Day 111 – Catwalks

Had to put in a couple hrs at Buffalo greyhound terminal before making my way to catch a city bus to the airport. There are city buses that take you from the greyhound station to the airport however it only starts running around 5:30 am. There is an earlier bus you can catch at like 4:25 if you are willing to walk 10-15 mins to where you need to catch it.

Catching the 4:25 bus is the only bus that gets to the airport early enough for the 1st flights of the day. My flight wasn’t actually until 7:15, but I figured I might as well take the early bus so at least I know where I have to walk to catch it for future trips. Plus I like the walk and it is either wait at the bus station or wait at the airport.

When I got to the airport I got some bad news as I found out USAir was now charging $15 if you want to check even one bag. Now my luggage is small enough to carry on, but the problem is I have liquids for my contacts that are too big to carry on so I have to check them. All this does is encourage people to carry more bags on and the overhead bins are already always stuffed full. I don’t see why they don’t just raise the prices of flights and hide the cost there. It is kind of annoying to show up for your flight and then have to pull out your credit card to incur another expense.

I had about a 45 min layover in Philadelphia before continuing on to Tampa. Got into Tampa and unfortunately I did not have enough time to get from the airport to downtown Tampa to catch the next greyhound to St. Petersburg. The next one after would get me there way too late since there was a game that night. There actually is a city bus that goes across the bay but it only runs a couple times a day at commuter times. So I had to take a shared van which wasn’t too much more then what the greyhound + city bus would cost me.

Once I was all checked into my hotel it was off to find my way to the ballpark. I had about a 20 blocks east and 8 blocks south walk ahead of me. It was hot and very humid and it was nice knowing that they had a dome.

The ballpark is not much to look at either from the outside or the inside and I can’t exactly blame the fans for not wanting to come out when the Rays were bad. Now that they are good it should be a different story and they should come out regardless of the stadium. The fact that they have catwalks that are in play is ridiculous. Especially since for one of them if a ball hits it, the ball is still considered live and in play. For those of you who follow the Jays you may remember McDonald catching one off the catwalk a couple yrs ago.

It is amazing how much stadiums copy in between innings entertainment from other stadiums. Now I don’t know who did it first, but for those of you who have been to Rogers Centre this year and have witnessed one of the Jays For Justice cartoons well TB has a similar one. The animation looks like it is done by the same company, but at least it was a different storyline.

While I’m on the subject of in between innings, the one I can’t stand being copied is the Milwaukee Sausage Race. Other stadiums have their twist to it, some are ok, others lame. For example, Washington races Presidents, Toronto did Chili’s last year (thankfully they quit it this year), Texas races dots (yes, dots), TB races pepsi products, etc. The Milwaukee Sausage Race is the only good one b/c it is an original.