Spikes, Skating, Strikes & Softball

It’s been a busy past few days, with a bunch of stuff going on, particularly with PSCG. Back on Thursday evening, a group of us went out to the State College Spikes (the Class A short-season minor league baseball affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates) home opener to celebrate Daniel van N. passing his PhD dissertation defense! It was fun to be out enjoying a fine spring evening, though the game did drag for a bit in the early-mid innings (the Spikes lost to the Jamestown Jammers 6-3). But then again, it’s Class A minor league baseball, and even I’m not going just to watch the baseball, but more to hang out with friends. Minor league baseball is still fun though, with all the zany promotions and contests that happen. And it’s especially awesome when postgame fireworks are involved!
On Friday evening we celebrated Ruth H.’s 27th birthday, and for that she wanted to go rollerskating, so we went to Penn Skates. Now, I had no idea where this place was or that it even existed prior to last week, but I wasn’t exactly impressed when I heard that it was in a warehouse across the road from the airport. Didn’t exactly sound high-class, but then again, it’s a rollerskating rink, what should I expect? 🙂 To be completely honest, I wasn’t totally sold on the idea of rollerskating because, well, it seemed like a very middle school-type activity, and the last time I’d skated was, well, in middle school. Over a decade ago. [Wow, I guess it has been that long!] But I went, and rented some rollerblades. Now this was the first time I’d ever put on a pair of rollerblades, so needless to say I was pretty awkward for the first, oh, at least 30 minutes or so before I finally started getting a little bit of a feel for it, and began finally to be gliding and pushing off a bit like you’re supposed to. But I only fell once on the evening, so I consider that a minor victory! I rollerbladed for about an hour and a half before I decided to call it quits, because my feet and legs were hurting me (the skates were cutting into my legs too, pretty uncomfortable — next time I’ll wear taller socks). At least I didn’t completely suck at it by the time I quit though, and that was one of my goals, just not to suck by the end. I set high goals for myself, what can I say? The whole experience was still kinda weird though. First off, the rink totally smelled like middle school when we first got there, before they opened up the doors at the ends of the rink to let in a bit of a breeze. They had black lights on in the place, there was an arcade and a pool table, and pretty much all the things you’d expect at a middle school hangout (including a bunch of middle schoolers, who were probably wondering what all of us basically-adults were doing there taking over their hangout). Including flat, round pod-like tables scattered amongst the arcade games, on which middle schoolers were frequently making out, haha. Did they think they were being discreet?? But all in all, I’d say I had more fun than I was expecting. I guess I should maybe be willing to be a bit more open to new things in the future, even if I don’t *think* I’ll enjoy them beforehand.
Saturday was moving day for the Hollemans, the advisors for PSCG. Something like 15 of us showed up in the morning to help them load all their stuff from their old house near Suburban Park into the U-Haul (two trips), and then unload it into their new house in the Park Forest neighborhood. Helping with a full house move made me glad that I currently have just books, clothing, a TV, a small bookcase and a bed (plus some odds and ends) that I’ll have to pack up and move in August to my new apartment. If it weren’t for the bed, I could probably squeeze everything into my car still, haha. But anyway, after helping Ash & Heather get everything into their awesome new house, in the evening we helped get their big projection screen and sound system hooked up in the basement, and then had a Wii party down there, rocking out to plenty of Guitar Hero.
The insulation in their house is pretty amazing, in that even when we have Guitar Hero cranked up pretty good, you can’t hear a thing on the main floor. So when we heard some claps of thunder over Guitar Hero after awhile, we knew those had to be some pretty close lightning strikes. I went upstairs to check it out, and was treated to the most spectacular lightning show I’ve seen in my time in State College, and maybe the most spectacular show I’ve ever seen in my life. There was barely a second that went without some flash of lightning in the sky, and the rain was coming down in torrents to boot. There were several strikes that were within half a mile, it was awesome. After a bit, Ash realized that his garage door was still open, and that rain was blowing inside. I helped him to close it, by holding the door up while he undid the ropes and bungee cords that were holding the door open (the spring on the garage door had broken). While I was grabbing the metal part of the door, lightning struck maybe 1,000 feet in front of me, and at that moment I felt a little shock in my hands, and Ash smelled ozone (which lightning produces). A second later came the big boom. Now that was close! I figure what must’ve happened is that the lightning stroke probably induced a current in all metal in at least a 1,000-foot radius, to give me the shock. That’s pretty impressive in and of itself, if you ask me, and I never knew lightning could do that. But then again, you know you’re dealing with something pretty powerful electricity when it can travel several kilometers through *air*, which isn’t exactly a good conductor. That’s really all the closer I ever care to get to being struck by lightning, though I will admit it’s pretty cool to say that I was almost struck by lightning. 🙂 It felt a lot like I had just grabbed an electric fence; it wasn’t a big shock, but it was definitely enough to get my attention!
Oddly enough, lightning’s been on my mind more than that lately. A couple weeks ago my mom called me on her cell phone to say that our house had just been struck by lightning. Everything wound up being okay (after getting some circuits back online and having the phone company repair the phone line), and what probably happened there is that the garage likely got struck, and that the current followed the phone line to the house, where it blew the cover off the phone box on the exterior of the house several feet away. Close call!
And then tonight in church softball, we called the game after 3 innings due to approaching lightning. With the approaching storm, I just didn’t feel comfortable saying that I thought it was okay to have everyone go back out in the field to try to get in another inning. That turned out to be the right decision, because 5 minutes later there was a rumble of thunder that would’ve made me tell everyone to vacate the field right away anyway. Even though this game didn’t officially count, we “lost” 12-3. But if you discount the 1st inning, we were winning 3-0. 🙂 Faith Baptist scored 12 in the 1st inning, 10 of which came before we could record an out (ugh). Ben had me playing 3rd base, and I at least didn’t commit an error while getting two putouts. I was 1-for-2 batting, with a single down the 3rd base line (and a run scored), and a fielder’s choice to the shortstop.
Last week I played probably my best game ever in church softball. We lost to Penns Valley Community Church 18-10 after 7 innings (technically it was 13-1 after 5), but I was 4-for-5 on fielding chances in left-center and left field, including a couple “go-go gadget arm!” running catches, haha. I was 3-for-4 at the plate too, with a single past the shortstop up the middle and another single into short center. Then in the 6th inning I got to bat twice, I don’t know if that’s ever happened to me in church league before. And they were my two best swings I’ve had! My first at-bat that inning was a towering fly ball to deep right-center — if I’d hit it just a little more square, it would’ve been way gone, sigh. But then I made up for it later in the inning, with a 2-out 3-RBI double off the top of the wall in left-center. That one really felt good, although I was very glad to see it hit the fence. I was worried about it clearing the fence and hitting a house at first, but on second thought if it would’ve cleared the fence it probably would’ve gone bounding down the street between the houses and been okay. Better safe than sorry though.
One last item for this evening: it’s going to get harder to fly into and out of State College soon. Starting on 1 Sep 2008, Delta Airlines is discontinuing its Cincinnati-State College flights, meaning that Delta will no longer be servicing State College (the Atlanta-State College flights were already discontinued by Delta back on 1 May 2008). Argh. Now that means there are only three ways in or out of SCE: on US Airways through Philadelphia, on United Airlines through Washington Dulles, and on Northwest Airlines through Detroit. Further limiting our flying options will definitely hurt consumers even more here in central PA, as it was already hard enough to fly in and out of here. This will probably make trips to Harrisburg, Pittsburgh or Baltimore a bit more common when I need to fly somewhere. The State College airport doesn’t seem to have any choice in the matter though, and this’ll be devastating for them too. Hopefully they’ll be able to arrange some flights to other cities at some point to make up for it. Makes me all the more glad that Minneapolis is still going to be a Northwest hub (even after the Delta merger), so if I need to fly home I can do it with just one layover. If Northwest kills the flight from Detroit-State College though, that’ll really be annoying.