Baseball Road Trip 2011: Day 8 (Los Angeles to San Diego and back to Los Angeles)

Day 8

June 12th

Woke up a little after eight and came downstairs to a wonderful breakfast of bagels, scrambled eggs, fresh fruit, and orange juice, prepared by Linda and Erwin. We left the house for San Diego at 9:30, and drove two and a half hours to Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres. We arrived at the ballpark over an hour before game time and decided to go get something to eat, rather than go to the game that early. We found a Subway, about 15 minutes from the ballpark, and headed over to Sunset Cliffs to eat our sandwiches. The cliffs provided a beautiful view of the San Diego coast and a comfortable place to eat lunch at a bench. We took off for the game, and found our seats up in the second deck above the left field wall. Our streak of home teams winning came to an end with a 2-0 Padre loss to the Nationals, of D.C, but our string of good, close ballgames did not. We witnessed a tremendous pitchers duel, which held scoreless up until the top of the ninth inning, when the Nationals scratched across two runs, and held on for the victory. Although it was a good game to watch, we decided it’s more fun when the home team wins. After the ball game, we toyed with the idea of going to the San Diego zoo, but decided against it, as it wasn’t worth the $40 each, for less than two hours at the zoo. Instead, we headed back to our home in Hollywood for a quick recoup and turnaround to Santa Monica to walk on the pier, just off the beach. We caught Santa Monica just around sunset, and were taken away by the beauty of the beach, ocean, and the sun disappearing behind the horizon. The boardwalk was filled with people, shops, and carnival rides, and was quite a spectacle. After our walk down the pier, we headed back to the house, only to turnaround for dinner at an In N Out Burger in West Hollywood, a must do, Southern California experience, which I had been craving the whole trip. Peter has been our main city driver, doing most of the driving in LA, and has done a really nice job. He has been navigating his way around without the aid of our GPS, and claims he knows LA like the back of his hand. So far, I can’t argue with him. After dinner, we came home to swim in the pool, where Alex, Riley, and I became got into an intense game of swimming pool-basketball. After swimming, we returned to our loft for a little Rock band and TV before bed. Tomorrow, we plan to leave the house by late morning and head over to my cousin, James’s warehouse/recording studio, where we’ll be staying tomorrow night, to drop our stuff off. James and his girlfriend Destiny live on Olympic street in downtown LA, near the ghetto. Should be interesting. After that, we’re going to have lunch with a family friend of mine, possibly hang out with our friend, Eric Fagerstrom, in the afternoon, who’s in the LA area for pre-season football training, and then head to Dodger stadium for a 7:05 ballgame.