Last night the Kansas City Royals beat the New York Metropolitans – Mets for short – in the first game of the World Series. They did it in fourteen innings played over five hours in fifty-five degree weather. The last time a World Series game went that many innings was in 2005 when the White Sox beat the Astros in game three. (The White Sox swept the Series in four games.) That game lasted five hours and forty-one minutes. It hasn’t always been this way. In 1916, the Red Sox beat the Brooklyn Robins – aka Dodgers – in fourteen innings. That game lasted 2:32.
Tilikum Crossing
With great fanfare, Portland opened its new bridge across the Willamette River. The Tilikum Crossing, or “Bridge of the People,” is open to pedestrians, bicyclists, buses, streetcars, light rail, and emergency vehicles. Private automobiles and trucks are not allowed on the bridge.
The name comes from the Native-American Chinook Jargon, meaning people, tribe or family.
Atlas Obscura
Ever wonder about package delivery before Amazon? Do you know why millipedes in Sequoia National Park glow in the dark? Maybe a cafe shaped like a camera, where you can sit inside and look out through a lens would make you want to travel to Seoul, Korea? Want something that will help you to spend more time on the Internet? The answer is Atlas Obscura.
We Love Our Dogs
Yes, everybody loves dogs. A person’s dog is part of the image one wants to present to others. In Portland, it’s common to find water bowls outside the entrances to businesses.
After years of planning and work, the city of Portland officially opened the South Waterfront Greenway in what was previously a heavy industrial area.
Late last May the fences came down from around the new sod. Here’s what it looked like: lush green grass.
Perfect for walking your dog. Here’s what it looks like less than two months later.
Water Fight
California’s San Joaquin Valley produces 25% of our nation’s table food using 1% of the nation’s land. Grapes – table, raisin and wine – cotton, nuts – especially almonds and pistachios – lettuce, citrus, tomatoes are among the more than 250 crops grown in the area. Pretty impressive for what is basically a desert. But it’s using up what water it has available.
Country Hardball
During the Independence Day weekend, the downtown plaza in Sonoma (population 10,600) was filled with people enjoying the holiday entertainment and browsing the surrounding shops and restaurants and wine-tasting venues. Two blocks beyond the plaza, three hundred baseball fans watched the Sonoma Stompers take on the San Rafael Pacifics. The finale was a Sunday double-header: afternoon game in Sonoma, then a thirty-mile ride to San Rafael for the evening contest. The Pacifics won both.