Gardner WebLog

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to have a full day off.  I’ve been climbing with my Swiss buddy Marcel at the climbing gym for awhile now and he knew of a good place to go about an hour’s train ride away.  So off we went early in the morning to beat the crowd (I guess it’s not your average Joshua Tree trip where you can usually always find a place by yourself.) Now, the United Kingdom is famous for its world class limestone, or grit as most climbers call it.  It’s all over Europe, mostly up north where a lot of the good climbing is.  However, one of the best areas closest to London is down near a town called Tonbridge Wells, and all of the rock is sandstone.  Marcel and I went to a place in Eridge Green which is just near Tonbridge.  The train ride was great, a good break from the city.  We left the small station and walked about 20 minutes through English countryside.  It was mostly wheat fields, woods and grass, but we did walk through a few driveways that led to really old looking country homes, all completely brick.  I guess the climbers have an arrangement with the people that live there and they don’t mind if you just walk through their property. 

The actual climbing area was a bit more popular than I was expecting, but it was still a lot of fun.  The difference between climbing on this sandstone and climbing in J Tree is huge.  Think of a library or building similar built in the 60’s or 70’s.  You know that really coarse white texture that they sometimes use to cover the outside wall?  (I think we had it outside our house in Redlands too, back in the day, maybe it’s a west coast thing.)  Well that’s similar to J Tree rock.  Now think of a recently sanded piece of wood.  It’s dry but still very smooth.  That’s the sandstone we climbed on.   It obviously was easier on the hands but made positioning your feet a lot harder.  Anyway, we were there for the whole day and got our moneys worth out of the train ticket.  After hopping back on the train we passed out and woke up from the loud speakers telling us to leave because we were at London Bridge Station.  All in all it was a good day, although I’m still eager to get out and see and try out the famous grit. 

It’s been awhile since my last post, I’ve been a little busy the last few weeks.  Instead of writing a term paper length post, I’ve just broken it up.  Last week I went back to Washington D.C. to stand by my good buddy Troy at his wedding.  He’s been a friend since we were twelve, and I’ve known Natalie since high school.  I’ve never been a best man before, or been in a wedding party for that matter.  It was all new to me, so I was a little nervous heading back to the states.  I do have to say though, I think it all went as good as it could have gone.  Everyone showed up, things went right, and most everyone danced (always a plus.)

            Since most of you are probably wondering what I organized for the bachelor party, I’ll fill you in on minimal details.  In the morning we went out to Leesburg and went paintballing, most of us for the first time.  It was of course a lot of fun, men and their guns.  After lunch with Bryson, the minister in the wedding and a long term friend of Troy and I, we packed up the car and headed for Great Falls to go rock climbing.  The forecast was ten percent chance of thunderstorms mind you.  Adam and I had been arranging for a few weeks how we were going to get enough gear there for all of us (seven guys.)  We set it all up, two ropes, ready to go, about to rappel down to start climbing.  Crack, boom, rumble, rumble.  We decide to wait it out and about ten minutes later it’s pouring.  You can’t control the weather, god does what he will.  So we headed back early and got ready to go out.  We all went out to Adam’s Morgan, a fun place in D.C. and had a great time.  That’s it about the bachelor party. 

            The wedding day went great, as I said before.  The photographer took two thousand pictures, so I’m pretty sure it’s all well recorded and documented.  There were lots of people there I hadn’t seen in a long time, so it was nice to catch up.  Natalie looked amazing of course, and things just went smoothly.  If I do have to say though, the reception was a success for three reasons.  It was sunny, the food was really good (mashed potatoes), and Troy did the worm across the dance floor.  Case closed, good times.  Congratulations to Troy and Natalie and a fantastic time for everyone there.  I’m waiting for a visit now in California from Mr. and Mrs. Troy and Natalie Barnes, especially because I owe Troy and rock climbing adventure. 

Before I get to my next post, I just wanted to let you know where I’m writing these recent few.  I’m sitting in the café of the South Bank Centre overlooking the Thames.  It’s finally sunny after one of the wettest Junes in London history.  There is horrible flooding up north right now so we need as many dry and sunny days as we can get.  The South Bank Centre is a great place to come and get food, drinks, or just overlook the walkway which leads down to the London Eye and Westminster Bridge.  It also leads north and east all the way down as far as you want to go, beyond the Tower Bridge.  Sorry if that sounded like I was rubbing it in, but I thought it was relevant to the blog.

            This weekend, BSUK (baseball softball UK) hosted two big games at our field in Finsbury Park.  Johns Hopkins University came out to travel around the UK and play a few games.  Since they have a JV team in addition to the varsity team (unlike most D3 schools), they brought 36 players and their families, two bus loads in all.  JHU played a team up in Scotland made of all-stars from the Scottish men’s league.  I guess it wasn’t much of a game, JHU won pretty easily.  Well, I think that left an impression, because they showed up less than an hour before the doubleheader on Friday against the Great Britain National Team.  The GB team is a combination of all sorts of players from everywhere around the world.  As long as you have a British passport, you can play for the team.  GB won both games, by a few runs.  JHU lost to Keane in the last game of the regional finals this year.  Keane went on to win the D3 World Series Championship.  JHU was expected to win both GB games easily, I guess they didn’t show up mentally.  Either that or they spent too much time in the pub the night before, probably a little of both.

            There was a big barbecue afterwards, and I got to talking with some of the JHU guys.  It turns out one of them grew up in Burke, VA and went to Lake Braddock, my rival high school, small world.  In all four years playing east coast teams at Redlands during Spring Break, we never played JHU, so I didn’t know much about them.  They have quite a successful program now and should be pretty good next year.  I guess every three years they take both squads and travel outside the U.S. to play.  They’ve been to Russia and Cuba, not bad places to go with a team.

            Yesterday I played on the all-men’s league team against the GB team.  I pitched and threw four innings of no hit baseball, pretty good pitching actually, unlike my lucky games against the second division teams.  I got yanked after four for what reason I don’t know, but I know that GB was supposed to win the game. They weren’t happy while I was pitching, but rallied off the next two pitchers and won the game by a lot.  It was mostly just a game for the coaches of the GB team to evaluate some guys and pick who they want to take to the European Championship which is coming up I think.

            Well that’s all for now, there’s more to come. The battery on my computer is dying, so I’ll write another one back home.  Thanks for checking in on the updates.

Cheers.

One of the parts of my job out here is to travel around to different schools to teach baseball.  Although I do basically the same thing at each school, the kids are different and that always makes it interesting.  I start every session by asking them where they think I am from.  They all say America of course and then I ask what part.  About eighty percent of the time they all scream either New York, or Los Angeles.  I tell them that I came all the way from California just to teach them the game of baseball.  That usually grabs there attention.  We mostly just do throwing drills and then play a modified game.  There are two things that most of them have trouble remembering to do.  First, dropping the bat after they hit the ball.  I have to go over it time and time again because as soon as they hit the ball, all thirty kids are screaming a million different things and they usually can’t hear me.  The second is actually touching the bases.  Some kids will just hit the ball and run as fast as they possibly can in the general direction of each base. 

            Depending on the school and how the kids behave, managing a group of thirty isn’t always easy but I make it work.  I’m mostly around North London and close to where I’m staying.  Neil would have me go around to every school in the London area if he had enough time and money.  I’ve been to a few schools in rough parts of Hackney where the kids aren’t as well behaved or motivated to participate.  You have to learn how to keep everyone engaged and interested while making sure nobody punches somebody over who’s up next.  It’s fun and I like it, although sometimes it can be hard work.

            Most of the kids just have a blast and there are usually about four or five in each group that follow me out asking questions and telling me everything they know or have done having to do with baseball.  Last week, I heard a girl as she was walking back into the school say “Baseball is awesome!! America rules Kyle!!”  At a different school a boy chased me down before I left to tell me he wanted to be a baseball player when he grew up.  Fun times.  Although, I did have a ten year old girl ask me if I supported George Bush’s foreign policy.  It was rather intimidating, but I told her we could meet later for coffee to discuss American politics.  July looks to be the busiest month for me, because the schools close at the end of the month.  Neil wants me to get to as many schools before the kids get out.  I’m sure I’ll have some more interesting stories about the kids in a few weeks.