Christopher and I love baseball. He is a Padres fan, of course, having grown up here in San Diego, and I’ve been a Braves fan for years. However, since I’m now a resident of America’s Finest City, I’ll be supporting the Padres…except when they play my team, of course.

This year, the Padres are expected to not entirely suck for the first time in years (but the Braves probably will—damn you AOL). While some of this is due to the trades of the off-season and the healing of some injured players, I think the team will do better because of their new ballpark—PetCo Park.

We’ve been watching as construction continues on the park. Every time we’re anywhere near the Gaslamp District downtown, we walk over to the site to see what new bits have been added. Though we never broke into the construction site (unlike back in Columbus with Nationwide Arena—3 forays there, thankyouverymuch), we’ve been sorely tempted.

Finally, on 06 March, we got the chance to see inside. The park was opened that day (and the day before) for the general public. Free. Well, you were asked to bring donations to animal charities or food for the (human) Food Bank (we did the latter), but that was it. We went (with out guest Paul) and walked all over the place. It’s pretty cool.

On Wednesday, Christopher sent me an email asking if I was busy Thursday evening. I said “no” and he said not to make plans—he was taking me on a date. That date turned out to be going to the first ever baseball game in PetCo Park! It was the SDSU Aztecs against the University of Houston Cougars—game one of the 2004 Aztec Invitational Baseball Tournament. Cool! The very first game!

One of the issues about PetCo Park is that, being downtown, there is not enough parking. However, there are 3 trolley stops within easy walk of the park so the city has been suggesting taking the trolley to any game there. This was the first game, so it was the first try for the trolley system to handle the increased ridership. We followed the suggestion, and drove to Jack Murphy Stadium where we could park for free for the trolley (the Murph is where the Chargers play [don’t call it Qualcomm, please]—funny that we went to the football stadium to go to a baseball game).

Seems that almost everyone who went to the game had the same idea—take the trolley. The ride took an HOUR (normally less than 30 minutes) because of all the stops between stations due to too many trolleys on the line, but it was still pleasant and everyone was excited about getting to see the park in action.

Got to the park, and climbed up to our seats, in far right field. The view was still great, even in the “cheap seats.”

And right after we got there, the Aztecs got a hit. “Tink!” Ugh…aluminum bats. That is so wrong. By the time you get to college you should switch to the wood, damn it. But besides that it was really cool. The hotdogs were fine and the beer tasted like ballpark beer (weak and over-priced), we were park of a record-setting crowd for a college baseball game (over 40K!) and the underdog Aztecs won.

The trip back, however, was more eventful. We were waiting for the trolley, and next to us on the platform was a covey of elderly ladies. These were true baseball fans of the first order, and there was not one of them under 65—most were over 70 at least—and just cute as could be. As the trolley pulled up to the platform, a door aligned almost directly in front of us and the ladies. There was a huge crowd waiting to get on, of course, but most were polite. The door opened, and as the ladies started forward this young guy (probably about 23-25) tried to jump in front of me and then them. Well, that pissed me off so I grabbed the guy’s arm and told him to show some respect and let the ladies get on first. He got very ugly and started calling me names in that obnoxious pseudo-ghetto speak that suburban white boys use way too much these days (and Blondie couldn’t have gotten much whiter). “Bee-yatch! Who the fuck do you think you are?! Let go of me bee-yatch! Don’t disrespect me…”

Christopher, who is about as non-violent as you can get, looked like he was going to beat this kid. And actually he had a hand on him for a moment (and C was at least 6 inches taller, btw). I got between them and told C it wasn’t worth it. We got on the trolley (after the ladies), and when the kid got on he kept up the verbal abuse calling me “nasty old hag” and the like. I just kept distracting C so that he wouldn’t pulverize the kid. That worked—he missed the “nasty old hag” comment. When I told him about it later he said it was a good thing he didn’t catch that or he would have beaten that kid no matter how much I protested.

Kind of sweet, in that cro-magnon sort of way that guys occasionally show. Frankly, I would have loved for him to deck the kid, but the kid would have probably sued or something (especially since I think C would have knocked him cold or at least knocked out some teeth–with one punch). Darn.

The elderly ladies were really funny on the train. They had seen everything of course, so they were making comments like, “Let him come down this way—we’ll show him what old ladies can do!” and one of them stuck out a leg into the aisle. Unfortunately, the obnoxious kid exited from some other door. Too bad.

My friend Paul came to visit us last week. It was a great visit. We did all sorts of fun San Diego things.

We went to the zoo. If you come to SD, you have to go to the zoo. We actually joined because it was $86 for a membership for two people, and the regular entrance fee is something like $32 per adult, so now we can go every time we’re at Balboa Park if we want. While there we tried to see every cat, being big cat fans…and fans of big cats. Unfortunately the tigers were mostly hiding, but we got a great view of a black leopard.

We did see the Arabian Wild Cat, which, in case you’ve never seen one, is actually a housecat in a cage. I’m not kidding. There is no way that thing is a ferocious wild cat. It looks just like the cat on the Cat Chow bag. Benito, one of our cats, is probably bigger and definitely more evil.

On one day I took Paul up to the Cabrillo National Monument, so he could see the view. Cabrillo, in case you don’t know, is on the very tip of Point Loma, which is that little point of land that points straight south on the map and separates the Pacific from San Diego Bay. From there you get a gorgeous view of the Pacific, the bay, the city, Coronado, and even Mexico.

Then we went down to the tidepools on the Pacific side and looked for crabs and the like. It was a gorgeous afternoon. Hot in the sun, but the ocean breeze was perfect. I think we could have sat on that rock for hours.

Anyway, during the visit we also ate out a lot (including evil desserts at the City Deli), and just blew my diet all to hell. It was fantastic. We also went to bars. We did the Friday night happy hour at the bar atop the Park Hotel. It’s called the Park Hotel because it is right next to Balboa Park. The bar is on the roof, but the hotel is only about 7 stories high so I wasn’t expecting much. Yeah, it’s 7 stories high, but it’s also on a mesa that overlooks downtown and the Bay. The view was lovely.

The fact that we had to take the stairs down (the ancient elevator was acting up) didn’t even bother us after that view.

The next afternoon we went to a place called Bourbon Street; a lovely gay bar with a cute courtyard in the middle. We were just going to hang out and have cocktails with a guy Christopher works with and his partner, but we stayed long enough to get to participate in the early evening fun: Bingo. We played bingo with a transvestite nun caller with a voice like grating steel and a raunchy sense of humor. S/he also decided to pick on Christopher (probably the only straight guy in the place) after he called her a name for not calling the number he wanted. Hoot!

We’ll be going back for more bingo, I’m sure. It was tons of fun and next time I want to win something!

On Paul’s last afternoon here we did what everyone should do at least once on a visit to San Diego, even if it is touristy as hell: we had a drink at sunset at the Hotel Del.

For that Paul and I took a water taxi to Coronado (and back). Have I mentioned that the Coronado Bridge is just way the hell too high for me to drive across? Well, it is, so the water taxi was a great option–even if it was only a couple of days after the capsizing of the one in Baltimore. But that one was a pontoon boat and ours was a regular boat with a keel and everything, and the bay was nice and calm so no worries. In fact, it was over 70 when we left and bright sunshine. The water taxi is $5 per person, one way, from just about any place in the bay to just about any place in the bay. So we went from Seaport Village (downtown) to the marina just across the street from the Hotel Del. That meant going under the bridge (very neat). We asked the “driver” to pick us up at a certain time for the return, and headed for the hotel. A quick walk from the marina and one frou-frou drink later and you’re all set for the sun to do its thing. It did, perfectly, over Point Loma, and we sighed and walked back to the marina. The return trip was chillier (the temps drop fast after sunset) but still beautiful with the city all lit up.

Hard to believe he was here for a week. It just didn’t seem that long.

Just glad the weather was nice for him, ‘cause you know we always worry about that ‘round here.