Mmmm. An exciting day indeed.
First, early rise, plenty of studying. 8 hours worth, in fact. Roughly.
Then off to downtown for a baseball game. Of course, early afternoon was awful weather. We had severe thunderstorm warnings all afternoon and on into the evening. But after I got to the park, it only threatened, and missed us to the north, and except for the occasional glance into the gloomy dark sky, the weather couldn’t have been better for a baseball game. And, finally, the home team came through with a quality game.
Big Brad Thompson got the start and pitched well, except for giving up a home run to the opposing pitcher. The offense was on the verge of breaking through all game long, but left several men stranded on base until late in the game when a couple of home runs and a 2-run rally in the bottom of the eighth set up the one-run win. Fun!
Then I battled the crowds (I’ll bet at least half of the 43,000+ there went my way) to the Arch Riverfront, where Fair St. Louis was going on. Just in time, it turned out, as I managed to get down the stairs just as Cyndi Lauper was finishing up her set with Time After Time and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun - the only two Cyndi Lauper songs I would recognize. Frankly, I didn’t realize she was still alive, much less still dying her hair purple and performing. But that was fun, too. And I didn’t have to suffer through any of her recent stuff or anything that I didn’t know. Missed the Goo Goo Dolls last night, though.
Oh, and she is sooooo Brooklyn, every time she spoke I was waiting for an "oye!"
And then fireworks, which were astounding. Awesome. And fun!
Then I realized that I was standing at the riverfront. There were a few thousand people on the Arch steps, and several thousand more on the grassy park under the Arch beyond that. Tens of thousands of people between me and my car. And only two entrances, twenty feet wide. Climb up the stairs, fighting the crowd, across the grassy park, fighting the crowd, up the hill, fighting the crowd, down the hill, fighting the crowd, through the bottleneck, fighting the crowd, then 10 blocks of walking with the crowd. Then home!
Fun.
