Chapter 1/2 (new pages added Sept.24) of "30-24"
Note: It doesn't come out as good after copying from WORD, some of the fonts are altered from original design.
30-24
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1
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I sat in the Houston International Airport awaiting the flight that would take me to the last baseball double header in Arlington Texas. I had felt a huge sense of accomplishment in arriving on time for this Five-Fifteen Pm departure. I had thought this would be a tight squeeze from the moment I booked and purchased the flight.
I was lucky the Houston Astros game had wound up in the two hour and forty-five minute window—with them beating the New York Mets.
During a hot and humid day indoors, I watched with curious energy as the last out was recorded, I then raced to the corner of Crawford and Congress—where my sedan driver was in his car, gas running and ready to head out to the airport. We had beat the general attendance out of the game because I had positioned myself near the exit while watching the final inning. The game was close enough to be in question so people were not leaving early.
My driver had been the same driver I called on the previous month when I made my first visit to Houston. Ironically, it was the also the third day of the month, and was also a day game, except for this game was on a weekend, and that game was on a Thursday.
Traffic was light on that Sunday, and I took a look at my boarding pass that I had printed out in the airport earlier that morning when I had arrived from Minnesota. I then looked at my remnants of a black travel bag that had already travelled Forty-Thousand Miles through the journey. The bag used to be heavier, but I started throwing things out towards the end of my trip to make it lighter. I also had a black briefcase which had been the best ally to travel with since it could double as a place for extra clothing—along with carrying schedules, game tickets, hotel reservations, car reservations, maps and electronics for my equipment to document the evidence of this streak.
I was dressed in shorts that had the colors of the British Flag, red white and blue. I was also wearing my black number 23 ‘Don Mattingly New York Yankee t-shirt jersey’, I had sandals on, and a black baseball cap that was severely weathered from being to Twenty-Eight different ballparks in the last Twenty Six days.
My stomach was full of pizza I had eaten at the baseball game. At this point of the trip I knew I had gained about thirty pounds in the month. I shot from One hundred and Eighty-Five pounds to Two-hundred and Fifteen. I was going to work that off when I returned home to Canada. Another thing to be gone was the beard dangling from my face that had never been so long in my life.
Heading up Highway Fifty-Nine up North, I started to see clouds in the distance, as we approached the airport more, it was apparent we were going to the eye of a rainstorm. I felt a little uneasy as I paid the driver and cleared through security, all the while I was looking through the glass of the airport to monitor the weather towards my pending gate. It was Four fifteen in the afternoon. My driver had made good time in reaching the airport from ‘Minute Maid Park’ in twenty-five minutes, and I made it through security in only a few minutes as well.
Everything felt ominous from the time I reached the area of the boarding jet way of this scheduled flight. Most notably, there was not a sign of a plane at that jet way. As rain continued gaining momentum outside the gate, I talked with an airline agent and she told me a plane was supposed to be coming in and was only late by ten minutes. According to her, we would be able to make the set departure time.
I took a seat after buying a Coke, (another habit I was going to stop after the trip was finished), and began watching ‘CNN’. There was yet another debate going on with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic race. Having been on forty plus flights in a month, I was well versed in every avenue of this given political race. All the airport TV monitors carried ‘CNN’ as the only channel. Another gust of wind, followed by a heavy thunderclap, and the rain came feverishly to the ground of outside the airport. The lights momentarily flickered throughout the entire inside of the airport. I became worried. No sooner then two minutes later the clock for the impending flight to Dallas Fort Worth, changed by thirty minutes. This caused me to bury my head into my hands. Already if the flight was on time I needed a perfect flight, timely sedan pick up in Dallas, and to have traffic not be so bad in Dallas, so I could run go through the turnstiles at ‘THE BALLPARK IN ARLINGTON’, for the first pitch. Plus they were playing my favorite team the ‘NEW YORK YANKEES’ in a Sunday night contest. First pitch was five minutes after seven. My map told me it was about eleven miles of distance to cover, and could take thirty-five minutes in traffic to get there.
I called my buddy Justin in Canada, I asked for the weather report in Dallas for the game. My thought was that, “If it is raining here it may be raining there, and that could cause a rain-delay, then I might be able to make the first pitch still.” He confirmed it was raining in Dallas and that it loomed in the forecast pretty heavy for the next few hours but was supposed to clear up after that.
At this point I had a little bit of optimism, the very same thing had happened to me in Cincinnati the previous month. There was a big traffic accident on the Seventy-One Highway South on the ‘Fourth of July’ heading from Indianapolis Airport to ‘THE GREAT AMERICAN BALLPARK’. The start of the game was delayed, and I made it there on time to qualify for the game.
I drank my beverage and was ready to call my sedan driver in Dallas to go over the game plan. I noticed that not only was there not a plane in my gate yet, that I had not even seen a plane in any of the other dozen gates as well. From that instant, my flight to Dallas, (that had already been delayed by thirty minutes), jumped from one gate all the way to other side of the airport and the time changed to Seven. I swore out loud.
I swore so loud that about fifty people looked in my direction with angst. It was a natural reaction without any time to even think about it. It was not the first time in the trip I had been caught swearing either, and it would not be the last. The next few times I swore I managed to do it under my breath. I ran to the bathroom. It was an excruciating few minutes.
After all the chasing I had done, radio interviews, newspaper articles that had been written about the streak in pursuit for charity, months of planning, years of saving up money, dedication to learning the craft of the stadium chase, having been on the road for Thirty-Five days straight, travelling on planes, trains, automobiles, public transit, losing sleep entirely thought the process, all culminating in the chance to break the record— was now officially over and it was not my fault. A spill over, rogue Gail storm, left over from some of the worst Hurricane season in the lower ‘Southern Belt Area” of the summer had wreaked enough havoc to ground and/or re-route planes to nearby airports in Mobil and Gulfport.
All I could do was tie the record that was stated by the fine people at “THE GUINESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS.” The given streak chase was “FASTEST TO SEE ALL 30 MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL HOME TEAMS IN THE LEAST AMOUNT OF DAYS’. The record stood at Thirty- games in Twenty-nine days, although I had seen articles and websites of a couple of Canadians who had accomplished the feat in ‘Twenty-Eight’ days. My official best I could do was Thirty-Games in Twenty-Nine days. During those brief moments I knew that I might not even be able to tie the ‘World Record’ should “GWR” have given the ‘Canadians’ the new record. I was mad.
I wished that I had never tried for the record knowing that I had my scheduled holiday always with the three days off for the All-star break. I had initially not planned to shoot for the record when I booked my vacation. My original version of the six week trip was to see all the parks over the course of the trip. The break was in week number three.
During a day of planning online, I decided to see what the world record was for seeing all the parks. That is when I saw the thirty games in twenty-eight days record website. It took me two weeks of looking at Baseball’s schedule to see if I could try for the record even with the three day penalty. There were going to be some costs incurred for altering some of my already purchased schedule. I was willing to live with that. Besides, I could re-sell some of my baseball tickets. It was only April still, two months before the whole chase started.
The skinny of it all was that any record I submitted would have the three days of July 14-16/2008 as a blank. To make up the necessary games I was going to need six successful double headers to bring in a thirty games in twenty-seven days streak. I had a Thirty-games-in Twenty-Six games bid scheduled. With some more diligent planning, I even was able to have a re-set attempt on July.9th, some ten days into the first bid attempt, should the streak go awry to begin with. I had exercised that chance, hit on five out of six double headers with this second streak attempt, with the seventh chance being foiled due to this rain. There was another day missed when a Toronto bound flight was delayed from O’Hare International Airport for a day game.
Normally I would have rented a car from Chicago to drive to Cleveland to make up the only doubleheader game that I missed—except I was to meet my mom in Toronto for that game and she was already there having flown in from Montreal. I flew to Canada instead and took a zero for the day. This all led up to streak now sitting at Twenty-Seven games in Twenty-Six days. The last three-games would be in Texas, Toronto and Chicago.
After calling my step-mom in Canada, I waited for my delayed flight to Texas, and thought about Jim McLaren’s dedication to his life, and how I should not ever ‘give up’ even when you are truly feeling like crap.
Besides, the way it worked out, I was going to visit the last baseball park in my stadiums list! I had been to several of the other parks multiple times each already but never to Arlington. It was kind of nice the way it was going to work out. It was my salvation in otherwise horrendous day of emotions. (Little did I know at that point, I was going to have another shot at the record in 2009!) To show you where I went from this time, I must show you were this all originated from back on another rainy day in 2004.
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2
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Over four years ago I was listening to the Jim Rome Show in my hometown of White Rock B.C., when he had a special motivational guest speaker come on named Jim McClaren. I often thought I had a difficult life at that point until I heard his story.
Jim was an all-American guy in the mid-eighties, who had played football in college and aspired to make it in Hollywood. He stood six foot-five and weighed almost three hundred pounds. He had life by the tail, until he was riding his bike in New York City and a bus hit his bicycle head on and knocked into the air. Jim was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital and doctors were shocked when a while later he came back to life. His accident did not come without any permanent damage—as one of his legs was amputated. He now had some serious obstacles to overcome. Since Jim was a great athlete, he started riding a bike and spending time in the pool.
His new will was to test his physical limits, despite his leg. For eight years he routinely beat able-bodied competitors in triathlons and other tests of physical endurance. In an Ironman contest in California, in Nineteen Ninety-Three he was riding his bike in a competition when he heard screams in the distance. A van had been swerving and headed for him without any warning. Jim was flung from the van and smashed into a street sign far from the point of impact. This time he also lived but he had to face another fact, he was left a quadriplegic.
Jim struggled with this news and sunk into a depression that caused him to have several inner battles to which he fought drugs, thoughts of suicide and most of all loneliness.
At a turning point in his life he decided to live his life to the fullest despite all the things physically that were working against him. Jim changed his entire outlook on life and found a deep inner peace with him self, it was after this he knew he was ready to live his life.
Jim spent hours rehabilitating his injuries and willed his own self to walk in a pool and regained some use in his arms. Doctors marveled at Jim’s unwillingness to give up. Soon Jim realized that he had lots of advice to give to others because he had been at the bottom of everything life had to offer in the negative fashion and had rose up to live a normal life.
Normal for Jim is doing thing that others routinely take for granted, tying up shoe laces, moving across a room, doing the dishes after a meal. Jim has touched so many people with his tale of courage to live. If you ask him, he will tell you that, “he has been given a gift with the life he has led, for he has seen the light in what makes him happy.” He would not change any of it for anything.
Hearing this story I pulled over to the side of the road and took some personal inventory of my own life. I was nearly in tears hearing his story and was inspired to achieve things in my life from that point forward. I wrote down all the goals I wanted to achieve to make me happy. One of them was to write the two novels I had always procrastinated about as an adult. The other goal was to see all the Major League Baseball stadiums in my life. It was going to take re-tooling my schedule. I was going to have to work harder, smarter and focus to realize this dream.
In Two Thousand and Five, I visited most of all the West Coast teams: Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles Angels and San Diego in a six-day span despite having a bad run of financial luck. At this point in my life I knew I was going to declare bankruptcy. There were many factors that had led to this decision. In a moment of acceptance, I told my wife that if we were going to do this I wanted to at least see a few ballparks.
It had not been my fault I was in such bad financial shape. My wife Stella had Tourette’s Syndrome—and was on government assistance that had been cut off the moment we were married. It was a most devastating bad turn of events. My jobs were delivering newspaper and pizza for about sixty hours a week. I should have had enough money to pay the bills with what I made, but a bad run of car repairs for years upon years had sunk us to the level we were at. The worst part was that we could not live in an apartment, because of her involuntary ticks had caused a disturbance in every building we lived in—enough to force five moves in five years. Finally, I had us situated in a secluded house that was costly in rent, but I could afford it if I could just clear the credit card debt.
After promising myself changes to come after the Jim McLaren interview, I also added an additional thirty hours a week job at a gas station. This brought my weekly work total up to ninety hours. The extra money was actually helping me to balance my expenses and even save a few dollars. Changes were still coming, and I could not pay off my credit balances, but it was satisfying to be making more money then spending.
In June of Two-Thousand and Five I was burnt out from working ninety hours a week for six months straight. however I arrived to my first vacation in six years. The trip was great, my wife and I would drive my repaired Nineteen Eighty One Mustang to Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, before returning home up Las Vegas to Nevada before California again.
We sat on the third base side at ‘SAFECO FIELD.’ I felt an adrenaline rush hit my body as I stood up for the National Anthem. The Mariners were playing the New York Mets. It was my first baseball game since Nineteen Ninety Six-when I saw the Montreal expos play at ‘OLYMPIC STADIUM.’ I was really happy to watch the Mariners starting pitcher (Jamie Moyer) pitch to one of my favorite catchers of all time in Pat Borders. They were both Forty-Two years old. I was watching history. Somehow throughout the whole game, I knew my life was about to change for the better. I had been brought back to the game I loved.
It was my first road trip of baseball games. Two days after the Seattle game, I watched the Oakland A’s play on Father’s day at ‘MCAFEE COLISEUM’, the very next night I watched the San Francisco Giants at then ‘Pacific Bell Park now AT@T Park.’ During batting practice Shawn Green of the Diamondbacks, launched a baseball off the red brick past the right center field bleachers——and it promptly ricocheted right to my feet. That was it, I was hooked. No matter what it took I was going to come to baseball games every year if it killed me. What an awesome few days. I saw two of the best stadiums in baseball within that stretch of time. I closed off the trip by seeing the Los Angeles Angels play, then to be followed up by a trip to ‘PETCO PARK’ to see the Padres play.
I returned from that trip having now seen six out of the thirty ball parks. I did declare bankruptcy in early Two Thousand and Six, but managed to sneak away to see two games at ‘DODGER STADIUM’ and ‘YANKEE STADIUM,’ along with a handful of games at ‘SAFECO FIELD.’
I was riding high on life in early Two-Thousand and Seven and wanted to see a few more games. My three cars had been good to me on repairs up until then for the last few years. With my debt being cleared off with bankruptcy, I would be able to pay my bills with the money I made provided I did not get blistered on car repairs.
The gas station job was lost because the station closed. I replaced the earnings with a community based newspaper that I could pick my own hours. My pizza job and major circulation newspaper routes had been set on deadlines and specific hours to work. It was going to take a physical torque on my body to keep up with the ninety hour work week, but it was necessary to keep the savings up to take off a couple of weeks a year to baseball stadium chase.
March of Two Thousand and Seven provided more drama in a week then I wanted to deal with. I had to sell the Eighty One Mustang because gasoline prices were at a record high. It had been a value car though, doing spade work in making that road trip in Two Thousand-Five. I used that money to sink into my Nineteen Eighty-Four Toyota Celica, only to have the master chain break on the engine and render the car un-drive able. This left me with one car that had been through the gauntlet of hard city driving for the seven years I had been a courier, a Nineteen Ninety-One Chevy Cavalier. I was worried about the car expenses killing any dream of baseball watching in the future should they start piling up again.
In an act of desperation, I resorted to bidding on another Ninety-One Chevrolet Cavalier in a town that was two hours south of Toronto. I won the bid for a decent amount of money. My thought process at this time was: “At least if the thing breaks down en route back home I can have a baseball vacation out of it, because it was opening week of baseball.”
I flew to Toronto and drove a rental car down to the remote town, and took the car into a repair garage—and had the guy’s price out a repair job for servicing the car. I planned this all along. I figured it would take two to three days to fix, so in the meantime I would drive down to Cincinnati and Cleveland to knock them off the schedule of baseball stadiums to see. When the car was repaired, I was going to also see ‘WRIGLEY FIELD’ and the ‘METRODOME’ on the way back to Vancouver BC Canada.
Something clicked in my brain somewhere that this ballpark viewing was going to be easier by car out east as well. It was April and it was snowing all over the Eastern Seaboard jeopardizing the games I was going to watch. I did get to see Ken Griffey Jr. play right field for the Cincinnati Reds at ‘THE GREAT AMERICAN BALLPARK’ in near freezing weather. It was so cold outside that when the game was over I went into the ‘Cincinnati Baseball Hall Of Fame’ to warm up. The day before the Reds game, I had watched a hockey game in Columbus because a game had been snowed out of Cleveland. The next day I drove back to Cleveland to watch a newly announced doubleheader between the Mariners and Indians. When I showed up the games were cancelled and the stadium had a foot of snow surrounding it——I got the consolation prize of viewing the ‘Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame’ instead.
I drove the rental car back to Toronto and met up with my brother for a Blue Jays game in Toronto. Memories came back to me of my first pro game ever returned as I entered ‘SKYDOME’. It was my thirteenth birthday in Nineteen Eighty-Nine, the very first year of the existence of the retractable skyline roof in Toronto. I talked with my oldest brother Trent about the rental car I had. We were eating hot dogs and sitting in the bleachers level in the Five Hundred Deck.
“You drove the car rental Fifteen Hundred Miles in Four Days and had full insurance for the average of Fifty dollars a day?” Trent asked as the sound system echoed from the latest theme song being played for Canadian Matt Stairs of the Toronto Blue Jays. It was a wrestling song from the WWE.
“Yeah, that it is a pretty good price for a nice car like a Pontiac G6, that is almost as much as I pay per day to drive the crappy cars I have been driving,” I answered as I thought about it some more.
“Chuck, I have been renting cars for years now and have never heard of those rates.”
“I am going to investigate that when I get home, maybe I can work it out for the courier jobs. I sure hope this Cavalier car makes it all the way home without conking out.”
“You have guts brother.”
“The car should be fine, but this snow is something else.” I was excited yet nervous about driving to Wrigley the next day.
“Did you hear about the Indians-Angels series being moved to Miller Park?”
“No, starting tomorrow?”
“All series,” Trent explained.
“I am going to buy tickets for that too. Milwaukee is only a hundred miles away from Miller Park and the game is during the day in Chicago.”
“Dude, I don’t know if you are going to pull that off in this weather, the Ninety Four Highway gets pretty jammed in cold weather.”
“I gotta try. I am not going to see Miller Park this year if I don’t.”
Trent finished his food, “I am just saying you won’t see every pitch.”
“I don’t like that but, I will stay for the whole game in Chicago first.”
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The game in Chicago was cancelled a few days later. I sat across the street from Wrigley Field flabbergasted. I had come all this way and for the game to be called was crazy. The car had made it with all the new parts and accessories. I was now well versed in the disappointment one faces in a stadium visit that is all dependent on the weather. I wish all of the stadiums had roofs. During the first few minutes after the notification, a local news camera interviewed some people outside the ballpark. I made my way to the camera and explained how far I was from home to come to this historic park. I would not give up on this dream.
During the interview I snapped. “I was going to ask for a refund for the ticket, but I just decided now to risk my job and make my wife upset by changing the ticket to two days from now to see the ‘REDS’ play.” Snow was pelting off my spring beige jacket as I said this. It was a true statement. I was supposed to have gone to Minnesota after the Milwaukee game that night. A few days later I was to be home and back at work. It was a calculated risk too, it may have kept snowing the whole time till that game and then I would have nothing to show for the trip to Chicago.
It was the first sign of things to go my way. My brother was right about the traffic to Milwaukee too. I was thinking about how I was going to find out an excuse to justify my prolonging of the trip to include Wrigley Field. I went to the game at Miller Park, when I returned to my car, the front left wheel was deflated—it was not un-drive able—just losing air to suggest it was a small leak. There was my out, I took the car in the next day to a Tire place in Milwaukee, attended the Angels and Indians game for the second straight day for ten dollars.
I was able to attend Wrigley Field the next day, in cold but sunny weather I saw them jump out to a five run lead before in classic style, they surrendered the lead and lost to the Cincinnati Reds. I got to live another disappointment with the ‘Wrigley fans.’ It was a great moment, seeing baseball without all the modern day amenities, seeing the ivory in the outfield, man-operated scoreboard that only has seven spots for the A.L teams, and six for the N.L teams. (There is always one NL score that does not get posted.)
The next day I drove to Minnesota and watched a game from the “METRODOME.” It felt like being at home because we have a similar stadium back in British Colombia Canada in “BC PLACE.” It is also one of two stadiums in the Majors that have Canadian flags prominently displayed.
Since I delayed my return home by a few days, I wanted to gun it as fast as humanly possible from Minnesota to Seattle. It was a test of endurance and pride that I reached Seattle a mere Twenty Six Hours after leaving Minnesota, thus covering almost Seventeen Hundred Miles. I was back in Canada after driving from Seattle in another two hours
The whole trip left me wanting more. The car was successful enough to make it through the next few months, so I was able to plan out another trip back East.
I had searched the internet for rates on car rental when I returned home with my car in the spring. I found no such deals that would compare to what I found during my trip in April, besides I just sank a thousand dollars into the Chevy Cavalier, and it was working.
My first trial into hardcore ballpark chasing started that summer. I had ten days of vacation and planned to see ten baseball games in eight days. Since I did not have a passport at this time, and the United States required foreign travelers to fly domestic flights within the States with one—I had to fly to Montreal to rent a car and drive down to the States instead.
Day one was a game in Toronto, then it was onto, Baltimore, New York to see the Mets and Philadelphia as part of a day-night double header in two different cities, this was to be followed up Detroit, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, a doubleheader in Pittsburgh, Boston and to be concluded in New York. The trip was Four Thousand Miles of all driving. I brought my wife Stella along with me. She was going to visit the ‘Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame’, Times Square in New York, and was going to meet ‘DOG THE BOUNTY HUNTER’ in a bookstore in TAYLOR, Michigan.
I loved my wife Stella at this point, and I did not think it was fair to have a ten day vacation without her so she came along. Many different events happened though out chasing these stadiums that threw a wrench into out marriage. I would not see them for months afterwards, but it was a problem with us, I never attributed them to the baseball directly although it was the catalyst.
Doing a schedule like this made me realize how hard travelling can be. I missed the second game of the trip in Baltimore outright because the drive from Toronto to Philadelphia, then onto Baltimore took way longer then I thought it would. Some of these directions you receive online are just mileage charts—they don’t take construction, weather, and traffic into consideration. Deciding not to drive to Baltimore was a wake-up call that I needed to fine-tune the preparations I took from that point future.
After completing the Shea Stadium, Citizen’s Bank doubleheader, I was schooled again on the drive from Philadelphia to Detroit. I never made it to Comerica until the second inning. The next day we were late arriving to ‘US Cellular Field’ because ‘DOG THE BOUNTY HOUNTER’ arrived late in Michigan. I hate missing any pitch for baseball games, and vowed right there never to miss any starts or ends of the game from that point forward!
I will get to ranking and talking about all the stadiums during the streak chases later in future chapters. I ended the trip seeing nine different home games in nine days. The biggest shock of the trip was returning the rental car in Montreal to find that when we parked out car in a New York Valet Parking near Times Square, someone had dinged it against the wall. I guess because I was tired, I forgot when booking the car contract online, that we had taken full insurance for the car and were covered for the damages. My fears of paying for the car were subsided instantly. I would investigate this when I got home again.
My wife and I fought the whole time we drove from New York City to Montreal, it was apparent she did not have the physical fortitude to come on big road trips that test your endurance. I, on the other hand, was invigorated by the process and was contemplating a huge summer long vacation the following year that included going to all the ballparks.
I spent four hours on the computer verifying that the latest car offer was real. I found out that the website that I reserved my rental contract offered a deal for fully insured rental cars for just over a Thousand Dollars a month. The reason I thought my first rate on my spring trip was such a deal was because it was low season for travelling. Car rentals are spiked from June to September.
Whether it was fate or not, a couple of weeks into being home that August, the Chevy Cavalier started to show signs it was headed for major car repairs. Again I was prompted to the computer.
This time I searched every car rental place in the book. I remembered what got me to this point in my life success the last few years—it was tireless work towards my management of schedule. I finally came to a conclusion that would be questioned for years in logic, for me it was a revelation.
The best thing I ever did as a courier was chart down every expense for gas, repairs, purchase prices, insurance, car washes and oil changes. I doubled that with charting all the mileage for the pizzeria—along with daily money earned for the driver job and for the paper routes. I roughly knew what I was paying per mile to operate a car. It was six years of research that told me a tale. I sat with a calculator for a full day straight crunching numbers.
It was a decision that I needed help with. My dad is a car salesman, and he knows the car business like no tomorrow. I ran the idea by him—he counter-offered a loan for a reliable used Toyota Yaris. I was touched by the prospect, but I have a knack for mathematics and knew that buying a car would be the worst thing I could do. I left the conversation telling him that I would try the car rental for three months and see how it turned out. At worst, I could always take him up on his offer after. My mind was working overtime. I broke it down like this.
3000 miles per month is what I averaged in driving
Rental Car-Estimated Charges
Heavy price tag at $1000 per month
Gas on a new car for the 3000 miles driven for Rental Car of a 2007 Toyota Corolla was- $400
Total Operation money was- $1400 or 46.7 Cents per mile
Chevy Cavalier-Estimated Charges
Car Insurance (For Delivery Insurance—(which Rental Cars do not need to have because they have Fleet Insurance) $150, plus $75 for the second old Cavalier for emergency use incase the first one breaks down for a $225 a month rare for insurance. This did not include if I caused the accident, my own vehicle would have to be replaced at my own expense.
Gas on 3000 miles was $575 per month
Average depreciation per mile was 4 cents so $125 per month
Future purchase price—New Car $125 per month
Average Repairs on 3000 miles on 15 year old car (moderate) is 15 cents a mile
So total average per month of $450
Car washes and Oil Changes on 3000 miles is $50
Total operation Money was $1550 or 51.7 cents per Mile, plus no coverage if the car was wrecked.
At minimum I figured I would spend $150 dollars less a month. With the rental car I would also have the knowledge I was not going to spend one 2-5 days a month in the car repair shop waiting for the car to be repaired. Oh, and lest we forget that this was a month to month comparison analysis. What if the engine seized, or a transmission was blown? With the set total for the rental car I would be able to set a budget for the first time ever as a carrier.
Another thing I always had to worry about was crossing the border to Washington State from the province of British Colombia. I live three miles from the first gas station. The price difference per gallon translates to about a dollar a gallon savings going to Blaine Washington. If my cars had any slight problems I would not even risk the car breaking down in the States, thus pay the crazy fuel charges Canadians pay. I went with the rental car.
Immediately my life improved ten-fold. No longer was I worried about mileage on cars. At work I was offered some of the higher paying routes that no one wanted to do because of a mileage on a car—well now with unlimited miles I could take country routes that required more driving then physical walking and for half of the time elapsed. This opened up my income to take on more community newspapers, having that extra energy in reserve.
The first month I switched to the rental cars, I made a Thousand more dollars then the previous month. I actually tallied about 3500 miles on the car too.
Another thing I learned was that every 16 days that I rented the car—I received a free day car rental to use anywhere in North America——including my summer baseball trips where I could save 60-70 dollars per day for those mid-week rentals in cities like St. Louis, Chicago, New York and Philly. This meant an additional $125 on the good side of the ledger.
I have long known for years that the United States also has a cheaper cost of living. Many times on prolonged road-trips I would bring back the $700 worth of goods exemptions from the USA-back into Canada. Compared to what we pay in Canada that could be a savings of nearly half off.
The town of Bellingham, Washington is Twenty-Five Miles from my house. I started travelling there three times a week to pick up $15-20 worth of food, clothing and whatever else was cheaper there. Usually the border guards would not impose duty when I returned to Canada on the way back. Since mileage was not an issue for me, I reveled in the amount of miles I tacked on the cars. I was driving new Toyota cars that all had Ten-Thousand Miles on them or under. After a month, I would take the car back to the rental place, and trade for a fully detailed similar car. It was an awesome feeling. I even was able to drive a few of the cars under a thousand miles. Sometimes I would keep these cars for longer then a month.
At the pizzeria, I used to be moan and groan when there were far off single deliveries, this unlimited mileage deal eliminated all of that. I was driving almost three times more then the average driver. People started questioning the logistics of it all. They would ask questions about leasing or buying being better? I had to reply them these answers: “I can not lease a car because I put on 36 to 40000 miles a year. Second is the delivery insurance, thirdly, I could not buy a car from any bank because I just declared bankruptcy. I was lucky enough that there are ‘secured credit card’s’ out there that grant you all the benefits of a regular Visa—but you must deposit whatever you want you credit limit to be though.
Having more money on a monthly basis also freed up the ability to buy other food items, and other household items that had reward air miles from specific grocery stores like ‘Safeway.’ Air miles that could get you hotel gift certificates, airline vouchers. I had always done this but was afraid of carrying to much inventory of one or two items in my house for fear of running out of money. I could now carry inventory of items for up to six months at a time if the deal was right. Every week I sat in my house with my calculator and crunched the value of the air miles in connection to the products listed. In some instances the value of the air miles was worth more money then the product itself.
I will give you an example.
There is a deal for 32 oz Coke bottles (3 for $3 at Safeway.) For every 6 bottles you buy, you receive 40 air miles. An Air Mile is worth 16 cents each when you redeem them for Best Western Hotel Gift Cards. So you buy (6) 32-oz cokes for $6, in exchange you receive 40 Air Miles at .16 worth for $6.40 in return. I would buy hundreds of dollars worth of the deal—and then sell them to my manager at the pizzeria. She just wanted the best deal in town equivalent and she would give the money for that price point. I would line up the Air Miles dollar for Dollar with the money spent on the Coke—and then resell them to manager at like 50% percent of the money spent—the rest of that money was pure profit. I will get into how I made $2000 for my first streak chase when it comes to that chapter from another Air Miles deal. This was money made from the road while I was going to baseball games for 6 weeks.
My community newspaper I was delivering for, also was thrilled I wanted to work extra, so they gave me more work. There was a problem with the amount of people who did not want this given paper on the house lists though. About 15 percent of the houses for every route on average did not want the paper. The problem was that I was getting shipped a hundred extra papers (including the subsequent huge volume of flyers to be inserted in the papers) of the stopped houses. They were piling up in my shed. That is when I remembered a guy at the ‘big newspaper job’ used to talk about receiving a few dollars a day for recycling about five big bundles of newspapers near his house. I asked him for the address and how this all worked.
It was yet another victory for me after finding out the specifics. They paid about Thirty-Five Dollars a Metric Ton—or about fifteen dollars a full car load from one of the Toyota’s I was renting. I had a new business. On the way back from the States border—there was a community recycling plant in which several bad carriers dumped their entire paper routes every two or three days. Every two days I went for gas I came back with a full car—and headed right over to the recycling plant. This profited me fifteen dollars for about forty-five minutes of work. I just had to protect the rental cars from the newspaper ink—wouldn’t you know I used free blanket giveaways from baseball stadiums to do this. This business netted me an extra Two-hundred dollars of money per month.
I was now in a situation where I could make as much money as the amount of hours I was willing to work. Between the newspapers and delivering pizza seven days a week I was making money from every direction—also at this time the Canadian dollar was worth $1.10 for every American dollar. I started buying all the U.S money I could get my hands on for the future trip.
Also because of the vast amount of money I was making delivering to nearly 600 hundred houses—as opposed to 250 the year before—for that Christmas I made nearly $2000 in Christmas tips, more then the $700 the year before. I saved $14000 dollars from September to March.
The best part about my new schedule was I actually decreased the amount of time involving work because my days of being in a repair shop were over. From September to December I wrote a full science fiction novel—and re-edited my first novel ever written about a teenage gambling ringmaster. I wrote for fifteen to twenty hours a week without fail.
In January of 2008 I purchased the ability to self publish them both for Thirteen Hundred Dollars Total. Now it was a matter of one more final edit. Out of the goals I set forth for myself, they were all a realistic achievement now—with enough money to see the remainder stadiums, (with the bonus of seeing all the other nineteen stadiums again also) and the books being published. The other goal I had was to visit all the Fifty States in America.
At this point in time I was sitting at Twenty-Five States out of the Fifty. However I was going to do the baseball trip it would include every other State I had not yet seen except for Alaska.
I was ready for the tickets to go on sale for every ball club—and for them to post the remaining time of game starts on the schedule. Unlike the previous summer, my wife would not be going with me for the road trip. I had initial talks with all other family members, with most of them agreeing to meet me at various times to watch some baseball. I printed up two months worth of the schedule and studied up at the course I wanted to take. I made some early purchases of tickets for this schedule. A few weeks later, I was online and searched for the ‘WORLD RECORD’ holder of the “FASTEST TO SEE ALL 30 MLB TEAMS AT A HOME IN LEAST AMOUNT OF DAYS.” I knew the record was 28 days—and now I had to re-think this whole trip now.
30-24
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1
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I sat in the Houston International Airport awaiting the flight that would take me to the last baseball double header in Arlington Texas. I had felt a huge sense of accomplishment in arriving on time for this Five-Fifteen Pm departure. I had thought this would be a tight squeeze from the moment I booked and purchased the flight.
I was lucky the Houston Astros game had wound up in the two hour and forty-five minute window—with them beating the New York Mets.
During a hot and humid day indoors, I watched with curious energy as the last out was recorded, I then raced to the corner of Crawford and Congress—where my sedan driver was in his car, gas running and ready to head out to the airport. We had beat the general attendance out of the game because I had positioned myself near the exit while watching the final inning. The game was close enough to be in question so people were not leaving early.
My driver had been the same driver I called on the previous month when I made my first visit to Houston. Ironically, it was the also the third day of the month, and was also a day game, except for this game was on a weekend, and that game was on a Thursday.
Traffic was light on that Sunday, and I took a look at my boarding pass that I had printed out in the airport earlier that morning when I had arrived from Minnesota. I then looked at my remnants of a black travel bag that had already travelled Forty-Thousand Miles through the journey. The bag used to be heavier, but I started throwing things out towards the end of my trip to make it lighter. I also had a black briefcase which had been the best ally to travel with since it could double as a place for extra clothing—along with carrying schedules, game tickets, hotel reservations, car reservations, maps and electronics for my equipment to document the evidence of this streak.
I was dressed in shorts that had the colors of the British Flag, red white and blue. I was also wearing my black number 23 ‘Don Mattingly New York Yankee t-shirt jersey’, I had sandals on, and a black baseball cap that was severely weathered from being to Twenty-Eight different ballparks in the last Twenty Six days.
My stomach was full of pizza I had eaten at the baseball game. At this point of the trip I knew I had gained about thirty pounds in the month. I shot from One hundred and Eighty-Five pounds to Two-hundred and Fifteen. I was going to work that off when I returned home to Canada. Another thing to be gone was the beard dangling from my face that had never been so long in my life.
Heading up Highway Fifty-Nine up North, I started to see clouds in the distance, as we approached the airport more, it was apparent we were going to the eye of a rainstorm. I felt a little uneasy as I paid the driver and cleared through security, all the while I was looking through the glass of the airport to monitor the weather towards my pending gate. It was Four fifteen in the afternoon. My driver had made good time in reaching the airport from ‘Minute Maid Park’ in twenty-five minutes, and I made it through security in only a few minutes as well.
Everything felt ominous from the time I reached the area of the boarding jet way of this scheduled flight. Most notably, there was not a sign of a plane at that jet way. As rain continued gaining momentum outside the gate, I talked with an airline agent and she told me a plane was supposed to be coming in and was only late by ten minutes. According to her, we would be able to make the set departure time.
I took a seat after buying a Coke, (another habit I was going to stop after the trip was finished), and began watching ‘CNN’. There was yet another debate going on with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic race. Having been on forty plus flights in a month, I was well versed in every avenue of this given political race. All the airport TV monitors carried ‘CNN’ as the only channel. Another gust of wind, followed by a heavy thunderclap, and the rain came feverishly to the ground of outside the airport. The lights momentarily flickered throughout the entire inside of the airport. I became worried. No sooner then two minutes later the clock for the impending flight to Dallas Fort Worth, changed by thirty minutes. This caused me to bury my head into my hands. Already if the flight was on time I needed a perfect flight, timely sedan pick up in Dallas, and to have traffic not be so bad in Dallas, so I could run go through the turnstiles at ‘THE BALLPARK IN ARLINGTON’, for the first pitch. Plus they were playing my favorite team the ‘NEW YORK YANKEES’ in a Sunday night contest. First pitch was five minutes after seven. My map told me it was about eleven miles of distance to cover, and could take thirty-five minutes in traffic to get there.
I called my buddy Justin in Canada, I asked for the weather report in Dallas for the game. My thought was that, “If it is raining here it may be raining there, and that could cause a rain-delay, then I might be able to make the first pitch still.” He confirmed it was raining in Dallas and that it loomed in the forecast pretty heavy for the next few hours but was supposed to clear up after that.
At this point I had a little bit of optimism, the very same thing had happened to me in Cincinnati the previous month. There was a big traffic accident on the Seventy-One Highway South on the ‘Fourth of July’ heading from Indianapolis Airport to ‘THE GREAT AMERICAN BALLPARK’. The start of the game was delayed, and I made it there on time to qualify for the game.
I drank my beverage and was ready to call my sedan driver in Dallas to go over the game plan. I noticed that not only was there not a plane in my gate yet, that I had not even seen a plane in any of the other dozen gates as well. From that instant, my flight to Dallas, (that had already been delayed by thirty minutes), jumped from one gate all the way to other side of the airport and the time changed to Seven. I swore out loud.
I swore so loud that about fifty people looked in my direction with angst. It was a natural reaction without any time to even think about it. It was not the first time in the trip I had been caught swearing either, and it would not be the last. The next few times I swore I managed to do it under my breath. I ran to the bathroom. It was an excruciating few minutes.
After all the chasing I had done, radio interviews, newspaper articles that had been written about the streak in pursuit for charity, months of planning, years of saving up money, dedication to learning the craft of the stadium chase, having been on the road for Thirty-Five days straight, travelling on planes, trains, automobiles, public transit, losing sleep entirely thought the process, all culminating in the chance to break the record— was now officially over and it was not my fault. A spill over, rogue Gail storm, left over from some of the worst Hurricane season in the lower ‘Southern Belt Area” of the summer had wreaked enough havoc to ground and/or re-route planes to nearby airports in Mobil and Gulfport.
All I could do was tie the record that was stated by the fine people at “THE GUINESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS.” The given streak chase was “FASTEST TO SEE ALL 30 MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL HOME TEAMS IN THE LEAST AMOUNT OF DAYS’. The record stood at Thirty- games in Twenty-nine days, although I had seen articles and websites of a couple of Canadians who had accomplished the feat in ‘Twenty-Eight’ days. My official best I could do was Thirty-Games in Twenty-Nine days. During those brief moments I knew that I might not even be able to tie the ‘World Record’ should “GWR” have given the ‘Canadians’ the new record. I was mad.
I wished that I had never tried for the record knowing that I had my scheduled holiday always with the three days off for the All-star break. I had initially not planned to shoot for the record when I booked my vacation. My original version of the six week trip was to see all the parks over the course of the trip. The break was in week number three.
During a day of planning online, I decided to see what the world record was for seeing all the parks. That is when I saw the thirty games in twenty-eight days record website. It took me two weeks of looking at Baseball’s schedule to see if I could try for the record even with the three day penalty. There were going to be some costs incurred for altering some of my already purchased schedule. I was willing to live with that. Besides, I could re-sell some of my baseball tickets. It was only April still, two months before the whole chase started.
The skinny of it all was that any record I submitted would have the three days of July 14-16/2008 as a blank. To make up the necessary games I was going to need six successful double headers to bring in a thirty games in twenty-seven days streak. I had a Thirty-games-in Twenty-Six games bid scheduled. With some more diligent planning, I even was able to have a re-set attempt on July.9th, some ten days into the first bid attempt, should the streak go awry to begin with. I had exercised that chance, hit on five out of six double headers with this second streak attempt, with the seventh chance being foiled due to this rain. There was another day missed when a Toronto bound flight was delayed from O’Hare International Airport for a day game.
Normally I would have rented a car from Chicago to drive to Cleveland to make up the only doubleheader game that I missed—except I was to meet my mom in Toronto for that game and she was already there having flown in from Montreal. I flew to Canada instead and took a zero for the day. This all led up to streak now sitting at Twenty-Seven games in Twenty-Six days. The last three-games would be in Texas, Toronto and Chicago.
After calling my step-mom in Canada, I waited for my delayed flight to Texas, and thought about Jim McLaren’s dedication to his life, and how I should not ever ‘give up’ even when you are truly feeling like crap.
Besides, the way it worked out, I was going to visit the last baseball park in my stadiums list! I had been to several of the other parks multiple times each already but never to Arlington. It was kind of nice the way it was going to work out. It was my salvation in otherwise horrendous day of emotions. (Little did I know at that point, I was going to have another shot at the record in 2009!) To show you where I went from this time, I must show you were this all originated from back on another rainy day in 2004.
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2
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Over four years ago I was listening to the Jim Rome Show in my hometown of White Rock B.C., when he had a special motivational guest speaker come on named Jim McClaren. I often thought I had a difficult life at that point until I heard his story.
Jim was an all-American guy in the mid-eighties, who had played football in college and aspired to make it in Hollywood. He stood six foot-five and weighed almost three hundred pounds. He had life by the tail, until he was riding his bike in New York City and a bus hit his bicycle head on and knocked into the air. Jim was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital and doctors were shocked when a while later he came back to life. His accident did not come without any permanent damage—as one of his legs was amputated. He now had some serious obstacles to overcome. Since Jim was a great athlete, he started riding a bike and spending time in the pool.
His new will was to test his physical limits, despite his leg. For eight years he routinely beat able-bodied competitors in triathlons and other tests of physical endurance. In an Ironman contest in California, in Nineteen Ninety-Three he was riding his bike in a competition when he heard screams in the distance. A van had been swerving and headed for him without any warning. Jim was flung from the van and smashed into a street sign far from the point of impact. This time he also lived but he had to face another fact, he was left a quadriplegic.
Jim struggled with this news and sunk into a depression that caused him to have several inner battles to which he fought drugs, thoughts of suicide and most of all loneliness.
At a turning point in his life he decided to live his life to the fullest despite all the things physically that were working against him. Jim changed his entire outlook on life and found a deep inner peace with him self, it was after this he knew he was ready to live his life.
Jim spent hours rehabilitating his injuries and willed his own self to walk in a pool and regained some use in his arms. Doctors marveled at Jim’s unwillingness to give up. Soon Jim realized that he had lots of advice to give to others because he had been at the bottom of everything life had to offer in the negative fashion and had rose up to live a normal life.
Normal for Jim is doing thing that others routinely take for granted, tying up shoe laces, moving across a room, doing the dishes after a meal. Jim has touched so many people with his tale of courage to live. If you ask him, he will tell you that, “he has been given a gift with the life he has led, for he has seen the light in what makes him happy.” He would not change any of it for anything.
Hearing this story I pulled over to the side of the road and took some personal inventory of my own life. I was nearly in tears hearing his story and was inspired to achieve things in my life from that point forward. I wrote down all the goals I wanted to achieve to make me happy. One of them was to write the two novels I had always procrastinated about as an adult. The other goal was to see all the Major League Baseball stadiums in my life. It was going to take re-tooling my schedule. I was going to have to work harder, smarter and focus to realize this dream.
In Two Thousand and Five, I visited most of all the West Coast teams: Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles Angels and San Diego in a six-day span despite having a bad run of financial luck. At this point in my life I knew I was going to declare bankruptcy. There were many factors that had led to this decision. In a moment of acceptance, I told my wife that if we were going to do this I wanted to at least see a few ballparks.
It had not been my fault I was in such bad financial shape. My wife Stella had Tourette’s Syndrome—and was on government assistance that had been cut off the moment we were married. It was a most devastating bad turn of events. My jobs were delivering newspaper and pizza for about sixty hours a week. I should have had enough money to pay the bills with what I made, but a bad run of car repairs for years upon years had sunk us to the level we were at. The worst part was that we could not live in an apartment, because of her involuntary ticks had caused a disturbance in every building we lived in—enough to force five moves in five years. Finally, I had us situated in a secluded house that was costly in rent, but I could afford it if I could just clear the credit card debt.
After promising myself changes to come after the Jim McLaren interview, I also added an additional thirty hours a week job at a gas station. This brought my weekly work total up to ninety hours. The extra money was actually helping me to balance my expenses and even save a few dollars. Changes were still coming, and I could not pay off my credit balances, but it was satisfying to be making more money then spending.
In June of Two-Thousand and Five I was burnt out from working ninety hours a week for six months straight. however I arrived to my first vacation in six years. The trip was great, my wife and I would drive my repaired Nineteen Eighty One Mustang to Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, before returning home up Las Vegas to Nevada before California again.
We sat on the third base side at ‘SAFECO FIELD.’ I felt an adrenaline rush hit my body as I stood up for the National Anthem. The Mariners were playing the New York Mets. It was my first baseball game since Nineteen Ninety Six-when I saw the Montreal expos play at ‘OLYMPIC STADIUM.’ I was really happy to watch the Mariners starting pitcher (Jamie Moyer) pitch to one of my favorite catchers of all time in Pat Borders. They were both Forty-Two years old. I was watching history. Somehow throughout the whole game, I knew my life was about to change for the better. I had been brought back to the game I loved.
It was my first road trip of baseball games. Two days after the Seattle game, I watched the Oakland A’s play on Father’s day at ‘MCAFEE COLISEUM’, the very next night I watched the San Francisco Giants at then ‘Pacific Bell Park now AT@T Park.’ During batting practice Shawn Green of the Diamondbacks, launched a baseball off the red brick past the right center field bleachers——and it promptly ricocheted right to my feet. That was it, I was hooked. No matter what it took I was going to come to baseball games every year if it killed me. What an awesome few days. I saw two of the best stadiums in baseball within that stretch of time. I closed off the trip by seeing the Los Angeles Angels play, then to be followed up by a trip to ‘PETCO PARK’ to see the Padres play.
I returned from that trip having now seen six out of the thirty ball parks. I did declare bankruptcy in early Two Thousand and Six, but managed to sneak away to see two games at ‘DODGER STADIUM’ and ‘YANKEE STADIUM,’ along with a handful of games at ‘SAFECO FIELD.’
I was riding high on life in early Two-Thousand and Seven and wanted to see a few more games. My three cars had been good to me on repairs up until then for the last few years. With my debt being cleared off with bankruptcy, I would be able to pay my bills with the money I made provided I did not get blistered on car repairs.
The gas station job was lost because the station closed. I replaced the earnings with a community based newspaper that I could pick my own hours. My pizza job and major circulation newspaper routes had been set on deadlines and specific hours to work. It was going to take a physical torque on my body to keep up with the ninety hour work week, but it was necessary to keep the savings up to take off a couple of weeks a year to baseball stadium chase.
March of Two Thousand and Seven provided more drama in a week then I wanted to deal with. I had to sell the Eighty One Mustang because gasoline prices were at a record high. It had been a value car though, doing spade work in making that road trip in Two Thousand-Five. I used that money to sink into my Nineteen Eighty-Four Toyota Celica, only to have the master chain break on the engine and render the car un-drive able. This left me with one car that had been through the gauntlet of hard city driving for the seven years I had been a courier, a Nineteen Ninety-One Chevy Cavalier. I was worried about the car expenses killing any dream of baseball watching in the future should they start piling up again.
In an act of desperation, I resorted to bidding on another Ninety-One Chevrolet Cavalier in a town that was two hours south of Toronto. I won the bid for a decent amount of money. My thought process at this time was: “At least if the thing breaks down en route back home I can have a baseball vacation out of it, because it was opening week of baseball.”
I flew to Toronto and drove a rental car down to the remote town, and took the car into a repair garage—and had the guy’s price out a repair job for servicing the car. I planned this all along. I figured it would take two to three days to fix, so in the meantime I would drive down to Cincinnati and Cleveland to knock them off the schedule of baseball stadiums to see. When the car was repaired, I was going to also see ‘WRIGLEY FIELD’ and the ‘METRODOME’ on the way back to Vancouver BC Canada.
Something clicked in my brain somewhere that this ballpark viewing was going to be easier by car out east as well. It was April and it was snowing all over the Eastern Seaboard jeopardizing the games I was going to watch. I did get to see Ken Griffey Jr. play right field for the Cincinnati Reds at ‘THE GREAT AMERICAN BALLPARK’ in near freezing weather. It was so cold outside that when the game was over I went into the ‘Cincinnati Baseball Hall Of Fame’ to warm up. The day before the Reds game, I had watched a hockey game in Columbus because a game had been snowed out of Cleveland. The next day I drove back to Cleveland to watch a newly announced doubleheader between the Mariners and Indians. When I showed up the games were cancelled and the stadium had a foot of snow surrounding it——I got the consolation prize of viewing the ‘Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame’ instead.
I drove the rental car back to Toronto and met up with my brother for a Blue Jays game in Toronto. Memories came back to me of my first pro game ever returned as I entered ‘SKYDOME’. It was my thirteenth birthday in Nineteen Eighty-Nine, the very first year of the existence of the retractable skyline roof in Toronto. I talked with my oldest brother Trent about the rental car I had. We were eating hot dogs and sitting in the bleachers level in the Five Hundred Deck.
“You drove the car rental Fifteen Hundred Miles in Four Days and had full insurance for the average of Fifty dollars a day?” Trent asked as the sound system echoed from the latest theme song being played for Canadian Matt Stairs of the Toronto Blue Jays. It was a wrestling song from the WWE.
“Yeah, that it is a pretty good price for a nice car like a Pontiac G6, that is almost as much as I pay per day to drive the crappy cars I have been driving,” I answered as I thought about it some more.
“Chuck, I have been renting cars for years now and have never heard of those rates.”
“I am going to investigate that when I get home, maybe I can work it out for the courier jobs. I sure hope this Cavalier car makes it all the way home without conking out.”
“You have guts brother.”
“The car should be fine, but this snow is something else.” I was excited yet nervous about driving to Wrigley the next day.
“Did you hear about the Indians-Angels series being moved to Miller Park?”
“No, starting tomorrow?”
“All series,” Trent explained.
“I am going to buy tickets for that too. Milwaukee is only a hundred miles away from Miller Park and the game is during the day in Chicago.”
“Dude, I don’t know if you are going to pull that off in this weather, the Ninety Four Highway gets pretty jammed in cold weather.”
“I gotta try. I am not going to see Miller Park this year if I don’t.”
Trent finished his food, “I am just saying you won’t see every pitch.”
“I don’t like that but, I will stay for the whole game in Chicago first.”
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The game in Chicago was cancelled a few days later. I sat across the street from Wrigley Field flabbergasted. I had come all this way and for the game to be called was crazy. The car had made it with all the new parts and accessories. I was now well versed in the disappointment one faces in a stadium visit that is all dependent on the weather. I wish all of the stadiums had roofs. During the first few minutes after the notification, a local news camera interviewed some people outside the ballpark. I made my way to the camera and explained how far I was from home to come to this historic park. I would not give up on this dream.
During the interview I snapped. “I was going to ask for a refund for the ticket, but I just decided now to risk my job and make my wife upset by changing the ticket to two days from now to see the ‘REDS’ play.” Snow was pelting off my spring beige jacket as I said this. It was a true statement. I was supposed to have gone to Minnesota after the Milwaukee game that night. A few days later I was to be home and back at work. It was a calculated risk too, it may have kept snowing the whole time till that game and then I would have nothing to show for the trip to Chicago.
It was the first sign of things to go my way. My brother was right about the traffic to Milwaukee too. I was thinking about how I was going to find out an excuse to justify my prolonging of the trip to include Wrigley Field. I went to the game at Miller Park, when I returned to my car, the front left wheel was deflated—it was not un-drive able—just losing air to suggest it was a small leak. There was my out, I took the car in the next day to a Tire place in Milwaukee, attended the Angels and Indians game for the second straight day for ten dollars.
I was able to attend Wrigley Field the next day, in cold but sunny weather I saw them jump out to a five run lead before in classic style, they surrendered the lead and lost to the Cincinnati Reds. I got to live another disappointment with the ‘Wrigley fans.’ It was a great moment, seeing baseball without all the modern day amenities, seeing the ivory in the outfield, man-operated scoreboard that only has seven spots for the A.L teams, and six for the N.L teams. (There is always one NL score that does not get posted.)
The next day I drove to Minnesota and watched a game from the “METRODOME.” It felt like being at home because we have a similar stadium back in British Colombia Canada in “BC PLACE.” It is also one of two stadiums in the Majors that have Canadian flags prominently displayed.
Since I delayed my return home by a few days, I wanted to gun it as fast as humanly possible from Minnesota to Seattle. It was a test of endurance and pride that I reached Seattle a mere Twenty Six Hours after leaving Minnesota, thus covering almost Seventeen Hundred Miles. I was back in Canada after driving from Seattle in another two hours
The whole trip left me wanting more. The car was successful enough to make it through the next few months, so I was able to plan out another trip back East.
I had searched the internet for rates on car rental when I returned home with my car in the spring. I found no such deals that would compare to what I found during my trip in April, besides I just sank a thousand dollars into the Chevy Cavalier, and it was working.
My first trial into hardcore ballpark chasing started that summer. I had ten days of vacation and planned to see ten baseball games in eight days. Since I did not have a passport at this time, and the United States required foreign travelers to fly domestic flights within the States with one—I had to fly to Montreal to rent a car and drive down to the States instead.
Day one was a game in Toronto, then it was onto, Baltimore, New York to see the Mets and Philadelphia as part of a day-night double header in two different cities, this was to be followed up Detroit, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, a doubleheader in Pittsburgh, Boston and to be concluded in New York. The trip was Four Thousand Miles of all driving. I brought my wife Stella along with me. She was going to visit the ‘Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame’, Times Square in New York, and was going to meet ‘DOG THE BOUNTY HUNTER’ in a bookstore in TAYLOR, Michigan.
I loved my wife Stella at this point, and I did not think it was fair to have a ten day vacation without her so she came along. Many different events happened though out chasing these stadiums that threw a wrench into out marriage. I would not see them for months afterwards, but it was a problem with us, I never attributed them to the baseball directly although it was the catalyst.
Doing a schedule like this made me realize how hard travelling can be. I missed the second game of the trip in Baltimore outright because the drive from Toronto to Philadelphia, then onto Baltimore took way longer then I thought it would. Some of these directions you receive online are just mileage charts—they don’t take construction, weather, and traffic into consideration. Deciding not to drive to Baltimore was a wake-up call that I needed to fine-tune the preparations I took from that point future.
After completing the Shea Stadium, Citizen’s Bank doubleheader, I was schooled again on the drive from Philadelphia to Detroit. I never made it to Comerica until the second inning. The next day we were late arriving to ‘US Cellular Field’ because ‘DOG THE BOUNTY HOUNTER’ arrived late in Michigan. I hate missing any pitch for baseball games, and vowed right there never to miss any starts or ends of the game from that point forward!
I will get to ranking and talking about all the stadiums during the streak chases later in future chapters. I ended the trip seeing nine different home games in nine days. The biggest shock of the trip was returning the rental car in Montreal to find that when we parked out car in a New York Valet Parking near Times Square, someone had dinged it against the wall. I guess because I was tired, I forgot when booking the car contract online, that we had taken full insurance for the car and were covered for the damages. My fears of paying for the car were subsided instantly. I would investigate this when I got home again.
My wife and I fought the whole time we drove from New York City to Montreal, it was apparent she did not have the physical fortitude to come on big road trips that test your endurance. I, on the other hand, was invigorated by the process and was contemplating a huge summer long vacation the following year that included going to all the ballparks.
I spent four hours on the computer verifying that the latest car offer was real. I found out that the website that I reserved my rental contract offered a deal for fully insured rental cars for just over a Thousand Dollars a month. The reason I thought my first rate on my spring trip was such a deal was because it was low season for travelling. Car rentals are spiked from June to September.
Whether it was fate or not, a couple of weeks into being home that August, the Chevy Cavalier started to show signs it was headed for major car repairs. Again I was prompted to the computer.
This time I searched every car rental place in the book. I remembered what got me to this point in my life success the last few years—it was tireless work towards my management of schedule. I finally came to a conclusion that would be questioned for years in logic, for me it was a revelation.
The best thing I ever did as a courier was chart down every expense for gas, repairs, purchase prices, insurance, car washes and oil changes. I doubled that with charting all the mileage for the pizzeria—along with daily money earned for the driver job and for the paper routes. I roughly knew what I was paying per mile to operate a car. It was six years of research that told me a tale. I sat with a calculator for a full day straight crunching numbers.
It was a decision that I needed help with. My dad is a car salesman, and he knows the car business like no tomorrow. I ran the idea by him—he counter-offered a loan for a reliable used Toyota Yaris. I was touched by the prospect, but I have a knack for mathematics and knew that buying a car would be the worst thing I could do. I left the conversation telling him that I would try the car rental for three months and see how it turned out. At worst, I could always take him up on his offer after. My mind was working overtime. I broke it down like this.
3000 miles per month is what I averaged in driving
Rental Car-Estimated Charges
Heavy price tag at $1000 per month
Gas on a new car for the 3000 miles driven for Rental Car of a 2007 Toyota Corolla was- $400
Total Operation money was- $1400 or 46.7 Cents per mile
Chevy Cavalier-Estimated Charges
Car Insurance (For Delivery Insurance—(which Rental Cars do not need to have because they have Fleet Insurance) $150, plus $75 for the second old Cavalier for emergency use incase the first one breaks down for a $225 a month rare for insurance. This did not include if I caused the accident, my own vehicle would have to be replaced at my own expense.
Gas on 3000 miles was $575 per month
Average depreciation per mile was 4 cents so $125 per month
Future purchase price—New Car $125 per month
Average Repairs on 3000 miles on 15 year old car (moderate) is 15 cents a mile
So total average per month of $450
Car washes and Oil Changes on 3000 miles is $50
Total operation Money was $1550 or 51.7 cents per Mile, plus no coverage if the car was wrecked.
At minimum I figured I would spend $150 dollars less a month. With the rental car I would also have the knowledge I was not going to spend one 2-5 days a month in the car repair shop waiting for the car to be repaired. Oh, and lest we forget that this was a month to month comparison analysis. What if the engine seized, or a transmission was blown? With the set total for the rental car I would be able to set a budget for the first time ever as a carrier.
Another thing I always had to worry about was crossing the border to Washington State from the province of British Colombia. I live three miles from the first gas station. The price difference per gallon translates to about a dollar a gallon savings going to Blaine Washington. If my cars had any slight problems I would not even risk the car breaking down in the States, thus pay the crazy fuel charges Canadians pay. I went with the rental car.
Immediately my life improved ten-fold. No longer was I worried about mileage on cars. At work I was offered some of the higher paying routes that no one wanted to do because of a mileage on a car—well now with unlimited miles I could take country routes that required more driving then physical walking and for half of the time elapsed. This opened up my income to take on more community newspapers, having that extra energy in reserve.
The first month I switched to the rental cars, I made a Thousand more dollars then the previous month. I actually tallied about 3500 miles on the car too.
Another thing I learned was that every 16 days that I rented the car—I received a free day car rental to use anywhere in North America——including my summer baseball trips where I could save 60-70 dollars per day for those mid-week rentals in cities like St. Louis, Chicago, New York and Philly. This meant an additional $125 on the good side of the ledger.
I have long known for years that the United States also has a cheaper cost of living. Many times on prolonged road-trips I would bring back the $700 worth of goods exemptions from the USA-back into Canada. Compared to what we pay in Canada that could be a savings of nearly half off.
The town of Bellingham, Washington is Twenty-Five Miles from my house. I started travelling there three times a week to pick up $15-20 worth of food, clothing and whatever else was cheaper there. Usually the border guards would not impose duty when I returned to Canada on the way back. Since mileage was not an issue for me, I reveled in the amount of miles I tacked on the cars. I was driving new Toyota cars that all had Ten-Thousand Miles on them or under. After a month, I would take the car back to the rental place, and trade for a fully detailed similar car. It was an awesome feeling. I even was able to drive a few of the cars under a thousand miles. Sometimes I would keep these cars for longer then a month.
At the pizzeria, I used to be moan and groan when there were far off single deliveries, this unlimited mileage deal eliminated all of that. I was driving almost three times more then the average driver. People started questioning the logistics of it all. They would ask questions about leasing or buying being better? I had to reply them these answers: “I can not lease a car because I put on 36 to 40000 miles a year. Second is the delivery insurance, thirdly, I could not buy a car from any bank because I just declared bankruptcy. I was lucky enough that there are ‘secured credit card’s’ out there that grant you all the benefits of a regular Visa—but you must deposit whatever you want you credit limit to be though.
Having more money on a monthly basis also freed up the ability to buy other food items, and other household items that had reward air miles from specific grocery stores like ‘Safeway.’ Air miles that could get you hotel gift certificates, airline vouchers. I had always done this but was afraid of carrying to much inventory of one or two items in my house for fear of running out of money. I could now carry inventory of items for up to six months at a time if the deal was right. Every week I sat in my house with my calculator and crunched the value of the air miles in connection to the products listed. In some instances the value of the air miles was worth more money then the product itself.
I will give you an example.
There is a deal for 32 oz Coke bottles (3 for $3 at Safeway.) For every 6 bottles you buy, you receive 40 air miles. An Air Mile is worth 16 cents each when you redeem them for Best Western Hotel Gift Cards. So you buy (6) 32-oz cokes for $6, in exchange you receive 40 Air Miles at .16 worth for $6.40 in return. I would buy hundreds of dollars worth of the deal—and then sell them to my manager at the pizzeria. She just wanted the best deal in town equivalent and she would give the money for that price point. I would line up the Air Miles dollar for Dollar with the money spent on the Coke—and then resell them to manager at like 50% percent of the money spent—the rest of that money was pure profit. I will get into how I made $2000 for my first streak chase when it comes to that chapter from another Air Miles deal. This was money made from the road while I was going to baseball games for 6 weeks.
My community newspaper I was delivering for, also was thrilled I wanted to work extra, so they gave me more work. There was a problem with the amount of people who did not want this given paper on the house lists though. About 15 percent of the houses for every route on average did not want the paper. The problem was that I was getting shipped a hundred extra papers (including the subsequent huge volume of flyers to be inserted in the papers) of the stopped houses. They were piling up in my shed. That is when I remembered a guy at the ‘big newspaper job’ used to talk about receiving a few dollars a day for recycling about five big bundles of newspapers near his house. I asked him for the address and how this all worked.
It was yet another victory for me after finding out the specifics. They paid about Thirty-Five Dollars a Metric Ton—or about fifteen dollars a full car load from one of the Toyota’s I was renting. I had a new business. On the way back from the States border—there was a community recycling plant in which several bad carriers dumped their entire paper routes every two or three days. Every two days I went for gas I came back with a full car—and headed right over to the recycling plant. This profited me fifteen dollars for about forty-five minutes of work. I just had to protect the rental cars from the newspaper ink—wouldn’t you know I used free blanket giveaways from baseball stadiums to do this. This business netted me an extra Two-hundred dollars of money per month.
I was now in a situation where I could make as much money as the amount of hours I was willing to work. Between the newspapers and delivering pizza seven days a week I was making money from every direction—also at this time the Canadian dollar was worth $1.10 for every American dollar. I started buying all the U.S money I could get my hands on for the future trip.
Also because of the vast amount of money I was making delivering to nearly 600 hundred houses—as opposed to 250 the year before—for that Christmas I made nearly $2000 in Christmas tips, more then the $700 the year before. I saved $14000 dollars from September to March.
The best part about my new schedule was I actually decreased the amount of time involving work because my days of being in a repair shop were over. From September to December I wrote a full science fiction novel—and re-edited my first novel ever written about a teenage gambling ringmaster. I wrote for fifteen to twenty hours a week without fail.
In January of 2008 I purchased the ability to self publish them both for Thirteen Hundred Dollars Total. Now it was a matter of one more final edit. Out of the goals I set forth for myself, they were all a realistic achievement now—with enough money to see the remainder stadiums, (with the bonus of seeing all the other nineteen stadiums again also) and the books being published. The other goal I had was to visit all the Fifty States in America.
At this point in time I was sitting at Twenty-Five States out of the Fifty. However I was going to do the baseball trip it would include every other State I had not yet seen except for Alaska.
I was ready for the tickets to go on sale for every ball club—and for them to post the remaining time of game starts on the schedule. Unlike the previous summer, my wife would not be going with me for the road trip. I had initial talks with all other family members, with most of them agreeing to meet me at various times to watch some baseball. I printed up two months worth of the schedule and studied up at the course I wanted to take. I made some early purchases of tickets for this schedule. A few weeks later, I was online and searched for the ‘WORLD RECORD’ holder of the “FASTEST TO SEE ALL 30 MLB TEAMS AT A HOME IN LEAST AMOUNT OF DAYS.” I knew the record was 28 days—and now I had to re-think this whole trip now.
Comment
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Comment by Ken Lee (30/43) on September 21, 2009 at 5:10pm
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More... I need more to read :)
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