Big Day

It's been a long but good day. The weather was perfect ... sunny ... 80 degrees ... low humidity ... light breeze ... perfect. And I had a lot to do.

This morning I walked into town for the farmer's market. Nice walk listening to Fruit Bats' new album, Spelled in Bones. That album has just clicked with me and it's sounding great.

The after a quick lunch, I took my 3-year-old son to a Monster Truck Jamboree in Essex, VT. I had never been to a monster truck show but my kid is nutty for the trucks. So, I thought it would be a big hit.

While the trucks are actually racing, it is a lot of fun and exciting. However, the races only last about three seconds. Then it's a five-minute wait until the next race. People say baseball involves a lot of waiting in anticipation of sudden excitement. Well, baseball looks frantic compared to monster truck racing.

But my son was a trooper and watched for a hour or so. But then a fight broke out between the people behind us and the people further down in our row. Once they started standing, pushing each other, screaming "fucking bitch" and running for security guards, we were out of there. I don't think my son understood what was going on but if it escalated any further, it was going to spill right into our seats.

So, we went around the booths and checked out the little rides and souvenier shops before heading home. It was a fun to see something different but the crowd was difficult to deal with. I always thought monster truck shows were for little kids (like a Wiggles show or something). But there were a lot of shady adults there that were drunk, antagonistic and waaaaaay too into it. I would have expected that during the evening session but it was weird to see that behavior in the early afternoon.

After that, we headed home to see my wife and daughter before all of us went to a friend's house to pick blueberries. The berry bushes are peaking around here right now and tasting great.

Then after dinner, it was off to the Mountaineers' game. We left at the bottom of the seventh with the good guys losing 7-0. The entire game turned in the bottom half of the second and the top half of the third.

In the bottom of the second, the Mountaineers had runners on second and third with their best hitter coming to bat. It was looking promising. However, three strikeouts later, the Mountaineers were retired without scoring. Then in the top of the third, the Swamp Bats posted seven runs on the board including a moral crushing grand slam. Big swing in the game.

The final game of the NECBL northern division series will be played tomorrow night in Keene. The winner will play Newport (regular season and playoff champs of the southern division) starting on Monday. If the Mountaineers beat Keene tomorrow, they will play at Newport on Monday before coming home for a game on Tuesday.

However, even with the lost tonight, it was a great day with lots of activity. And I'll sleep well tonight.