Durham

On Redefining the Word "Delay"

Punk is dead. Here is its corpse.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Durham, NC



Outside the Game:
My gate was unfortunately by the GBGB restaurant. I had suppressed the information that the guy who owned the naming rights to CBGB decided that Newark Airport was the place to open his theme restaurant with the name. Because nothing says punk rock like Newark Airport and mid-level eatery. Of all the ludicrous and offensiveness of this place was the fact that it had a record store at the entrance. Because who in their right mind is going to go vinyl shopping in an airport? It was too much. Anger increased to fury and dissipated to apathy in a way I found uncomfortable.

I was heading out straight from work for my North Carolina trip. To hit all the parks I wanted, I had to take an extra day on Friday, so it was a Thursday evening when I headed out to Newark airport. The only problem was that there was a tropical storm racing me to North Carolina, and my flight got delayed before I even left work.

So it was a more leisurely trip to Newark Bald Eagle God Bless America Airport than usual. My flight was delayed to 10 PM by the time I got to the airport itself. Given the delays and the packed flight, I upgraded to first glass for next to nothing and went to get something to eat.

We boarded for a 10 PM departure, and I settled into my comfy seat. And then, instead of pulling away from the gate, we got delayed to an 11:30 PM departure, and, in a first for me, the pilot just let us off the plane and told us to come back in an hour. And so I did, to wander around, because we got delayed to a 12:30 AM departure.

This was a functional problem, because the information I had available said all the rental car places at Raleigh-Durham Airport closed from 1:30-4:30 AM. And we were not going to make it. Now, the good news for me is that I chose a hotel right by the airport, so I could just take the shuttle to the airport, and get my car the next day. I ran into a woman who had the same problem, but no easy solution, as she had to drive to a relative's house after the plane landed. I tried to help as much as I could, but it looked like she might have to wait for the rental places to open again. I successfully contacted my rental place and got them to defer my reservation until the next morning.

I also had a chat with the pilot, who was hanging out by the gate after grabbing coffee. He was very open and communicative, which did a lot to improve the situation. He was showing everyone the story on his phone with the real-time weather map. He said he thought we could sneak in and land around 1:30 AM, and he was going to try and do that. And that is all I could really ask, I suppose.

We boarded again a little after midnight to find my seatmate had bailed. Apparently, he was just going down for a day meeting, and at this point, he figured he could just dial in. The pilot's plan did work, the flight itself was uneventful, and we snuck in and landed at about 1:45 AM. I dragged myself out to get the hotel shuttle. I'm sure I must have looked like something checking in, but I got a key, went to my room, and used the bed roughly.  


The Accommodations: 

Microtel Inn & Suites

I got there late and didn't spend a lot of time there, but I was at the Microtel Inn & Suites in Morrisville just outside the airport. The functional bathroom was just off the entrance to the left and the bedroom was in the next room. A small shelf desk was across from the bed, and on the other wall, above the AC unit was a padded shelf and storage drawers. The TV was on the bathroom wall.

But I just got the room, dropped my bags, took my pills, and passed out.

On Missteps Along the Way

Durham Bulls Athletic Park, 2016

Friday, June 24, 2016

Lehigh Valley IronPigs (Philadelphia Phillies) vs. 

Durham Bulls (Tampa Bay Rays)
Durham Bulls Athletic Park
International League (AAA)
Durham, NC
7:05 PM


Outside the Game:
This day began inauspiciously, with what amounts to a complete nightmare scenario for one of these trips, although I didn't quite realize it except in retrospect. You are going to need to know a little bit about how I pack and travel for this to be understandable. No one's forcing you to be here. You can leave at any point, buddy.

So, for the most part, I keep everything to a “two bag” scenario. There's my main carry-on, where I have my clothes and the like. Then there's the smaller backpack "personal item" bag that I have, where I keep my binder, my game bag, electronics, and medicine (on the plane). This is so if I have to check my carry-on for whatever reason, I have all the truly important stuff with my person at all times. Following so far? Great. Gold star.

So I woke up on Friday with not enough sleep and a rental car to pick up. Deciding that I need a break, I booked a surprisingly cheap boutique hotel right across from the ballpark for the evening, and then I shower, groggily pack up, and then plop down in the lobby to wait for the shuttle to the rental car place. This eventually shows up, I throw all my crap into the bus, and we get to the rental car place.

I'm already not in a mood for anything, when I realize that the rental place is an Alamo partner. If you remember my trip to Buffalo ("On Why Alamo Rental Eats Dead Babies After Killing Said Babies"), you'll remember my particular aversion to this rental establishment. Well, first off, I found out that they are, in fact, open 24 hours, so some of that drama from last night was unnecessary. Okay, whatever. New day, fresh start. Happy face, happy face.

Another city, another Accent

I had rented a Kia Rio, or a similar subcompact. I was told they only had full-size sedans that they were going to upgrade me to for free (and those that remember the trip to Kansas City remember my last "upgrade"), I was adamant about getting a subcompact like I wanted. I was told they had nothing at National, but they might have some at Alamo.

Okay, deep breath. Here we go. So I went to the other side of the lot, and met with an extremely helpful man who found me the one compact they had left, a Hyundai Accent in the back of the lot. Hurrah and huzzah. So I got my car, loaded my bag into the car, and then got ready to leave and realized that I needed my GPS to get me to the hotel. So I go and open up my trunk, and... wait, did I load my bag into the car? Bags. I need bags. Where was my backpack?

Look at how I'm not panicking. Look at me! LOOK AT ME! I very calmly went and looked around the car for my other bag. Failing that, I very calmly went over to the National side of the lot where I was talking to their people, and looked for my backpack. I then calmly sprinted back inside the rental building to look for my bag. I then calmly went back to my car and screamed incoherently for a good ten minutes.

So, I was here without my tickets, my schedule, my maps, and my electronics. Thankfully, my medicine was now in my carry-on, but I was not in a good place. Eventually, I think the screaming shook lose a memory of me sitting half-awake in the lobby of the hotel waiting for the shuttle, and I quickly called the hotel back. It turns out they had, indeed, found a black backpack in the lobby, and I could pick it up whenever.

All I had to do was drive back to the hotel... and pick up my GPS. I'm not a navigator by nature. The good news is that the hotel was right by the airport, so I just had to remember a couple of turns, and I'd be there in a five minutes. After screwing it up seven or so times, I was jauntily walking into the hotel lobby and demurely retrieving my backpack, which I abjectly hugged in front of a lot of people.

Back in my car, I was in a better place, a happier place--a place with documentation and GPSes. And I set up my GPS for the short drive to the hotel in downtown Durham. And I drove there with no problem, but the address for the hotel didn't lead anywhere but a grass square that was full of... something. After driving around four or five times, I gave up and flagged someone down. They explained that the festival was hiding the access road, and I had to make a sharp blind right a little ahead. I found the road, and I drove up the road to the hotel, which was right on the square, right across from the ballpark... with a festival in front of it. I nearly started crying at the thought of not sleeping again.

Upon checking in, however, I was assured that the festival didn't start until Saturday and that there wouldn't be any noise that night. I parked my car in the hotel lot, went up to my room, and dumped everything out. I went out to take pictures of the park, and accidentally wandered into the stadium. The main gate of the park was open and unattended, and people were inside, so I figured, what the hell, and went up the stairs. I eventually found a Little League camp going on, so I made my way out after a short time poking around, realized that I passed quite easily for a Little League dad, for whatever universal truth that imparted. I went back to the hotel for a very welcome shower and nap, because I had sweat through my clothes nearly immediately in the North Carolina June.

Durham Athletic Park

I went out to the original Durham Athletic Park (from the movie) and took some pictures there, walked around a little in downtown, and then went back to the hotel for another lay down before walking down to the game.

Boom

On the way out of the park, I didn't make it fast enough, so I got caught inside the park when the fireworks started, and I wasn't allowed out until they were over, while literally being about 100 feet from my hotel. As the game ended so early, I had some time to kill. I dropped everything off in my hotel room, and then wandered around the American Tobacco Campus across from the ballpark. One of the writers from work was a Durham native, and his friends ran an upscale cocktail concern called Alley Twenty-Three downtown. I decided to take a trip down there to see what I thought, but peeking in, I saw a lot of sharp-dressed people in a locals’ establishment. And I, wrinkled and sweaty and not in the mood to turn on any charm around strangers, decided in the better part of valor, and I went back to the hotel to get some needed shut-eye.


The Stadium & Fans: 

Home plate to center field, Durham Bulls Athletic Park

Thanks to Bull Durham, if the Durham Bulls aren't the most famous minor-league team, they are at worst in the top three. This was one of the parks that I had been looking forward to the most, and thankfully, it did not disappoint.

The new Durham Bulls Athletic Park (D-BAP, as opposed to the old wooden Bulls Athletic Park [BAP] from the film) was a relatively new park, located smack dab in the middle of the revitalized area next to the American Tobacco Campus, the old factory that had been converted into shopping, arts, and restaurant spaces. The outside of the park is clad in red brick, and you can walk all around it on city streets. A walk of fame is on the sidewalk outside of third base. There are two entrances: one in center field (Diamond View, right by my hotel) and the main one at home plate. The home plate entrance (at Jackie Robinson Drive and Blackwell Street) is plaza with fountains and baseball statuary the mouth, in front of the team store, which is flanked by the two entrance gates and stairs up to the park. A bat company store is to the right of the entrance, and the suite entrance is to the right. The ticket booths run along the wall by the fan walk.

The main entrance stairways all empty out onto a main promenade that runs all the way around the park on the outside wall. Behind the seating bowl were most of the concessions, the stores, and the brewery. Oh, yeah, they have their own brewery in the park. You can smell the hops as you walk up the stairs of the main entrance. A landing behind home plate has seating to eat food, as well as bevy of bulls, and an exhibit space. There was something there about the origin of baseball cards in Durham when I was there, with the rest of the exhibit at the local history museum.

A smaller walkway circled the park from inside the seating bowl, separating the lower seats from the upper seats. At the top of the higher seating area there were the luxury boxes and the press box, as well as several party landings. The seating extended out to the wall in left and into right-center field, with a picnic hill near dead center and standing room only along the left field wall to center. The main scoreboard was built into the "Green Monster" in left field, next to a manual scoreboard. An auxiliary digital scoreboard ran the length of the low wall in right.

There is a plaza in left field with more restaurants. If you climb up to the top of the green monster, you can stand beneath the iconic "Hit Bull, Win Steak" sign. Right field has "Jackie's Landing", the Home Run Patio, and the Budweiser Picnic Area, which sits in front of the "Wool E. World" kids’ area. The outfield view is dominated by condos and business spaces that sprang up around the popular park. Also scattered through the park are baseball reliefs shared with the Bulls' sister stadium in Toyama Japan.

Wool E. Bull E.

Wool E. Bull is the beloved bull mascot. He is greeted by cheers and adoration wherever he goes, and spends most of his time in the stands or running the between-inning activities with the other human fun crew. These endeavors are befitting the AAA and somewhat more complex than the regular minor-league fare. Of course, there are callbacks to the movie, most notably with the Durham Bull Racers, where super-sized, felt-costume versions of the main film characters do their race around the park. The grounds crew even gets into the act, with the "Diamond Cutters" getting a dance routine during their work at the start of the seventh inning.

Durham Bull Racers

The Bulls are incredibly popular, so the park is usually packed, but these are baseball fans first, to be sure. They were knowledgeable and into the game and not just standard minor-league families looking for a distraction for the evening. This town bleeds blue.


At the Game with Oogie: 

Movie scoring

Sometimes you find yourself looking in a mirror that you don't want to see. I headed to the front gate a while before the stadium was to open, and I found people already there waiting. It turns out they were hardcore autograph hunters.

I had run into their ilk at both Spring Training league strips. You can spot them, with their three-ring binders and endless supplies of Sharpies. Seeing my game bag, they assumed I was one of them, and asked me if I knew what IronPigs were signing, but after I told them I had no idea, they started to ignore me. People came and went from their group, after updates on who was in the lineup, who was more likely to sign, and who people were looking for. Their three-ring binders were thrown open, cards extracted and transferred to smaller binders they would use to hunt the actual signatures, and then they'd be off talking again. Some visiting IronPigs signers even stopped in to share info, and it seems that team affiliation was not a limiting factor in the fraternity. They knew all the security personnel by name. They all got pre-screened before the gates were opened. And as soon as the call came in, they were gone like a flash into the park and to the dugouts to get their signatures.

Now, as much as I'd probably like to judge them, I guess I find myself not in a particular place to do so, given that they at least lived here and hadn't traveled this far for the privilege. So it goes.

Angus and cheese sandwich

I had a seat in the last row of the lower seating area by first base. The place was packed, and it was mostly families around me. I grubbed out on an "angus and cheese" sandwich, and then a foot-long hot dog to wash it down.


The Game: 

First pitch, IronPigs vs. Bulls

If this AAA game between the Bulls and the IronPigs were a weather report, it would be "Brief, with scattered scoring." It was a pitchers’ duel, for the most part, with the players going through most of the game like a cabbie getting a flat rate for the trip.

The IronPigs went in order in the first, but the hometown Bulls started the game with a double. On a groundout to short, the runner made it to third, and then scored on a two-out single. Another single made it first and third, but a fly out to right ended the first at 1-0, Bulls. The song remained the same in the second, with the Pigs going in turn, but the Bulls had a one-out double who made it to third on a wild pitch, but was stranded. 

And that was pretty much it until the sixth. There were two hits combined for both teams, and that was about it. In the top of the sixth, however, the IronPigs started a two-out rally with a walk and then a triple to bring him in. A single followed to score the runner to make it 2-1 Ironpigs, but the runner got picked off first to end the scoring. And then to the eighth, basically, with two Bulls baserunners to show for the interim.

The top of the eighth began with a walk and a wild pitch to get the runner to second. A ground-out to second got him to third, and he was brought in by a gutsy bunt single. The speedster bunter stole second and was brought in by a two-out single to left. But the scoring ended there, at 4-1 IronPigs. Both teams went in order until the bottom of the ninth, when the Bulls decided to try and come back to win it. A single started the bottom of the frame, but a grounder to second erased the lead runner, and two quick outs ended the game, a 4-1 loss for the hometown Bulls.


The Scorecard: 

IronPigs vs. Bulls, 06/24/16. IronPigs win, 4-1.

If there was any part of the experience at DBAP that was a little underwhelming, it was the full-color, half-tabloid program on magazine paper. But the program was free (rare for AAA), and the scorecard, in the centerfold) was on good paper stock. While about a third was taken up by ads, the scorecard was still spacious and easy to write on and use, so I can't really call it all that underwhelming.

From a scoring perspective, the game was a bit blah. There wasn't anything particularly out of the ordinary or controversial. It was a pitcher’s game, to be sure, but the pitchers weren't all that overpowering. So it goes



The Accommodations: 

Aloft

I had originally looked into staying at another boutique hotel in town that was built in an old bank and is an art space as well--I stayed when down there for business, but it was going for something like $800 for the night. So, while I liked that hotel, I didn't like it all that much.

Not that the newly open Aloft wasn't fighting for hipster hotel title tooth and nail. They didn't have a check-in desk. Oh no, there was a circular check-in station in the middle of the lobby, in between the trendy bar and the trendy restaurant. 

My room was boutique hotel 101. Dimly mood lit, the entrance led off to the spacious bathroom, with sliding partitions in the bathroom with glass shower and counterless wash basin. The flat screen was on the wall in the other room, above the wall-length wooden counter, ending in the trendy desk. The comfy bed had a local art headboard, and, of course, pixel art pillows, matching the pixel art window shade over the window, looking over the square below. I could just about see into the left field entrance of the park from where my room was.

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2016: The Carolinas