camping, no-hitter, graduation.
June 14, 2007: 10:30 PM

(Blog Soundtrack: Foxymorons - Harvard Hands. Open it in a new tab/window and read along)



Camping can be fun, you know. I don't go often enough. Or, at least, that's how I get to thinking as soon as I get far enough outside the city limits for my cell phone to stop picking up a signal. It's stopped being a bad thing for me to be so disconnected from the world from time to time, because the only world that wants to be connected to me during the weekend is often the world that wants to keep me planted in the same computer chair for hours on end.

I need a break from that stuff, s'all I'm saying.



Forest, Ontario, is not that far north of here. Only a couple hours. It doesn't stop me from bringing 256 of my CDs for the drive, just in case I get a sudden hankering for some Weezer, or some Floyd, or some Dylan.

Hard not to have a hankering for some Dylan, though.



The first thing you notice, or at least the first thing I always notice, is the huge difference in the amount of stars that are visible from outside of the Detroit/Windsor metro area.

It'd be too easy to say that it's the bad air and the light-pollution that are so prevalent in the city.

Rather, the difference is so vast that it seems more likely to be the case that we simply are not allotted the same visible night-sky. We're reserved our own less-twinkly twilight, full of nothing but smog-shaded moonlight. Once you get out of town, though, the real estate up overhead becomes quite a lot nicer.



The campsite is right alongside a private beach on Lake Huron. The water's a bit chilly and the mosquitoes are fairly prevalent, but it's worth it. How couldn't it be?





We went to the same flea market as we did last year. Antique junk is always nice for a gawk or two, but not much more. Two years in a row, I managed to find a nice book. Last year it was Bertrand Russell's collected papers, this year it was Lenin's complete works.

A dollar each. Sunblock was going for more than that.

Go figure.





I bet I'd get "hot pants".



Oh really, flag-salesman?



The drives home are just as fun as the rides up, if you ask me. On the way up it's all excitement about getting there, and the ride back lets you relax and pay attention to the nice sunsets, and the evergreens, and the rolling, roaming hills, even though they're not far from your own back yard.



And so, I come back to town for my graduation. As a present, my dad's gone ahead and gotten me tickets for that night's Detroit Tigers game (vs. the Milwaukee Brewers).

I gathered up the guys, we drove to Detroit, snagged our seats and some Coney Island dogs.

I had no idea what I was in store for.



Justin Verlander, Detroit's franchise pitcher at age 24, pitched a complete game no-hitter for the Tigers, the first time a Tigers pitcher has thrown one in Detroit since 1952.

Lifetimes come and go in between these sorts of things. The biggest baseball fans in the world go their whole lives without seeing such a feat up close.

The seats weren't great, but even bad seats become great at a no-hitter



By the 7th inning, you could really tell that something spectacular was taking place, and during every windup you could hear a pin drop, despite the crowd of almost 34,000. By the time the pitch hit the catcher's mitt, every throw, the place would erupt with cheers for a strike, or one of his twelve strikeouts that evening.

When it was all over, the place went nuts. High-fives and hugging in the stands, you couldn't see without wincing for all the flashes going off. The whole team dove atop one another in the middle of the infield and people started to realize they'd just witnessed history.

It's a remarkable thing. One of the best moments of the whole of my life.



My grandmother, before she died, used to always say something about "sky-blue-pink". I never understood what she meant until, more than a decade later, I reflected on it while driving during a sunset. I don't know whether it's fortunate or not that I do my best thinking from behind the wheel, but it's the truth.

And so, I graduated. Honours Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. No great fanfare, just a pleasant commencement speech and a long, hot walk in a graduation gown much too large for me. None of the photos of me turned out very well, and frankly I'm okay with that. I don't want to remember this degree from a couple shots at the finish line. It means more to me than that, silly as it might sound.

Most things generally mean more to me than all that.

Thanks for the comments: Crissa, Stef, Fil, Don.

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