I decided to wait until after our second game of MLB Spring Training before posting about both of them, so I could compare them for my faithful readers. Our first game was on Saturday night in West Palm Beach: the Washington Nationals' home stadium for Spring Training, called FitTeam Stadium. The second game was on Monday afternoon in Jupiter: the St. Louis Cardinals' home stadium for Spring Training, called Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium. The first stadium was pretty new, and it was a great venue for baseball. The second game was at an older stadium, and the sun definitely made it a less pleasant experience. This was my first time experiencing MLB Spring Training. I used to be a huge fan of the Atlanta Braves, but then life became too busy to go to games on ... read more

So it's Spring Break time, and this year I decided that it was time to do the stereotypical thing for the week: head to south Florida. Specifically, I'm finally going to check out South Beach, but not for the party scene or even for the beach life. It's home to the largest concentration of Art Deco architecture in the world. And my loyal readers will remember how much I am in love with Art Deco. That is my motivating factor, and I was able to convince my buddy Jack to take the trip with me. It turns out that he has relatives in the area, so we're not going to have to pay for any lodging for the time we're in the Miami area. That's even more motivation to go to this destination. The first two ... read more

The third day of our trip saw us visit our third college football stadium: Utah State University in Logan, Utah. And frankly, the third time was definitely the charm. This school had the best stadium views of any of the schools we visited in Utah. They all had mountains to be seen, but the ones at Utah State were the highest, the snowiest, and the best, in both our opinions. We visited Logan on the way from Salt Lake City to Boise. For those of you looking at a map, it might not appear to be directly on the route between these two cities, and you would be correct. But it was only about 25 minutes added to our trip, and since I don’t know whether I will ever be in this part of the country ... read more

What to say about Utah? Lots. But before we get to that, let me tell you how we got here. I realized early on that if I was going to plan this trip, it was going to be a lot more fun if I invited someone along. And I also realized that I was going to be spending basically the same amount of money while I was here, whether I was alone or with someone else. Because hotels and rental cars don’t care if it’s just one person using their service, or two. The only thing that would take extra money was the flight out to Salt Lake City, and once I found cheap flights, it was pretty easy to ask someone to come along. Enter my friend Nick. His only task was to get us ... read more

I always enjoy learning new vocabulary words when I travel abroad, especially when they're immediately useful. But la canicule is not one of those words I wish I had to learn. Another thing I learned from the Biosphere park today was the origin of the Humidex, something I had heard about in my previous Canadian adventures but just thought was a weird way to refer to what we call the "heat index" in the States. It was also 'fun' to find out how that whole system works--I had no idea how those forecasters got the heat index, but now I know the way it works. So, in Fahrenheit, the temperature made it up to 91 (though I saw at one point on my phone it was 95), and the heat index was 110. I'm still in ... read more