than the prior three games on this tour.

So just a few shots of some of the action (and inaction) as well as to
show what great seats we had. That is all we did plus get dinner at a
fine “upscale” Mexican restaurant called El Vez. Speaking of food,
Citizens Bank Park, in addition to being a beautiful and functional
stadium, did receive my vote today for the best food, both quality and
selection, of all the stadiums we have visited during the past two
seasons.

Take that Yankee Stadium.

We finished our visit to New York City with another Yankees-Oakland
game in 100 degree heat on Saturday. An uneventful but exciting 4-3
victory by the A’s. I wised up and took the boys to the souvenir
shops after the game to avoid the massive crush for the train which
made the ride, and especially Logan’s because he gets overlooked by
the crowds, hugely more comfortable. We had a lovely dinner at a 20
seat Italian restaurant on East 53rd Street called Radicchio Pasta and
Risotto.

We arrived in Philly by Amtrak on Sunday afternoon and headed straight
to the historical area. We managed to visit the Liberty Bell Center,
Independence Hall and surrounding buildings and the wonderful
Independence Visitor Center. Afterwards we hiked for a few score more
blocks in search of dining and observing Philadelphia along the way.
The large older cities of the US are interesting in how the cityscape
changes from block to block as well as building to building as some of
the pictures demonstrate.

I always find it thought provoking to view history in Washington, DC
or someplace like here that focuses on our country’s founding and early
history. The film “Independence” that we viewed at the Visitor Center
was inspiring and yet another reminder that those people were able to
compromise enough to put together a whole country. Wouldn’t they be
embarrassed by our “leadership” today.

Phillies and Padres on Monday then off to Washington on Tuesday. This was fast.

Yep, that was the temperature and heat index in New York City today.
The bad news is that it was absolutely miserable outside. The good
news is that I think it kept the crowd down for the trip to the Statue
of Liberty. Thus, we completed that trip in a couple of hours and
still had time to visit Ground Zero, eat lunch and go shoe shopping in
Times Square before heading to Yankee Stadium in time for batting
practice.

We had a productive visit to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island as
Logan met his objective of seeing the family names among the
immigrants as well as enjoying other names including the Zyzyk
families who have the last immigrant name on the walls and, after
their arrival in the USA, whose children were always last in line in
grade school.

Game time (7:05 PM) weather conditions were 100/105 but a cooling
trend brought it down to 91/95 at 10:45 pm on our walk from the subway
to the hotel. We saw an exciting and then boring game with the
Yankees scoring 14 runs in the second and third innings on their way
to a 17 to 7 route of the Athletics. A three run homer by Nick
Swisher and a grand slam by Mark Teixeira in the same inning were the
highlights on a night that saw the highest temperatures yet recorded
at the new Yankee Stadium.

Back to the Stadium tomorrow unless I play the “elderly need to stay
indoors” card with the grandsons.

Fortunately I was not the only person at Citi Field today who
had the potential of being accused of child abuse. With a
temperature of 95 and a good old fashioned east coast/midwest type heat index of
104, I managed to have finally taken the lifetime Phoenix residents of
Ryan and Logan to a place that they thought was HOT. And boy, was it
ever. We were soaked by game time.

We did escape to the concourse level (which is open to the field like
Coors Field…a big plus today) for a few innings and the Mets and
Cardinals helped as best they could with a slightly over two hour game
which is nearly unheard of these days. Oh, the Cardinals prevailed
6-2 and we were fortunate to see Albert Pujols put one way out of the
park in the first inning. Logan managed to leave the park with one
more ball for his collection. I left still 0 for 62 years.

We will try to get Logan to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island
tomorrow where he will get to be the last of my son-in-law’s children
to see his grandmother’s name on the wall of immigrants. If we
survive a predicted high of 101 and a 110 heat index it will be off to
Yankee stadium for a night game. Will that be a relief from today?
Maybe not. As of this 10 pm writing it is 88 with a “feels like”
temperature of 98.

Baseball Tour 2011 has in fact begun. We arrived in New York City
this evening but our adventure is not beginning here. I flew to
Phoenix on July 18 to pick up Ryan (11) and Logan (almost 10) and then
returned to Denver to begin this year’s adventure.

On Tuesday night we attended Coors Field to watch the Rockies take on
the Atlanta Braves to kick off the Tour and for the first time we
filled a fourth seat as Konnie joined us for this year’s inaugural
game. We were treated to a Rockies’ romp as they battered the Braves
12 to 3 behind a great outing by Ubaldo Jimenez. Ryan left the
stadium with another ball, bringing the boys’ total take to five balls
in the first seven games of our tours. I am still 0 for 62 years.

The rest of our schedule is Citi Field to watch the Mets take on the
Cardinals, Yankee Stadium for two with the Athletics, back to
Philadelphia to see the Phillies and Padres and wrapping up on July 27
at Nationals Park in Washington to see the Nationals and the Marlins,
completing the Tour which has us seeing every National League Eastern
Division team in action in one week.

Tonight it was dinner at Sinigual (excellent “Contemporary Mexican
Cuisine”) and a stroll around Manhattan including the incredibly
crowded Times Square. Off to Citi Field tomorrow.

This trip marks the one year anniversary of this blog which was
started so that family and friends could follow Baseball Tour 2010. I
ended up continuing it to cover all of our other travels and have
enjoyed hearing from all of you who follow us. Thanks and stay tuned.

PS  Perhaps I should mention that you can see a larger image and usually a caption by double clicking on the thumbnail image.

Not quite the Woody Guthrie version. The area of northwestern Belize
in which I spent ten days this summer participating in the excavation
of Mayan ruins is interesting. The area has been occupied by a sect
of Mennonites since 1958. The story goes that this group first went
to Canada from Europe, then due to dissatisfaction with the Canadian
government, relocated to Mexico. That did not work out for them so
they headed to Belize where they signed a special agreement with the
government that exempts them from military service and certain taxes
and guarantees them complete freedom to practice their own form of
Protestantism and farm their closed communities to increase
agricultural production in Belize. They also practice their own form
of government and run their own schools and businesses. There appears
to be no typical government law enforcement in the area.

So in many respects “their” part of the country seems to be a country
within a country. The Mennonites make their own rules. It appears
that anyone who can see through a steering wheel can drive on the
roads. The interest in child safety is virtually non-existent. I
have seen as many as four children on a motorcycle, none with helmets
and the driver being maybe 10 years old and motorcyclists whose legs
don’t reach the ground while sitting on the seat when the bike is
stopped. I have seen a woman piloting a motorcycle to school with
three children on the bike while she carried goods in one had while
driving. And I have seen very young helmetless boys doing at least 80
mph on motorcycles on the highway.

This year they opened an ice cream shop that also has two internet
connections (they are considered “progressive” Mennonites). Actually
the internet cafe was very exciting for us communication deprived
archaeology volunteers. One day when we took some volunteers to get
ice cream, the parking lot was very full. Yet the inside was not that
busy. I jokingly said to someone that maybe those six twelve year old
boys eating ice cream in the corner booth each came in his own
vehicle. Ha ha! They did. When the six of them left the shop, each
got onto or into his own motorcycle or pick up truck and motored away.

Here’s the rub as most of us volunteers see it. They have no respect
for the nature of the land as it was when they arrived. So they
“pushback” the jungle. First they knock down all of the existing
vegetation by driving bulldozers through the jungle with chains
attached between the dozers. Then, after having knocked down the
forest and destroyed irreplaceable thousand year old Mayan structures,
they set it on fire to finish off what was here and then convert it to
grassland.

It is hard to photograph and show the accurate perspective, but I have
attempted it anyway.

Yes, This Land is Their Land♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪.

I spent ten days in the Maya Research Program’s archaeology camp in
Northwestern Belize again this year. This is my fifth time to do this
but the first time during the rainy season.

This is the 20th excavation season for MRP which runs for eight weeks.
Most of the participants are students with a few adult volunteers
sprinkled in and the areas that are excavated each year are based upon
a research thesis of either the graduate students who use this work
for such things as their graduate thesis or someone who already has
their doctorate to develop a paper for publication. This year I
worked for Gail Hammond who is working on her PhD in London and who I
have now known for four years. It was the first time that I worked
outside of the jungle canopy (though it used to be jungle before being
“pushed back”, as they say, by the local progressive Mennonite
population) and in the rainy season. It has always been grueling work
but it is made more difficult and much less efficient by the driving
rains that come through during the day this time of year.

So the digging was delayed this year and I found myself having to
leave before any exciting discoveries. But indications were that some
were imminent on our site. The Mayans left strong clues of what might
be coming up under the floors of their residences and such signs were
hit on my last day of excavating.

So with little physical evidence to show for this year’s activities, I
have included some pictures of last year’s work to demonstrate the
types of things that are found. (Any pictures of me are from 2010)

On Sunday I was driven from my jungle hike about 11 am by a driving
rainstorm. Unfortunately it continued through the day so further
attempts to work on my monkey photography were squelched. It was one
of those rains that if we got one like that in Denver, there would be
the mayhem of closed roads and many flooded intersections. There is
no way our existing systems could handle such a deluge.

When darkness descended on the jungle though an amazing sound began to
emanate from it. Frogs. There had to be millions singing to make
that much noise. And it also brought all kinds of frogs out in the
lodge area with their being all over the sidewalks. The toads come
out every night and station themselves next to the path lights where
they feast on the bugs that are attracted to the light. I have seen
this in other tropical settings. The result is very fat toads with
almost zero energy being expended to feast on the bug supply.
Unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough in the dark conditions to catch
that action.

So just a few shots of the couple of spider monkeys I encountered,
some of the frogs and toads and the rain. I recorded the frogs (the
black photo) singing but I do not know if the sound will come across
properly on this post. The hum you should hear is the frogs but my
camera microphone did not do them justice.

I haven’t been to as many places in the world as I should have at this
point in my life. For instance, I have a friend who, by coincidence,
I was on a trip with to Antarctica in 2000. He did so much traveling
with his family that Antarctica was all five family members’ seventh
and final continent to visit, including their ten year old. I’m still
stuck on five. One of my “problems” is I tend to repeat some places
quite a bit. As an example, here I sit tonight deep in the jungle of
western Belize at a lodge called Chan Chich (www.chanchich.com).
Benjamin and I came here for an escape in August of 2009, loved it and
this is now my fourth visit in 22 months. My real reason for being in
Belize is to have my fifth experience excavating Mayan Ruins with the
Maya Research Program (mayaresearchprogram.org). But that begins on
Monday and now I can’t come to dig without visiting Chan Chich.
Twelve rooms set among Mayan ruins, 36 miles from the nearest paved
road. Wonderful staff who live here year round and raise their
families here as well.

I spent today on some of the trails here checking out the birds,
flowers, plants, lizards, toads, monkeys and my favorite, the leaf
cutter ants. I paced off one leaf cutter trail that measured 8 inches
wide and a half a mile long. I think they are amazing animals. But
tonight, Elder the manager, took me “Jaguar and Puma Hunting.” We
drove the gravel roads around the area, me behind the wheel and Elder
sitting out of the passenger window with his spotlight. Given there
were hundreds of deer including many fawn, the cats were apparently
not hungry during the early part of this evening. In addition to the
deer, we only had four gray fox and one raccoon to show for our
efforts (some bad pictures of our expedition in the dark are
included).

Once I get settled into the MRP camp next week and have a few days of
work under my belt, I will hopefully have another post. But just in
case that activity doesn’t generate another post, Baseball Tour 2011
begins on July 20!