mark feldman's summer trip grand canyon part 4 - august 3-4

the way up via the bright angel trail began at 5:45 AM by the light of the moon, and continued for nearly six hours.  on our left we have the last view of the river *sniff*.  on our right we have me looking weary about halfway up.  and below we symbolize the increasingly distant views of the gorge below and the rim above.  the tourists gradually got more numerous, and i emerged from the depths at 11:30!  it's just so hard to capture how immense it all was in these pictures.  i treated myself to a milkshake, and collapsed in the lodge most of the afternoon, coming out that evening for one last sunset...

the next day i drove to phoenix for a brief overnight stay and my first ballgame in three weeks.  phoenix seemed to be like los angeles except without the movies and mountains, and 30 degrees hotter.  in other words, nowhere i'd want to live.  bank one ballpark (the BOB)  wasn't bad though, once you got over the sensation of being inside an airplane hangar.

i discovered upon entering, much to my delight, that the evening's pitchers were Randy "Big Unit" Johnson for arizona and Josh "Yankee Killer" Beckett for florida!  (he beat the yankees twice in last year's world series - also much to my delight at the time).  i bristled with excitement at the upcoming display of masterful pitching i was about to witness.  NOT!  the diamondbacks plastered Beckett for 8 runs in 4 innings, while the marlins scored 5 off of Johnson in 6 innings.  final score: 11-6.  oh well.  i still had fun, and my seat, thanks to the advice of my brother's invaluable book he gave me in may, cost me one measly buck (think upper right hand corner of above picture - i moved down of course, there were plenty of empty seats).

finally - the golden state

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