1. I followed a circuitous route provided by Google maps to drive from Nyack to Cooperstown today on purpose. I've never been to upstate New York before and thought it would be fun to drive through small towns and see the countryside. Well, as it turns out, that's the only way to get to Cooperstown from Nyack since Cooperstown is a rural town on the southern tip of Lake Otsego. I had one flub up as I wound my way on state highways and country roads past barns and silos, green fields and horses and cattles, past lakes and rivers, and a Girl Scout troop inviting drivers with big signs to a roadside barbecue in the middle of town, but I recovered, and arrived in Cooperstown, already wishing I was staying for several days rather than an afternoon so I could walk around the village more and take more drives into the countryside with ample time to take pictures.
2. I spent over three hours in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. One of the first things I wished was that I could be there with a fellow fan of baseball, preferably someone I grew up with and we could talk now in the Hall of Fame and the museum about the stuff we talked about when we were young. I especially thought of Dad. Not having a companion for the day, the details of the plaques in the gallery and the exhibits in the museum gave way to the Hall of Fame and baseball museum in my mind. I found myself looking less for artifacts (say, the bat Willie Mays hit his 600th home run with) and looking for pictures or videos of moments I have loved most: every hit I ever saw Roberto Clemente stroke, the thunderous home run George Brett hit into the third deck off Goose Gossage in Game Three of the ALCS on October 10, 1980, Kirk Gibson hobbling around the bases after crushing a 3-2 pitch in the bottom of the ninth off Dennis Eckersley to win Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, and more. I found a video of the Gibson homer, but almost everything else I would have enjoyed seeing was triggered by stuff in the museum and I saw my life as a baseball fan, especially from the time I was about eight years old until I was about forty pass before my eyes.
3. While I was away on my visit to Cooperstown, the Deke and Jack had gone to Home Depot where the Deke bought Jack some light rope and hooks. When I arrived back to Adrienne's, Jack took me out on the deck and showed me how he hooked sticks and other stuff onto the end of the rope and lowered them to the ground below and how he hooked stuff down below and pulled them up to the deck. These were rescue missions. Jack loves rescue missions. He also has a lively four year old's imagination for what ropes and hooks and sticks and other stuff become when lowered and raised over the rail of the family deck. The Deke struck gold when she bought him these materials to play with.
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