Sunday in Fall River and Fenway

Sunday’s are for sleeping late, but not this Sunday. It was road trip time with my friend Bob. So, I was up before the crack of 8:00!

OK – I know that’s sleeping in for most people. Remember, I live in the east, but operate on Hawaiian time.

We stopped for a quick container of coffee, dropped my car off at New Haven’s Union Station and headed eastward on the Connecticut Turnpike. Because the Turnpike is also I-95, this east-west route has signs referring to north and south.

It still drives me nuts!

Saturday night late, I had received this cryptic little email from another Bob friend, in Florida.

HVN: Temp: 80F Dewpt 78F

midnight

amazing

78&#176 for a dewpoint temperature represents Calcutta-like steam. It was very warm and very sticky Saturday night and nothing, except the Sun beaming down, had changed by Sunday morning.

With a Google generated map and directions in hand, we headed toward Somerset, MA and WSAR, scene of one of Bob’s earliest jobs and my first. There was never any thought that 36 years after my last time there, WSAR had moved. In fact, the only question was, how much was still the same?

In a poetic, romantic world, I’d now tell you about all the memories that rushed back to me as we drove up. The truth is, I could only vaguely make a connection. That surprised me.

The building is the same. It’s at the end of Home Street, on the edge of a neighborhood of modest homes. Beyond WSAR’s field of towers, a huge power plant poked out through the very thick haze.

Amazingly, someone was at the station. We think he was the manager of what now is a little mom and pop two station facility. WSAR is news, talk and sports. Its sister station, formerly WALE is all Portuguese.

The inside of the building had been changed, as you might expect after all this time. The man at the station told us to walk around and take a look.

We didn’t stay long.

I think Bob got more out of this than I did. I wish I would have made more of a connection with my past. Working at WSAR was such a seminal moment in my professional life.

Heading north, we stopped at a mall in Taunton for breakfast/lunch and then proceeded to Boston. It was very hazy. Nothing about the Boston skyline that was distinct. Everything was sort of placed within the murkiness.

We maneuvered up Storrow Drive, off at Arlington Street and then across Back Bay to a garage under the Prudential Center. I thought it would be a good idea to park at the Pru and then take the subway&#185 to Fenway.

We got to the platform only to see signs cautioning that no dollar bills would be accepted on the train. The three token machines were not working. There was no token clerk. What to do?

We popped back up at street level and walked into the Colonnade Hotel. Most business are bothered by subway change seekers and I understand why. But, we really needed the change, so I did everything I could to look like a touristy hotel guest. Having my camera slung over my shoulder didn’t hurt.

Oh, by the way… contrary to the many posted signs, you can use dollar bills on the subway. The driver puts them in a slot on the side of the change machine. I have no idea what happens to them at the end of the run.

It didn’t take long to get to Fenway. It is just beyond the Mass Pike, a few blocks from Kenmore Square. The neighborhood looks like it was industrial – the buildings have that kind of feel.

Crowds of happy people (the Red Sox are in first, after all) were heading toward the stadium.

Immediately, I began to sense a different vibe than I had felt at Yankee Stadium. Maybe it was the fact you could see the stadium as you approached it or the banners on its brick exterior? Maybe it was the cluster of stores across the street?

Whatever it was, it was not Yankee Stadium. Since Yankee Stadium was a disappointment, this was a good thing.

We found a man selling tickets and lucked into great seats. The luck wasn’t the site lines or distance from home plate – both of those were what we expected and quite good. The luck was being under cover in the grandstand, as you shall see.

We walked through a security screening and into a throng of people moving past the concession stands. It felt good. I don’t know why. It felt right. It was old and cramped but totally appropriate in a way Yankee Stadium was not.

We walked into the stands and gazed at the stadium. It’s a gem. The stadium has a small feel to it. And, I guess next to a 50-60,000 seat park, it is. Our seats were up the first base line, directly opposite from the green monster.

I was pleased to see restraint in the advertising signs on that big, green wall. They were all green and white. They fit in.

The first inning was rocky for the Red Sox. They finally retired the White Sox without a run, but it was obvious Matt Clement wasn’t throwing his best stuff.

There would be plenty of time to think about that, because as the first half inning ended, the heavens open, accompanied by deep throated thunder.

How glad was I, at this moment, that our seats were under cover? We watched as most of the lower deck and other exposed seats cleared out.

Within a few seconds the players and umps had left the field and the grounds crew was in charge, covering the base cutout and pitcher’s mound and unrolling the tarp.

This is something I had seen on TV, but never in person. The tarp is immense, covering the entire infield and skinned areas of the field. It went on quickly.

As a meteorologist (Wow, I can now refer to myself that way), I was concerned that they were placing themselves in harm’s way during the storm. You would expect a lightning strike to hit a light tower or other taller structure… but it could easily strike someone on the field, or in the stands, I guess.

It rained as hard as I’ve ever seen. Sheets of rain poured down. Most people moved to shelter. Others, resigned to getting soaked, stayed where the were.

At one point, security guards on the field were issued yellow slickers. By this time they were already soaked to the bone. I tried to figure out the value of this late move? By this point, the slickers were just holding in the moisture already there.

The rains stopped and the crew came back to remove the tarp. Now, what was heavy was heavier. The tarp was loaded with water.

By folding the tarp over itself and moving back and forth, the grounds crew was able to deposit most of the water just beyond the base paths in shallow right field. Then a groundskeeper reached down and began pulling plugs from the turf, opening drains to carry the water away.

This was nearly as good a show as the game!

Play resumed, but it wasn’t to be the Red Sox day. They were getting pummeled by Chicago. And then, it began to rain again.

We stayed a while and then, remembering there was a 6:40 train to Connecticut or a three hour wait until the one after that at 9:40, we left. Bob got off near his car and I continued, first on the Green Line and then the Red Line to South Station.

South Station is open and airy with kiosks for food, books and magazines. The ceiling and walls are largely populated by ads for Apple’s iPod. As much as I thought the green and white ads at Fenway were appropriate, I felt this was not… and I’m an iPod fan.

I went to a ticket machine to pay my way but all it wanted to sell me was a ticket at 9:40. I moved to a real person behind the counter. He gave me the bad news. The 6:40 train was sold out!

This wasn’t good. But, there was nothing I could do, yet. I got a salad, sat between a woman and her loud toddler son and a homeless person who seemed to be nodding off, and had dinner.

As train time approached, I moved toward the platform. Maybe there was someone based in New Haven on this train? Maybe I could talk my way on?

I ran into a conductor. He was from Boston, there was no doubt from his accent. I told him my plight and he said, “Don’t worry, you can sit in the Club Car.”

Easier said than done. He went to work on the train as I waited for the platform to be opened for passengers. When it finally was, my ticket was for the wrong train. They wouldn’t let me pass to get to the Club Car.

I began to panic. I was tired, extremely sweaty and I imagine quite pungent. I didn’t want to spend the next three hours at South Station.

I did something I have promised myself never to do. I took out my business card, handed it to one of the security people and asked her to ask one of the crew members (who all, except for the Club Car conductor were from New Haven) if they could help me.

Maybe I’m justifying what I’ve already done, but I thought I worded my request in such a way that it didn’t go over my imaginary line. It wasn’t a, “Don’t you know who I am” request. Well, it didn’t seem like one at the time.

As it turns out, a very nice conductor traveling with his family took mercy on me. He got me past security and onto the train. And, during the course of the trip I got to meet everyone who was “working on the railroad, all the livelong day.”

Here’s the more amazing corollary to this story. The sold out train couldn’t have been more than half full! Why did Amtrak think it was full and refuse to sell tickets? I have no idea. I would guess I wasn’t the only one prepared to spend another three hours in Boston… and some people probably did.

So, there’s the Boston trip… except for one little thing. As it turns out, after we left, the Red Sox waited and waited and waited and finally postponed the game. My two tickets are eligible to be replaced with tickets for another game.

I’m looking forward to returning to Fenway.

&#185 – I guess it officially fits the definition of subway, but Boston’s Green Line is just trolleys in a tube with some of the ugliest, dingiest stations ever seen by man. I have no doubt I was safe and never felt otherwise. It was just the subway time forgot.

Here’s What I Learned

There’s a project I’d like to take on. In that pursuit, I’ve been reading a lot about the atom and its nucleus, protons, neutrons and the electrons that orbit them all.

Part of the fascination has to do with the scale on which it occurs. For instance, the nucleus of an atom is roughly 1/10 of a millionth, millionth of a centimeter (10-&#185&#179 centimeter).

And, even though we’re talking about very tiny thing, all of it follows distinct laws of physics. That makes the whole a bit easier to explain and understand.

I had written a few weeks ago how I’m not being shy about contacting experts via email. This is a case in point. I’ve just spent over a half hour on the phone with an eminent expert from Yale University.

He had no clue who I was. It made no difference. He was learned and patient and I attempted my best sponge imitation. I don’t know what he knows, but I’ve now got a better foundation for continuing to study.

During our conversation he used a few analogies. Here’s my favorite, describing the size of the nucleus of an atom.

If the nucleus of an atom was the size of a fly, and it was sitting on 2nd base in Yankee Stadium, the electrons would be outside the stadium.

I’m still trying to get my arms around the astounding force necessary to hold those electrons in their place versus the relative size of the nucleus.

Anyway, it’s been an education and I really hope this project comes through.

Blogger’s note: Corrected an editing error thanks to Rod Richardson.

Yankees Versus Angels – At Yankee Stadium

Last weekend, I took in a Phillies game. It was the first major league baseball game I’d seen in at least fifteen years. Yesterday I took in my second.

I got the call early in the week from my friend Steve. A friend of his, a Yankee season ticket hold, had an extra ticket. Would I like to go?

Later it came out, Steve knew I wasn’t a Yankee fan, but thought of this as a photo safari for me. Good thinking! Our seats were down low in right field, beyond the dugout.

I met Steve at 8:50 and we drove to our rendezvous point where Norm, the ticket holder, picked us up.

The drive to the Bronx was a breeze. We made one stop on the Hutch (see my previous entry) and then headed past Fordham University and the Bronx Zoo to a stop on the #4 train.

This was a great idea. I haven’t been to Yankee Stadium in nearly 50 years, but I’ve heard traffic is horrendous. Taking the train for the last few minutes eliminates the crush of traffic going into and out of the stadium. Anyway, I love the subway and can’t remember the last time I was on this classic elevated line.

Looking down the tracks from the Fordham Road station, all I could think of was a roller coaster. The tracks went downhill, not steadily, but with few little bumps along the way. Finally, they took a dip and disappeared.

Getting off the train put us right next to the stadium. We were too close to have any perspective of its physical size. There are majestic views of Yankee Stadium from the Major Deegan Expressway, but none from our vantage point.

Norm’s daughter joined us here and the four of us walked around the outer edge of the park and into the Stadium Club. The Stadium Club is a very nice restaurant. In a venue where a beer can cost $8.50, the Stadium Club’s prices keep pace! We sat down for brunch.

Norm had celebrated his birthday on Tuesday, like me. Part of what he wanted had to do with Yankees and he had made arrangements to get us down to the edge of the dugout before the game started.

Unfortunately, being that wasn’t quite enough. The players never showed and we retreated up the foul line to our seats.

Let’s talk a little about Yankee Stadium. I have been there before. It was some time in the late 50s or early 60s. My dad had somehow gotten tickets to a football Giants game.

It was a day as cold as I can remember. We sat under an overhang, in the end zone with an unobstructed view. The smell of cigar smoke was thick enough to cut with a knife.

I don’t remember anything about the football game. Nothing.

Sitting in our seats a few minutes before game time gave me a chance to look around. The stadium itself (as opposed to the field of play) was smaller than I expected. Though the paint and fixtures seemed to be in good repair, the stadium looked old and tired.

The field itself was spectacular. We had come early enough to watch the ritual as the lines were carefully painted up the base paths, along with the batter’s and coaches boxes. The infield dirt was gently raked and then lightly sprayed, turning it a beautiful brown.

I’m sorry I’m not a Yankee fan, because this was an amazing win for them. Trailing all game, and looking sad doing it, they rallied in the bottom of the ninth and won as Hideki Matsui lined a double into left field.

A few sections up, a group of Japanese fans celebrated in a way I haven’t seen since I saw my grandparents celebrate at my Bar Mitzvah!

All I could think about was the pitcher, Francisco Rodriguez – aka “K-Rod.” He’s on my fantasy league team. He had just given up two runs, four walks and picked up the loss! Ouch.

I must admit, the vast majority of the game was seen by me through the lens of my camera. I brought the Canon, both lenses and nearly 2 gb of memory. Nothing was wasted.

In fact, it wasn’t until after the game and a chance to thumb through my photos that I realized how awkward and stressful a pitcher’s motion is. This is the kind of thing you just don’t get to appreciate unless the motion is stopped.

Having seen the Phillies last week, I was ready to try some new and improved techniques. My timing on fly balls and swinging bats is better. I also decided to sacrifice ‘noise’ (the digital cameras equivalent of graininess in an old fashioned photo) in order to shoot with a very fast shutter and open aperture.

For most of the game I was capturing images at 1/3200 second. That was enough to freeze every bit of action I saw. Opening the lens a little less increased my depth of field, making it easier to get sharper pictures.

When men were on first, I turned the autofocus off, focused on 2nd base and hoped for a play there. A few times that move paid off. Mostly it didn’t.

My favorite shot came as Juan Rivera of the Angels chased down a home run to right. I caught him as he jumped, hoping to find he ball. He didn’t get it but I did… well, at least I got the shot.

As the game ended, we poured out of the stadium and headed back to the “el.” This strategy of Norm’s worked again. In ten minutes we were in the car and faced no traffic all the way home to Connecticut.

Isn’t this strange? After all these years I get to see baseball games on consecutive weekends. And, there’s the possibility of more. My friend Bob is coming up from Charlotte, North Carolina in a few weeks. We’re not totally set in our plans, but he’d like to see the Red Sox play the Angels at Fenway.

I’m ready.

Camouflage Cell Tower

I was invited to go to the Yankees/Angels game at Yankee Stadium. I’m just too exhausted to write it up now. I will tomorrow.

I brought “Clicky” the camera and went a little nuts. There are a few shots I’m pretty happy with.

Meanwhile, on our way to New York from Connecticut, we stopped at a rest area on the Hutchinson River Parkway in Westchester County. Square foot for square foot this might be the most profitable retail business in the world! Their convenience store is jam packed 24/7.

It’s what’s on the edge of the rest area that attracted me the most. There is a cell phone tower, disguised to look like a tree.

The problem is, not only doesn’t it look like a tree, it looks like a thumbed nose insult to anyone who really thought this cell tower was going to blend in with the background.

I don’t know the process that went on, but I can’t believe anyone is happy with this – not the people who thought it might spoil their view, not the company who paid for its erection.

Recently there’s been a huge clamor about a cell tower to be built near the shores of Lake George in the Adirondacks. If this is the way their tower will be ‘hidden’, I understand the tumult.

Before I sound like a radical, if given the choice between this tower, on a major highway, and having no cell service, the tower would stay.

The Mecca Of Ham Radio

This is probably the nerdiest thing I can say about myself. I have been a ham radio operator for nearly 40 years. I was first licensed as a Novice class operator while in high school and then went on to my General, Advanced and Amateur Extra licenses.

I can still remember my first contact or QSO&#185. I didn’t have a radio of my own, so I went to my friend Ralph Press’ house. Using Morse Code, I was able to span the globe from Flushing, Queens all the way to Nassau County, a little farther out on Long Island.

His callsign was WN2RNG. I remember that, because in Morse it had a distinctive rhythm: di dah dit dah dit dah dah dit.

Growing up I lived in apartment 5E. It was a building where outdoor antennas were forbidden. From time-to-time early in my ham radio career I strung up ‘invisible’ antennas of extremely thin, and very flimsy, wire.

Neighbors who knew complained I was ruining their TV reception. They complained even after I moved out and went to college!

It was all for naught. Only as an adult did I being to understand what it took to have a proper antenna and how important that was.

My ham radio career has been through a number of stages. There would be a few years of activity followed by a period of inactivity. I’m in an inactive stage right now. You can blame that on the Internet, which is more efficient than ham radio doing many of the things I enjoyed.

In my last active stretch I became involved in contesting, trying to contact as many other hams as possible in a set period of time, usually exchanging specific bits of information to confirm the contact. I also started toying with QRP or low powered contacts.

I have made contacts to Europe and Asia and everywhere in between with a transceiver I built on my kitchen table, using less power than a flashlight bulb. Once, on vacation, I took it to the Dominican Republic and operated off of D cell batteries with an antenna draped between two palm trees on the beach.

Early on, I used voice for contacts, but I grew tired of that. It was too much like operating an appliance and there didn’t seem to be much skill involved.

In my last ham radio incarnation I was 100% Morse. Ham operators call that CW for continuous wave. It is the most simple form of radio communications.

I became pretty proficient, able to send and receive at nearly 30 words per minute. At that speed you stop listening to individual letters and begin trying to hear words or phrases.

Once you start sending faster than 10-15 words per minute you can’t use the classic Morse key – the ‘brass pounder.’ Instead I used a paddle, with the dit and dah on opposite sides and an electronic keyer to translate my little finger motions into properly spaced tones.

Recently, my friend Harold become the Chief Operating Officer for the American Radio Relay League – the ham radio organization in America. It is headquartered in Newington, CT, about 40 miles from my house.

League Headquarters is ham radio’s Mecca. I went and visited today. It’s been a while since I’d been there.

It’s a difficult time for the ARRL because computers have stolen many of the geeky kids, like me, who used to go into ham radio. Restrictive covenants in housing developments have also made it extremely difficult to put up a decent antenna. They still have plenty of members, but I assume they’re getting progressively older.

ARRL headquarters is an interesting place because it’s a publishing house, membership service center, laboratory where new equipment is evaluated (and those evaluations published) and home of W1AW.

W1AW is to ham radio stations as Yankee Stadium is to ballparks. It is the best known callsign, without a doubt. Today, before I left the league, I sat down and did a little operating at W1AW.

There is, to me, something very romantic and relaxing about operating Morse Code. In a darkened room, with headphones on, totally concentrating, you can pluck weak signals from the ether and have conversations with people from around the world.

Imagine if the simple act of conversing required skill? That’s what CW operating is all about.

Many of the people you speak to don’t understand English, and I certainly don’t speak any foreign languages fluently. That’s where the telegrapher’s abbreviations come in. It’s possible to have a rudimentary conversation without speaking a common language.

I sat down at the W1AW operating position. The transceiver was down on the low end of 20 meters (14.005 mHz to be exact), a wavelength suited for long distance conversations. The rig’s coaxial cable connected it to a large multi-element beam on a tall tower. I was loaded for bear with a very recognizable call.

I called CQ – the universal request to chat. Nothing. I called again and Tom in Cardiff, Wales came back. We talked for a few minutes and, as I signed off, Ludo in Slovakia called me. That was followed by Valentin somewhere in Russia.

Harold estimated my speed at about 18 words per minute, well below my old CW comfort zone. My sending wasn’t entirely flawless either. A number of times I hit dit when I should have hit dah and had to correct myself and resend.

It really felt good.

Maybe it’s time to throw a wire antenna up over the house again and give it another try? Or, maybe, ham radio’s time has come and gone for me. I’m not really sure. There’s certainly a lot more on my plate right now. Where would I fit it in?

Something to ponder. Who knows?

&#185 – Because amateur radio had its beginnings in telegraphy, many Morse Code abbreviations are used, sometimes even when speaking. QSO, QTH, QRZ, QRU – they’re all part of the arcane lexicon.