Without exception, we are trying to get the cheapest tickets possible for every ballgame. Before we left on Wednesday I checked the availability of tickets at each team’s official website. As I suspected, there were plenty of the cheapest tickets available for the Orioles, Blue Jays, Tigers, Indians, and White Sox. I thought about pre-ordering these tickets online, just for the peace of mind of having them, but I realized that the combination of convenience charges, handling fees, and shipping fees (yes, there is a $2.50 “shipping fee” to print your tickets out on your computer) equaled or surpassed the face values of the tickets I wanted to buy. There is a technical term for this, but as this is a family friendly blog, I will refrain from using it. In case you are curious, the cheapest available tickets for these games are $8 (Orioles), $9 (Blue Jays), $12 (Tigers), $9 (Indians), and $20 (White Sox). We will be purchasing tickets for these games the good ole fashoined way– at the box office on game day.
Note: I couldn’t find any available Phillies tickets for under $42. I guess winning a World Series really energizes your fan base. Thankfully the Phillies offer Standing Room Only tickets for $15. I also couldn’t find cheap available tickets for the Milwaukee Brewers game; this was the biggest surprise of ticket hunt. It is an interleague game against the nearby Chicago White Sox, but I should have been able to find three tickets for under $100 a piece. We’re just going to have to wait and see what happens with Milwaukee. This situation may end up turning into a second Its Not What You Know Its Who You Know post.
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Today was another tough travel day. Thankfully we won’t have anymore of these back to back until the end of the trip. We woke up at 8:00AM. John made us some eggs then took us down to Turner Field so we could take some pictures in front of the stadium. I wish the Braves had been at home while we were in Atlanta, but I’m glad we at least got to see the Hank Aaron and Warren Spahn statues outside the park. We left Atlanta at 10:00AM and arrived in Silver Spring, MD at 9:30PM. We stopped for gas three times. We also parlayed one of these stops into a gourmet dinner at McDonald’s. We are staying with my friend Kendra, who I met while studying abroad in India, tonight and tomorrow night while we watch the Orioles. We’re also going into Washington D.C. tomorrow for a little sight seeing.
Manuel's Tavern in Atlanta
Disclaimer: I am not a professional beer critic, nor do I claim to be one. I know what I like and I know what I don’t like, but some of the subtleties of judging beer still elude me. This portion of the blog is designed more to document my experiences drinking good beers than to critique the beers themselves.
The first local beer I had on this trip was at John’s house. It was the Terrapin Brewery‘s Sunray Wheat Beer. According to the label it is brewed with Tupelo Honey from the Savannah Bee Company. I have tried a lot of wheat beers, and I can’t say that this was one of my favorites, but it was exactly what I needed after 14 hours in the car. It also paired quite nicely with the amazing burgers that John made.
The rest of my Atlanta beer experience took place at Manuel’s Tavern on Highland Avenue. Manuel’s is a great neighborhood bar that has been an Atlanta institution since 1956. The first beer I had here was the SweetWater 420 Extra Pale Ale. The 420 is SweetWater’s flagship beer and their best seller. I thought it was quite good– not very bitter for a pale ale, easy to drink, with some very slight fruity undertones. Apparently most of SweetWater’s beers have somewhat provocative names, including 420, Motor Boat, Hummer, and Dank Tank. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is one of the reasons we do not get SweetWater in Texas (the TABC has incredibly arcane labeling restrictions). The other pint I had at Manuel’s was the Atlanta Brewing Company‘s Red Brick Amber Ale. This beer was also delicious. It had a beautiful dark red color and I believe it had some subtle coffee undertones.
Our bartender, Brandon, was a really cool guy. He saw me taking notes and jokingly asked if I was cataloging all of the beers I was drinking. When I replied “yes” he got really excited and brought us tasters of two beers that he thought should not be left off of a beer tour of Atlanta. The first beer was Terrapin’s Rye Pale Ale. It is Brandon’s favorite Atlanta brew, and from the four ounces I had, I can see why he likes it so much. He also brought us samples of Sierra Nevada‘s India Brown Ale. Sierra Nevada is not brewed anywhere near Atlanta, but apparently the current owner of Manuel’s teamed up with Sierra Nevada and this beer is made with a recipe that he developed. Truth be told I had never even heard of an India Brown Ale before tonight. I was just excited to try a new style of beer, so I was pleasantly surprised when it tasted great.
The first day of the trip has been an unparalleled success. I hope that the rest of the journey can follow in its footsteps.
Trips like this are not possible without people like John Allen. John is a friend of ours from the University of Texas, but he was raised in Atlanta, Georgia and his family still lives there. He happened to be back at home in Georgia this week and graciously offered up his house as a place for us to crash tonight. Free/cheap places to stay are high on our priority list, so of course we accepted his offer. We would have been happy with any kind of accommodation he could have provided, but John went so far above and beyond the call of duty that it merits special mention. When we arrived at his home around 10:15PM he had hamburgers waiting for us. They were home-cooked, half-pound monstrosities topped with sauteed mushrooms, avocados, lettuce, and onions. Simply delicious. After we had eaten our fill, John took us to a local tavern and introduced us to beers from all three of Atlanta’s local/regional craft breweries. To top it all off, he insisted on paying for all of our beers. It was Southern Hospitality at it’s very best, and I hope that I can repay John with similar hospitality in the near future.
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Whataburger
Today was one of our few intense travel days. We left Houston at 8:30 AM and arrived in Atlanta around 10:00 PM. We stopped for breakfast at a Whataburger in Orange, TX for 20 minutes at 10:30AM, but other than that we only stopped to get gas: once in Lafayette, LA at 12:30 PM and again 100 miles south of Montgomery, AL on I-65 at 5:00PM. The Whataburger we stopped in was one of the nicest I have ever seen. There was sports memorabilia hanging on the walls, including a Wayne Gretzky jersey, a Troy Aikman Jersey, and a David Carr Jersey (One of these things is not like the other ones…). We each drove one full tank of gas. I took the first shift, followed by Andrew, and then Eric, who drove the home stretch to Atlanta through some light rain. We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the car for lunch, and they tasted fine even though Eric accidentally used the loaf of bread as a pillow for a solid two hour stretch.
The Shoestring Catch 