Opening Day 2009!

So it's finally here: Opening Day 2009. Our yearly get-together with decades-long friends. Our one time a year when we ALL take the same time off and enjoy a brief visit to reminisce, drink good beer, watch baseball, and generally have an outstanding time with one another.

Thursday I worked 8-4, er, actually just 8-3. Then it was the 7+ hour drive northward to crash at Duke's in Mt. Vernon, OH. Fellow local beer nut Dale traveled with me this year, so he arrived at my house and we loaded up the Jeep and we took off.

Friday, we made for a 9am departure to arrive at our pregame destination: Great Lakes Brewing Co. The brewpubs to end all brewpubs. Call me a homer, but it's my favorite. Yes, even above my adored Foothills. We arrived before Great Lakes opened. So, it was a quick walk-over to Dave's Supermarket around the corner for some to release their coffee and for me to purchase 5 containers of brown Stadium Mustard. I needed to stock up.

Finally a table for 12 is acquired and we commence the drinking. And eating. But mostly drinking. Their fine, fine beverages were consumed with almost reckless abandon. Every one on the board was ordered...even my arch-nemesis Eliot Ness Vienna Lager. My least favorite. But I sucked it up and ordered a pint just to do it. Just to be stubborn and give Art the mental finger. Just to say I did so. It's on the board, after all.


So a $427 bill later, we make our way to Jacobs Field. The GLBC Fatty Wagon was on the fritz or something, so a smaller van was being utilized to carry revelers across the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge to the ballpark. It didn't carry as many people. So the line didn't reduce by very much with each roundtrip. Frustrated, and only out $1 each for the fare, we made Dave's underage son drive all of us in their own minivan. It made for cozy surroundings and some accidental touching where strangers shouldn't, but we made it across in one piece. And besides, we're not strangers so it's not inappropriate touching.

The game started, and then promptly stalled with a rain delay. Are you serious? ANOTHER year of crappy weather. Well, the rain chilled to the core more so than the SNOW of 2007, so we said the heck with this and left. Back across the bridge. We checked into our hotel, then made our way to The Winking Lizard for some munchies and some more beer. Here, after the Cavaliers game on TV was over, we discover that 60-odd people out of 41,000 had actually stayed in the ballpark and the game was back on after a 3-hour break. Sadly, the Toronto Blue Jays had their way with us afterward and a 13-7 score in favor of the bad guys was the horrifying result.

After the Lizard and the end of the game on TV, most of us went off to bed, but a few intrepid souls made one final trip of the day to Great Lakes Brewing for a dessert nightcap: both beer and ice cream. Blackout Stout, Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, and that delicious Edmund Fitzgerald Porter ice cream were on the docket. It took quite some pushing and determination to down that final beer of the long day, and we for the most part did not indeed succeed. Back to the hotel to wake up our sleeping roommates and then crash. And crash HARD.

A wonderful day spent with great friends. I so look forward to seeing everybody in one setting. And this year's trip did not disappoint.

Fantastic.