Buddy Across America Tour 2010: The ‘Roo-ful Recap

First leg: WiHi to Dayton/Cincinnati, where BudRoo made a new friend and we reacquainted ourselves with a few old ones — such as "GoGo" Goheen.

Mrs. WiHi even got a tour of my old haunts/bars in Cincy. We looked for Coach at The Gas Light Cafe in Pleasant Ridge, only to find that was "retiring" from bartending and had gone and married former Bengal Ken Anderson's daughter! Sometimes, you can't make this stuff up.

Second Leg: Ohio to Durham, N.C. Traveler's tip No. 1: If you somehow feel the urge to stop in Beckley, W.V., resist it. You're not missing a thing, except for the freak show. This is yours truly in front of Historic Durham Bulls Park, where the movie "Bull Durham" was shot more than 20 years ago.

Sunny Raleigh, home to the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes and the North Carolina State Wolfpack, whose football stadium is just across the street from the Hurricanes' arena.

Third leg: Raleigh/Durham to Nashville. While LeBron James was holding ESPN and the rest of the free world hostage, we elected to head outside and explore downtown Music City. Good call. Cort had never been to Nashville, nor had she seen the city's Parthenon replica lit up after dark. BudRoo wound up with some frozen yogurt later that night, which he inhaled. The next day, it was even better — he somehow charmed his way to personal service from a waiter on the dining deck at San Antonio Taco Co., across the street from Vanderbilt University. I think Nashville was Bud's favorite stop on the trip. Everybody bent over backwards for him there.

Fourth leg: Nasvhille to St. Louis. The folks in the Gateway City were a little more immune to his charms, but he got a kick out of walking University City while Mama and Papa WiHi took turns hopping in and out of stores. Travel tip No. 2: When staying at a Days Inn, it's best to try to avoid one of their "dog rooms."

King Arthur sought The Holy Grail. I sought Stag Beer. Hey. To each his quest.

Fifth leg: St. Louis to the WiHi. Travel tip No. 3: When your wife suggests climbing 244 steps in Hannibal, Mo., be sure to stretch out first. Trust me on this one, kids.

After a brutal April and May, the Sox are in first place at the All-Star Break. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Enjoy that cheese while you can, Joe Mauer. (Copyright 2010 Carl Skanberg, the genius behind SmellsLikeMascot.com)

After 10 days in the car, we’re back, but before we recap the “Buddy Across America Tour,”  a quick shout-out to WiHi’s beloved Pale Hose.

The Chicago White Sox hit the All-Star break in first place in the American League Central, a notion that seemed retarded impossible ridiculous as recently as Memorial Day. Mrs. WiHi and I went to go check out Ozzie’s Fightin’ Nine in person at Kansas City on May 16 — and proceeded to watch ’em get handcuffed by the mighty Brian Bannister.

“Never again,” I grumbled as I left The K, and made a bee-line for Arthur Bryant’s to drown my sorrows in barbecue sauce.

A few weeks later, I was up in Ames, tapping away in the office of a fellow Sox fan, when the conversation turned to baseball:

“What’s wrong with them?” he asked with genuine concern.

I pondered this for a second.

“Three things,” I replied. “This team was built to be carried by one,  its starting pitching; two, Carlos Quentin, who began the season hitting in the No.3 hole; and three, Gordon Beckham, who opened the season at No. 2. Basically, to this point, all three have been pretty damn brutal. Paulie is Paulie, Rios is Rios, and you weren’t going to get much out of fringe guys such as Andruw Jones, Omar Vizquel and Mark Kotsay either way. There ya go. ”

With that, we both shrugged and went back to work.

On June 11, the Sox were 27-33, 8.5 games back of Minnesota, with a flicker of life — a three-game winning streak — tempered by the fact that they were playing crap squads such as the Cubs.

But then a funny thing happened: Over the next 27 games, they went 22-5. They swept bad teams — don’t get me wrong, the  Pirates and Nats are brutal — and good. They took all three at home against Atlanta. They went to red-hot Texas over the Fourth of July weekend and took two of three. (Bite me, Keith Law.)

Remember that conversation up in Ames? Let’s go back and review those three key elements again:

1. Starting pitching (Mark Buerhle, Jake Peavy, John Danks, Gavin Floyd and Freddy Garcia)

April 5-June 11: 21-25

June 12-July 11: 16-5, 2.26 ERA

2. Carlos Quentin

April 5-June 11: .211, 8 HRs

June 12-July 11: .325, 11 HRs

3. Gordon Beckham

April 5-June 11: .204, 1 HR

June 12-July 11: .247, 2 HRs

And a bonus stat:

4. Alexei Ramirez

April 5-June 11: . 263, 6 HRs

June 12-July 11:  .298, 2 HRs

This isn’t a great lineup, even if all the parts are in sync, but when Quentin is providing legitimate protection behind Rios and Konerko, it’s a completely different animal. And while those three figure to come down to Earth in the second half of the season, there’s no way that Beckham is a .216 Major-League hitter, either. Production ought to even out, with Beckham and A.J. Pierzynski picking up some of the slack and Ramirez continuing to hit well during the warm months.

Defensively, once Mark Teahen went on the disabled list, everything else started to fall into place. The platoon of Vizquel and rookie Dayan “The Tank” Viciedo at third has produced pretty consistently in Teahen’s absence, and having Vizquel on the field has really seemed to help Ramirez defensively. Teahen is an adequate left-handed bat, and this lineup needs left-handed power help, but he’s also a minus defender (the more I think about it, the more I realize that Teahen is the perfect Pittsburgh Pirate — a cost-effective .255-ish, 14-16 HR player who wilts in clutch situations), and you don’t mess with a good thing when it ain’t broke.

But ultimately, the Sox’s resurgence — and staying power — comes down to starting pitching. After seven weeks of scuffling, Peavy and Buerhle were brilliant against interleague foes, then used that momentum to carry them into July.  Danks just needed run support; Floyd just needed confidence.  Garcia’s carriage is bound to turn back into a pumpkin at some point, but the dude still knows how to pitch, even when tossing slop and running on fumes.  Losing Peavy for the rest of the season was huge — but it’s not fatal, if  Danks and Floyd can maintain their recent form. In a perfect world, Kenny Williams would find a veteran hammer of some kind on the trade market to replace Peavy at the top of the rotation; at the moment, even if this team would somehow happen to hang on and win the Central, as presently constructed, it’s not getting out of the first round of the playoffs unless you’ve got a Cliff Lee/Peavy type to lean on in a short series.

Hell, at least they’re looking. If you’d told me on that grey, soggy day at Kauffman Stadium that the Sox would be buyers in two months, I’d have laughed you out of the Plaza.

Of course, I can’t shake this uneasy feeling the Twins are going to kick the tits out of my men up in Minneapolis right after the break and launch themselves right back into this thing, but we’ll cross that bridge of angst when it comes. For now, by God, I’m going to sit back and enjoy this.

You want BBC WiHi honeymoon details? Oh, we got honeymoon details.

Awwwww, don't they look happy? Usually, they were.

Monday: Travel — Des Moines to Detroit to London

Sister-in-law promises to make sure the house doesn’t burn down while we’re gone. (Thanks, Kendal.) Watched the movie “I Love You, Man” on the plane with Arabic subtitles. Hope it’s funnier in Arabic than it was in English. Cort took her first trans-Atlantic flight like a champ. At least she could sleep. I completely whiffed.

Tuesday: West London, Harrods, Picadilly Circus

Lack of sleep + jet lag + wrong flavor of Walkers Crisps (Builder’s Breakfast, bad idea) + insane shuttle driver from Heathrow = upset stomach. Cannot recommend the Renaissance Chancery Court in High Holborn strongly enough; lovely rooms, lovely courtyard, great location (with access to Central and Picadilly Tube lines just two blocks away). You’re a bit far from the Thames and some of the more conventional tourist traps, but that’s a minor quibble. Woke up in mid-afternoon in time to catch a train to Harrods, which is Younkers on steroids — really, really, really powerful steroids. Bonds steroids. Had dinner at a pub in Harrods’ basement, a little nook called The Green Man. The food was fantastic; the bill ($74-ish for two) was not. Did a walking tour of Picadilly Circus on the way back home. Not quite as big as I’d remembered, and not quite as overwhelming as Times Square. Pretty, though.

Tube stops: 3. HMVs visited: 2. H&Ms visited: 1.

Wednesday: Portobello Road, BBC Television Centre, Oxford Circus, Hampstead Theatre

Cort made a new friend: Pret A Manger, one of a chain of sandwich shops about a block from our hotel. No item on the menu was more than $8, much to our mutual delight. We headed west in early afternoon to the Notting Hill neighborhood, so Cort could a) shop the outdoor markets at Portobello Road; and b) find a souvenir that would sate her sister Leslie, who apparently has an encyclopedic recall for all things in the movie, “Notting Hill.” (Haven’t seen it. Is it funnier than “I Love You, Man?”) The centerpiece of the day was a tour of BBC Television Centre, where the public-television icons of our youth used to roam the halls. The first place they took us was — a newsroom. On vacation. Wonderful. Passed through Oxford Circus on the way back to the hotel for more shopping. Back at the hotel meant a change of clothes, then a train north to the Hampstead Theatre to watch “Hitler: My Part In His Downfall,” a play based on Spike Milligan’s World War II memoirs.

Tube stops: 6. HMVs visited: 1. H&Ms visited: 1.

Thursday: Tower of London, Knitting Shoppe, BFI Southbank, London Eye

Got off to a slow start and never quite recovered. Bottled Welsh water didn’t sit well with Cort’s stomach — she went back to the hotel over lunch to lie down; I went to another pub for a pint. (OK, two pints. Fine. Three.) Anyway, eventually, we made it to the Tower of London. I despise long lines, but the crown jewels were almost worth it. The idea was to spend the rest of the day and evening on the south bank of the Thames, only it took us forever to find this little knitting shoppe that Cort had targeted a few weeks back. (On the plus side, it had a very comfortable couch. One of the dozen lady patrons sidled up to me at one point and proclaimed: “Wow. I’d never get my ‘usband in ‘ere.” Me: “That’s OK. She’s going to a (football) match on Saturday as payback.”) Another pub dinner was tasty but took forever to prepare, setting us further behind. By the time we got to BFI Southbank (run by the British Film Institute), the ‘Viewing Centre’ was about 47 seconds from closing. Still, a fantastic building — more an art gallery than a theater, really, with a superlative bookstore in the foyer. If it weren’t for the DVD region-code difference, we would’ve done a helluva a lot more damage. Sadly, the pub dinner didn’t sit well with Cort’s guts, either, and we were dragging to the London Eye for our 9:30 p.m. appointment. Fortunately, the sky was clear. She loved the view.

Tube stops: 5. HMVs visited: 0. H&Ms visited: 0.

Friday: St Paul’s, Old Street, Abbey Road, Paddington Station, Harrods (again), late dinner

A quick morning jaunt to St. Paul’s Cathedral, followed by lunch at an Indian café at Whitecross Street Market with an old college friend of mine and her husband — both incredibly fun, cool people, so it was great to see them for a little chicken balti and another round of pints. (Pints, as you might imagine, were a recurring theme of this trip.) Also: we finally got to Abbey Road Studios, which I sensed — and predicted correctly — Cort would find a tad underwhelming. (Tip: If you want to recreate that infamous 1969 album-cover shot, you’re putting your life in your hands because of heavy traffic in the area). It took us a while to get to our next port of call — Paddington Station — but the quest was worth it as Cort finally got to fondle her beloved Paddington Bear statue (it’s in front of the Krispy Kreme) and snatch a few Paddington souvenirs. From there, it was a second trip south to Knightsbridge — mainly, to Harrods for family gifts and other odds-and-ends to commemorate our last full day in London. Cort also wanted to try the nearby H&M one more time, leaving me in The Green Man Pub to read the day’s tabloids and pound a few more pints (this time, Fuller’s Honey Dew, which in addition to being slightly sweet, seemed unusually potent.) She came back an hour or so later, short of breath and declared — which I’d also predicted — that the crowds in London were starting to annoy the hell out of her. Buzzing, I smiled.

Tube stops: 8. HMVs visited: 0. H&Ms visited: 1.

Saturday: Leicester (City Centre, Highcross Mall, The Walkers Stadium, Kayal)

Leicester Day. Memo to self: The last thing you want to do to someone who feels like they’re being dragged to somewhere they don’t want to go is actually physically drag them there. Because of typical WiHi morning slog and an unexpected police search at the Holborn station that held up our train, we found ourselves sprinting from one end of the King Cross/St Pancras station to the other in order to reach our East Midlands Trains connection. Which we did — with about 90 seconds to spare before the doors closed. Cort, needless to say, was not amused. When I mentioned that this is what those poor sods on her favorite TV show, “The Amazing Race” go through all the time, she became less amused — an 80-minute train to Leicestershire felt more like three hours of silence. Thankfully, a hearty lunch at Urban Pie — think Chipotle but with various stuffed pastries and pot pies — cooled the ice. Downtown Leicester looks like one giant farmer’s market, and more than few storefronts are true eyesores. That said, the people we met could not have been nicer. At least three different folks, unprompted, offered to give us directions or asked if they could help. Like Cleveland, it’s not your traditional tourist stop, so the locals don’t seem jaded in the least by strangers wandering around while pointing at maps. But while Cleveland has the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame, Leicester has — well, um, The Walkers Stadium. And from the rail station, brother, it’s a hike: 1.2 miles each way by foot, according to Google Maps. By the time we arrived, Cort’s feet were turning the same shade of blue as Leciester City’s home shirts. The stadium itself — a 32,500 all-seater that opened in 2002 — was clean and tidy but somewhat non-descript. The first-half between Leicester and visiting Barnsley wasn’t much better, as the two Coca-Cola Championship sides battled to a 0-0 draw at halftime. Cort’s feet improved in the second half — and so did the Foxes. Forward Matty Fryatt’s strike at the 54-minute mark gave the hosts a 1-0 lead, and Leicester played keep-away from there to hang on for the victory. I went a little crazy at the club shop, as you might imagine, which amused Cort somewhat. Leicester has a large and storied Anglo-Indian population, and the cuisine at dinner — Kayal, an award-winning, South-Indian-style eatery a few blocks from the train station — more than lived up to the hype. Yet again, the folks at the restaurant couldn’t have been kinder; Cort couldn’t stop raving about her dinner. Left on a high note. Or at least medium high.

Tube stops: 2. HMVs visited: 1. H&Ms visited: 1.

Sunday: Travel — London to Cincinnati to Des Moines

Once again, Cort took the long flight like a seasoned pro. Once again, I couldn’t sleep. Watched an episode of “The Mighty Boosh” on her iPod during the trans-Atlantic leg. Holy crap — nearly wet myself laughing. I must confess — the long layover (four hours) in Cincinnati was by design. Set a new personal record (low?) by eating six cheese coneys from the Gold Star Chili stand at the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International airport. I was ravenous. Cort was visibly apalled. Such is love.

Tube stops: 2. HMVs visited: 0. H&Ms visited: 0

Want more? For a complete photo gallery, check out The BBCWiHi Flickr page. Big props — and belated thanks — to DFK and PK for gifting us the trip.

He’s off the market. Also, off the diet.

Judge: "Do you take this man with the 21-inch neck to be your lawfully wedded husband?" Cort: "Let me think about that one for a minute."

Done deal, kids.

More pics available at the BBC WiHi Flickr page. Y’all missed a lot of free beer. And the best version of “Amie” by Pure Prairie League ever sung at a karaoke bar, bitches.