One night before the trip, Bryce who drinks Windex woke up and needed some water. Thinking that the container next to him was a bottle of water, he got at least three gulps down before realizing that what he was chugging was, in fact, Windex. Why there was Windex next to his bed (maybe he was cleaning that day?) and how he could have thought it was water will be mysteries until the end of time.

He explained it to me in his own words (via instant messenger) about 10 years ago:

“I had to make a decision — to puke or not to puke. I chose the ladder.”

Yep.

BWDW tore up Washington, D.C.

After our first major haul from Tampa to Atlanta our next stop was Richmond, the home of the Braves’ AAA affiliate. Andy was getting his Braves fix early-on.

We got out of Bryce’s famous “Motel 8” in the heart of the “Dirty-Dirty” and got on the road early.
In the midst of a nine-hour drive and on the heels of an eight-and-a-half hour haul the day before, the control freak in me began to relent. I was tired. I let Andy drive.

I planned on laying down in the back seat and maybe taking a nap. But Andy had other ideas. I love Andy, but he was a terror on that road. The Carolinas never knew what hit them. With NOFX one of the more mellow bands blaring on the stereo, Andy tailgated, passed, yelled at, and generally tormented every Southerner he possibly could.

As we started into the Richmond area, I was riding shotgun and BWDW was in his usual spot in the back seat. Andy had unloaded an ungodly amount of change onto the dashboard and I was trying to navigate. We saw the exit, but there was an exit off of the exit. Andy made a hard right at about 45 a’la Walter Sobjak and the change began to slide.

With the map in my hand, I was a little too late on the draw and about $4.00 in quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies flew across the dashboard flying into the air and/or into my defrost vents.

I hurried to pull as much of the change off the dashboard as possible and, of course, missed the luxury Motel 6 we were scheduled to stay in that night. In the pre-GPS days, we didn’t know that we had passed our hotel, so we kept on going. We found out quickly that there are, in fact, some parts of Richmond travelers like us would rather not be in.

Good times in Richmond! Somehow I was still in a super-happy mood even after my defrost vents were filled with change earlier in the day...

Eventually we regained our bearings, got back almost to the exit we had taken, and saw the Motel 6 on the right hand side of the road, directly across from a neon sign-laden building that advertised itself as the Paper Moon. The Paper Moon seemed like a fine establishment and advertised “Power Hour” from 2-3AM. Again, we weren’t in the greatest part of town, but we were on a budget.

The game in Richmond was interesting for a AAA game. The stark, cold, concrete stadium rose up in two steep tiers and had the capacity for many more fans than it seemed would ever come to a game there.

Highlights from the Richmond Braves game:

1) They played against the Mets AAA team that included former Major League catcher (and all-star) Benito Santiago. At the age of forty-something, Benito was still tooling around the minor leagues. It seemed pretty odd and I can’t say we didn’t heckle him a little about it. Others heckled him even more and in the minor league environment, it looked like Benito was talking directly back at them.

2) There was nearly a brawl — After two or three bean-balls, teams almost came to blows. Good times, good times. I think Benito was in the middle of the brouhaha, too.

3) There was some kind of mascot that had nothing to do with the Braves. He was like a yellow chicken or something. Bryce got friendly with him. BWDW got friendly with a lot of people/things that day and throughout the trip.

The next day, we were all a little sluggish. Despite the drive from Richmond to Baltimore being only 3 hours, we had to get up early because it was a day game for the Orioles vs. the Red Sox. I don’t really remember too much about that day. I think I must have been weary from the traveling. I remember a few things vividly though:

1) Oriole Park at Camden Yards is BEAUTIFUL. What a great place to watch a game. Unless…

2) Unless it is 95 degrees and you are on the top level in left field packed in and crowded around a bunch of sweaty freaking Red Sox fans. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against them, but that day they all seemed so hot and sweaty that I couldn’t help but to be the same. The seats were so far away from the action and, coming off a World Series victory the year before, Red Sox nation basically took over Camden Yards. The heat led to…

3) The first appearance of the phenomenon that became known affectionately as “swamp-ass.” I don’t think I have to explain, but when you’re sitting in a hot plastic seat for more than about nine seconds in the summertime on the East coast, your backside is going to be wet when you stand up. Everyone had it going on and probably everyone was as miserable as we were.

4) The heat also led to the second pair of shorts that Andy ripped. It wouldn’t be the last.
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What do you do when you’re in a strange town and you gotta go. I mean you really have got to go and you don’t even know where a public restroom is, even if you were willing to try it, which (in this case) Andy was not.

The best answer in Baltimore (or any city, for that matter) is to find the nearest large, bustling, nice-looking hotel. I parked the Sierra in the hotel loading zone, as though were were checking-in. Andy hustled into the lobby bathroom and we sat as if waiting for him to check us in.

The nice thing about a bathroom in a lobby of a nice hotel in the middle of the day is that, as long as there isn’t some kind of convention going on, it’s basically the cleanest bathroom you’ll ever find. And as long as you act like you belong, nobody will question you. It’s a fact I’ve proven through years of research.

I think Andy originally named this picture of BWDW "No Regard." I concur.

Fully relieved and with the three-day All-Star Break ahead of us, we decided to try to go crash in Washington, D.C.

BWDW wanted to stay close to the White House. Really close. At a really nice hotel. We were all really tired and the past two nights at the Super 8 in Atlanta and the Motel 6 in Richmond were offset by the Capitol Hilton. Our jaws hit the floor when the lady told us the price.
BWDW pulled out his credit card, cocked his head to the side, and replied cooly, “Charge it to the Game.”
________________

I will say but a few words regarding our night at the Capitol Hilton. The pictures should do the rest of the work for me.

The first thing is that they must have put us in an empty wing of the hotel. I travel a lot for work and I hate people who even talk too loudly next door. The amount of noise coming out of that room must have been heard 5 rooms over. I feel sorry for anyone who was within 2 floors or 10 rooms of us.
I guess Andy and Bryce must have slept a lot more than I thought during that day’s driving because I was completely wiped out and they were rearing to get their party on.

The lampshade, belt, towel tie/cape... a put-together look to be sure. That hotel room didn't know what hit it. "Charge it to the game."

While I crashed out in the corner of the room, BWDW and Andy began their first round of real shenanigans. With a lampshade secured on his head with someones belt and a cape made of a fine Egyptian cotton towel, BWDW turned into a flying Wallenda. I think the pictures tell the story better than I ever could.

What I will encourage a reader to do is to pay attention to the classy outfit. The “cape,” “tie,” and “lampshade” are all critical elements for a man about town in our nation’s capitol city.

The next day, we visited all of the monuments. On what was the hottest and muggiest day of the trip thus far, we decided to parallel park the truck on the side of the road near the river. Washington, D.C. is really a beautiful place in the summer.

In order to keep luggage safe, we had to move it from the back of the truck to the front each time we parked in a public place. The baggage and the cooler fit in the cab, but we had large pallets of Gatorade and water that we had to leave in the back of the truck.

Upon returning to the truck, the water was still intact, but there was no sign of the Gatorade. We hadn’t left it locked up, but it was still a bit of a shock to see ALL 48 bottles of Gatorade completely gone.

It didn’t take us long to find out where our sports drinks had gone. About 2 miles down the road, at an intersection, there was a man in the median. Instead of selling flowers or newspapers as one might typically find, the guy was selling — you guessed it — Gatorade!

Coming soon: The All Star Break, State College, BWDW vs. the Tree, Bitter B makes an appearance, the Mistake by the Lake, and the Big Apple.

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