Indians Game

Mariners over Indians, 3-2. I'm not a big Mariners fan, but I rooted for them anyway. Next time I will have to get tickets to an Indians-A's game.

Friday afternoon we drove up to Cleveland for a baseball game with the Petries. Sam's mom gave us the 4 tickets to the game, so we made it a double date with the Petries. We went to the Great Lakes Brewery for dinner and Great Lakes beers on tap. I've never thought all that much of their beers, but on tap they were amazing. The brewery is just across the river from the stadium and offers a $1 Fatty Wagon shuttle service to and from the games so we didn't even have to pay for downtown parking.

We had 1st baseline, upper deck tickets which put us in the setting sun. It was HOT!

Sam and Stephen went through several beers sitting in the sun. The stadium wasn't very full so we moved during the 7th inning stretch to right behind home plate at the very top where there was a great breeze. The view was also really great.
I hadn't been to a baseball game since high school. It was a lot of fun and I remembered how much I really like baseball especially going to the games. There were some good plays and some really botched plays. The Indians 2nd baseman was not looking too sharp that night. Ichiro Suzuki opened the game with a single, stole 2nd, moved to 3rd on an out, and was brought home by the next batter. Talk about manufacturing points! Shin Soo-Choo, Indians right fielder, was probably the best batter of the night and the Mariners pitcher was pretty much afraid to pitch to him. There were fireworks at the end of the game, but it got too loud and smoky so we left before the end.
We spent the night with the Petries and the next day, while Stephen was at work, we went to a local park on the lake. Unfortunately, we didn't have our swimsuits but we waded out. The water felt really good on such a hot, humid day. It was a really great beach and park. We walked along a creek and found remnants of what appeared to be an elevated roadway.
It finally rained and cooled things off while we were walking back to the car. We said goodbye to the Petries over gin and tonics as if we weren't going to see each other for a while. Then we all remembered we would be hanging out next Saturday for the baby shower and cook out.

I will need to rest up for next weekend because I have my sister-in-law's birthday party on Friday, Petrie-Pullmann baby shower in Saturday, and my brother-in-law's and nephew's birthday party on Sunday. August is a busier month than I expected.

Ohio's Finest Wines

Ohio has wineries?! Yup, and we tasted many of the wines from Cleveland area vineyards at the Vintage Ohio festival. Our friend from college, Rebekah, works for Cleveland metro parks at the Farmpark where the festival is held every year and invited us up for the day (and got us all a sweet employee discount). We also met up with Emrys and Tristan, also college friends who live in Cleveland.

Getting ready from some wine tasting

Although the majority of the wines were a little too sweet for me, there were some very good wines. The Old Firehouse winery had a very good spumanti and the Grand River winery had solid wines all around. It seemed like every winery had to Ohio classic catawba wine, which is sweet and grown in the Lake Erie area. I enjoy a catawba because it's more like juice than wine, but nice on a hot day.

Garden sculpture

Waiting in lines to taste wine got old and we weren't there to get drunk on 1/2 oz. samples so Rebekah showed us the educational garden center. The Farmpark has solar panels and a broken windmill that generate power, so there was a display showing how much power the solar panels were generating. Since it was a sunny day they were generating a lot of power. Clearly it was more power than the Farmpark needed so did they store this energy in batteries, sell it to the grid, or waste it? There was also an inaccurate display on how siphons work.

Sam's mouth was watering at all the ripe tomatoes in the different project gardens and greenhouse. I was pretty impressed with the hydroponics in the greenhouse. It looked like a really fun project to do in my dream greenhouse (along with all the citrus).

We grabbed some pizza at the local pizzeria, Angelo's. The pizza was really good. I don't know if it was better than Adornettos or Pizza Express, but I'm not the best judge of pizza as evidenced by my love of Pizza Express.

After dinner we went back to the festival and bought glasses of wine and enjoyed the evening in the park. Rebekah showed us the horse barn, where she works mucking stalls and riding horses. We couldn't resist taking pictures like we were seven.

Sam and Emrys barrel riding

Me and Sam being ridiculous

It was a long day and an even longer drive home. We drove by two accidents on the way home; one of them involving about 10 cars. Fortunately, we made it home safely. I don't know if I would go to the wine festival again, but it was a wonderful afternoon with friends.