Day 30: Colorado

Today was our venture into the Mountain Time Zone, as we watched the Colorado Rockies play the San Francisco Giants at Coors Field in Denver, CO. Josh Fogg was on the hill for the Rockies, and worked 7 solid innings. The Rockies had a home run from Matt Holliday, and won by a score of 5-3. Variance has indeed caught up with me, as Ben went with the coin-flipping technique to pick the Rockies tonight, so he now trails only 12-10 in picking games on our trip.

Coors Field was a very neat ballpark. One cool feature was a purple ring around one of the higher rows in the upper deck seats. This marking signified exactly 1 mile in altitude above sea level. Our seats were only $4, as we sat in the Rock Pile about 550 feet away from home plate in center field. The view was great and we could clearly see balls and strikes being directly behind the pitcher.



On our way to the stadium, we had another encounter with the law. A policeman in charge of crosswalks stopped us halfway across an intersection to have the following conversation:
Policeman: "This is Denver, and here, you wait for your traffic signal or your policeman to wave you through an intersection."
Ben: Sorry, I thought you had already started to signal for us to cross.
Policeman: You got a bit of a head start on me. Next time, it will be a $60 citation, and I don't think you want to pay $60.
Unreal, there were literally no cars coming on the street and he had started to walk into the street when we took one step off the sidewalk, not to mention that a jogger had passed us and was half way into the street, but got no such attention from the police officer.

The drive from Kansas City to Denver was enthralling, the plains just kept on going, and the 600 miles passed relatively quickly, as we made the total trip in about 9 hours. This included a nice stop in Oakley, KS for Subway lunch. Then, shortly after crossing into Colorado, we stopped at a rest area with a nice grassy knoll on which we played catch for a while. It was our only physical activity of the day, and felt good despite the howling wind that we had to negotiate.

Here are the statistical updates:
1- end of day odometer: 28,816
2- miles traveled today: 667
3-miles traveled total: 12,173
4-states traveled in today: Missouri, Kansas, Colorado
bonus stat: entering the Rockies game, pitcher Josh Fogg was 0-27 at the plate, but his RBI single in the 5th ended the rut at the plate, putting his average at a cool .036 on the year.