Quarry House Tavern
We did all of our drinking on this leg of the trip at the Quarry House Tavern in Silver Spring, MD. It bills itself as “Silver Spring’s favorite dive for over 70 years”. I don’t feel comfortable speaking for an entire city, but I certainly thought it was a quality establishment. The Quarry House is a basement bar with low ceilings and lower lighting that attracts an upper 20s to lower 30s crowd. There were some hipsters and colorful characters, but the bar was mostly packed with young professionals. On this particular Friday night there was no space available at the bar and all of the tables were filled with patrons enjoying their favorite brews and the company of good friends.
The Quarry House only has five beers on tap, none of which are local. This greatly disappointed me, and I thought about leaving… until I realized they had a bottled beer selection over 150 strong. I felt a bit like a kid in a candy store. I wanted to try everything, including some pricey Beligan brews, but I stuck to my guns and picked out only local beers to sample. I had two pints, both from the Clipper City Brewing Company, which is based out of Baltimore.
My first beer was the Loose Cannon IPA. It was a strong beer (7.5%) but I did not find it particularly hoppy for an IPA. I could definitely taste some subtle fruity flavors. It was a good beer, but nothing to get too excited about. The other beer I had was the Marzen Lager. This beer was rather average, but almost all lagers are, aren’t they? One of the most exciting things about this bar experience was the beer temperature. Different styles of beer should be served at different temperatures, but few bars I have been to bother with this (especially with bottles). My lager was ice-cold, while my IPA was significantly warmer (as it should be). It was a nice touch that I was not expecting from a “dive bar”.
Tonight was the Major Leauge debut of Orioles uber prospect Matt Wieters. He was supposed to be the focus of the game, but when your starter goes 8+ innings, Luke Scott homers twice, and you win 7-2, people tend to overlook the rookie catcher who goes 0 for four with a strikeout. However, it was one of the most exciting 0 for four performances I can remember. The Oriole faithful were on their feet for every Wieters at bat and chanting “MVP!”. On the very first pitch of the game, Josh Anderson laid down a bunt, which Wieters fielded cleanly and threw to firstbase to record his first Major League assist. I can’t help but wonder if Jim Leyland called that play just to test the rookie’s nerves. It seems like the kind of thing a veteran opposing manager would do to test a young buck’s mettle.
I mentioned that everyone was on their feet for all of Wieters’ at bats, but at least two of these were tailcoat-riding standing ovations. You see, Wieters had the good fortune of hitting behind the red hot Luke Scott, who went 3 for 3 with a walk, a grand slam, and a solo homerun. The crowd might have stood up for Wieters on his own merits, but they were already standing for Scott. They were also in such a good mood from Scott’s antics that they barely noticed when Wieters flied out to end two separate innings.
Another Wieters note: Apparently he has chosen AC/DC’s “Hells Bells” as his at bat music. Wieters certainly has the right to pick any song he wants, but I find this a particularly curious choice. I mean, is there any stronger song/player association in baseball this side of Mariano Rivera/Enter Sandman than Trevor Hoffman/Hells Bells? Maybe Wieters didn’t realize this, or maybe he just really loves Hells Bells and didn’t care. Either way, this is exactly the kind of story that the “real media” would make too much of, blow out of proportion, and drive me crazy with, so I am dropping it immediately.
In a development that surprised no one, and saddend at least me, Dontrell Willis was awful tonight.
We left Silver Spring at 5:00PM. It is only a 30 mile drive to Baltimore, but with rush hour traffic and a thunderstorm, the drive took us the better part of two hours. For some reason I thought we would be fine on traffic since we were driving into Baltimore, but because everything is so close to everything else on the east coast, that also meant we were driving out of D.C. We were delayed because of rain, but that same rain delayed the start of the game, so we didn’t miss anything. It was a very “chicken and the egg” experience.
There was some very convenient $20.00 parking very close to the ballpark, but because this is the budget trip, we parked at a meter on the corner of S. Pine and W. Baltimore in the University of Maryland at Baltimore Medical Center. The meters in Baltimore cost $1.00/hour and run until 8:00PM on Mondays-Saturdays. Since we pulled into our spot at 7:03 we were only on the hook for a $1.00 of parking fees. It was a bit of a hike to the ballpark, but it was worth the money saved. Because of the University, this also felt like a fairly safe location to leave my car. We passed several police officers and many med students in scrubs on our walk to Camden Yards.
Apparently tonight was student night at the ballpark and all of the upper deck tickets were available at a discount with a valid student I.D. Since we are all less than a month out of college, we still have our I.D.s and we took advantage of this deal. All of the upper deck tickets were “sold out”, but we were able to buy $6.00 Standing Room Only tickets. This ended up being the best of all worlds because it was the cheapest ticket we could have bought, and because of the rain, there were plenty of empty seats for us to scavenge.
Something else we did not know (this is starting to become a theme of the trip) is that Friday night is fireworks night at Camden Yards. We were treated to a lovely 20 minute fireworks display after the game. It was a nice, unexpected bonus.
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Lincoln Memorial view of Washington Monument
Kendra took us into Washington D.C. this morning around 10:00AM. We did a lightning tour of the monuments, memorials, and a few of the museums before we had to get back to Silver Spring so we could head to Baltimore for our Orioles game. I have not been to D.C. since I was 15, so the World War II monument was new to me. It is a top notch memorial. I took some pictures of it for my grandfather who served in Europe.
When I asked Kendra what time we should drive into D.C. so that we would avoid rush hour but still get to see everything we wanted, she gave me an inquisitive look and replied, “oh, you want to drive? I always just take the metro.” Public transportation is such a foreign concept to this Texan that I often forget it exists. Austin has a decent bus system, but Houston’s “light rail” is a joke, and we don’t have anything that passes for a subway in our entire great state. We rode the metro from Silver Spring straight to the Mall– it was wonderful. I have to remember this trick for other stops on the road trip.
The Shoestring Catch 