Spring Training Trip 2012 Recap-PART FIVE

Okay, I promise, this is the last part of my recap! I never dreamed I would have this much to post. It's been a lot of fun though! :)

So, our flight was supposed to leave at 12:25 on Monday from Phoenix. We figured we could go by the practice fields for about 30 minutes before we headed out (you know, because we didn't have enough pictures already). :) So, after checking out of our hotel, we headed to Surprise Stadium one last time.

Our hotel

So, a funny thing (well, kinda funny) happened while we were waiting for the gates to open. I was wearing an authentic Ben & Skin Show shirt (I got it last time they were doing their show live near my office). This guy that was standing in front of us turned around and told me that this other radio station was better than them. Now, I'm not a person who gets in heated discussions with strangers, but I may or may not have told him he was wrong and that Ben and Skin were the best sports talk radio show in the Metroplex. He disagreed. Words were exchanged. Don't worry friends, I didn't hurt him. Tonya held me back. :) In all honesty, it was a friendly disagreement, but if you know me, you know I'll defend my favorite radio duo! :)

I knew that Ben and Skin were in town that week doing their show from Surprise, they had flown in late that Sunday (not a stalker- they put that information on Twitter). I had sent them a message saying I hoped I could see them before I left (they knew I was there. I'm a big deal- they follow me on Twitter). :) Their show ends at noon Texas time, which was 10am Arizona time. I told them I had to leave the field at 10:30 in order to get back to Phoenix for my flight. They said they would do their best to find me. While we were roaming the practice fields, I found Jamey Newberg of The Newberg Report. If you are a Rangers fan, I highly recommend going to his website and signing up for his (almost) daily emails. It's free!

Jamey Newberg couldn't believe I wanted a picture with him. He said since I was wearing a Ben and Skin Show shirt he would allow it (he's friends with them).

While wandering around I saw Mark McLemore signing autographs. He played with the Rangers from 1995-1999. He now works for Fox Sports Southwest doing the pregame and post game reports for the Rangers. Of course I had to go by for a picture. 

Mark McLemore, AKA, the Doctor of Defense. I don't know why he was wearing a Rangers uniform, maybe the former players were getting together for a picture or something.

At 10:30 we had to force ourselves to leave, even though we really wanted to stay (next year we are staying a week)! As we were leaving Ben sent me a tweet saying they were looking for me. I finally found them and was able to get a picture (I can't have a Rangers Spring Training scrapbook and NOT have a picture with Ben and Skin). :)  

Ben and Skin with their biggest fan

We probably left the fields about 10:40. In our heads we kept thinking that Phoenix was about a 30 minute drive from Surprise. It wasn't. It was more like 45 minutes. Well, it would have been 45 minutes if we hadn't hit traffic. We got to the rental return about 11:40. Needless to say, we were starting to panic that we were going to miss our flight. We boarded the shuttle about 11:50 to head to the airport. 

On the shuttle bus to the airport. Tonya made those awesome name tags for us!

We got in line about noon to check in. Evidently EVERYONE was flying Southwest that day because the line was very long. This is when we started wondering what we would do if we missed our flight because I didn't see us making it. We finally got to the check in counter 10 minutes later. The lady was like, "We can't guarantee your luggage will make the flight. You are supposed to check in 45 minutes before the flight." I told her I was just hoping to make the flight. We raced to security where we got behind the slowest person on the face of the earth. When we finally got through, we waited on our bags to come through. The belt wasn't moving. The "slow guy" had something suspicious looking in his bag and three employees were looking at a computer screen trying to figure out what it was. They finally removed his bag to search it (allowing ours to come through). I told Tonya and Ashley I would run ahead (in hopes of stopping the plane from leaving- because I thought I had that kind of power). It's now 12:22. I finally get to the gate and the guy looks at me. I sheepishly hand him my boarding pass. He was like, "Rachel, Rachel, Rachel." I was like, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He laughed and asked if I was traveling alone. I told him my friends were on their way. He was like, "Tell Tonya and Ashley to hurry up." Yeah- he knew our names. He was about to page us. So embarrassing! :) Of course by the time we got on the plane (with everyone glaring at us for being late), there weren't three seats together. This nice couple let me sit by them (and gave me the window seat). A few minutes after I sat down, I realized my book was in my carry on bag, which I put in the storage bin. So I spent part of the flight looking out the window. I later found some Sudoku puzzles in the Southwest Airline magazine to entertain me.

Leaving Arizona...

My view..

We had a layover in San Antonio, but we weren't supposed to get off the plane. That changed when there was a mechanical issue (not on our plane, another plane, so they made us deboard and put that other flight on our plane). We not only had to deboard, but there was going to be an hour delay. The only positive thing about the delay is it allowed us to get food (seeing that we didn't have time before the flight). But, needless to say, we were ready to get home. We were exhausted.

Tired Rangers fans

Since we weren't supposed to get off the plane, they let everyone who was on the flight originally get on first. We were able to get front row seats! The flight was very short (maybe 40 minutes). When we finally landed at Love Field, we made our way to the luggage return. We knew there was a chance our luggage wouldn't make it. We saw one of Ashley's suitcases and my suitcase. We realized after a while that Tonya's suitcase and Ashley's other bag did not make the flight (which was weird since we checked the luggage at the same time). We went to the customer service booth and they said our luggage was on a plane that left Phoenix after ours, but had a stop in Austin. Thanks to our delay in San Antonio, the plane with our luggage actually landed a few minutes after ours, so we didn't have to wait long for the bags. Tonya and Ashley dropped me off at my apartment a little after 8:00 Texas time. Thanks to my sweet neighbor Donny who helped me carry my suitcase up the stairs. I was smart and had taken the next day off work, so I spent Tuesday doing nothing but resting (and catching up on my DVR watching). 

FINALLY on the plane to Dallas!

Hello leg room!

Cheers!!

Flying over the Ballpark and Jonestown, I mean, Cowboys Stadium. We are home!!

I hope you have enjoyed this recap. Thanks for reading!! I have enjoyed your comments, tweets and emails about it!!

Have a great weekend!

XOXO!!

Spring Training Trip 2012 Recap-PART FOUR

For all of you who don't care about baseball, I promise next week I'll be back to my "normal" posts. I can't promise I won't mention baseball every day now and then though! ;) When I start working on my Spring Training scrapbook, this online recap will come in handy!! :)

Sunday (Day 4) we were back at the practice fields in hopes of getting more pictures of the players. We made it to the fields about 30 minutes before the gate open, so we were near the front of the line to get in. The man behind us starting asking questions on the best places to get pictures and autographs, so we shared what little knowledge we had from that Friday. We found out he was from the Dallas area, he and his kids had made the 18 hour car drive to Surprise (eek!) His daughter wasn't at the practice fields, but his little boy (maybe 5 or 6) was there with him (and super excited). 

Waiting with Ashley for the gates to open

Me and Tonya!

Thanks again to Tonya and Ashley for getting awesome pictures during the practice and game! My scrapbook is going to rock! And thanks to those who took pictures of me with the different players (I'm a trusting person just handing my iPhone over to a stranger to snap a picture!) :) 

Michael Young and Ian Kinsler at batting practice

New Rangers pitcher Yu Darvish (he just came over here from Japan). There were so many people pushing so this was the best picture I could get on my phone.

I love Elvis! :)

Pitcher Mark Hamburger

Outfielder Conor Jackson

Sadly I couldn't get one with Craig Gentry, this was as close as I got. He was signing for little kids and had to leave before I could ask him. Again, not going to push kids out of the way for a picture! :)

Pitcher Joe Nathan

Pitcher Mike Adams

Got a better picture with catcher Mike Napoli.

Before the game we waited along the front row where the players walked by on their way to the dugout. We made conversation with a family waiting for the players (the wife and I are now Twitter friends!) Their kids were hoping for their first baseball autograph. At one point Ian Kinsler was walking down the field signing. They were both so excited- I'm so glad Ian was able to sign for them! The look on their faces was priceless! We were sad to leave the game because we knew it was the last Spring Training game we were going to. We had to leave to go home to Dallas the next day. We decided to go out for one more dinner in Surprise. We ate at this Mexican restaurant called Macayo's- the food was pretty good but our waitress was not that great. Once we got back to the hotel, we started packing so we wouldn't feel rushed the next morning. I tell about our last day in Surprise (including how we almost missed our flight home) tomorrow!!

Ian signing autographs (the two kids in front of me are the ones I was talking about!)

A rare Michael Young autograph signing

Leaving the stadium

Dinner at Macayo's

Dinner at Macayo's

For more pictures of Day 4, click here.

XOXO!

Spring Training Trip 2012 Recap-PART THREE

I'm thinking this recap might make 5 days. I hope you are enjoying it! On Day 3 of our trip the team was out of town, so we may or may not have slept in until about 10am that day (we were tired!) A friend in Dallas wanted to treat us to a nice dinner while we were in Surprise, so we spent the day sightseeing and shopping before going out to eat that night. When we left the hotel to go shopping, we saw this car in the parking lot. I kid you not, I still have nightmares after seeing this.

Hey, let's put a head on top of our company car- that will get business. It's like something from a horror movie.

Have I mentioned we really enjoyed the convertible? It was funny because I was tweeting that we were enjoying the sunshine and warm weather while my friends in Dallas were complaining it was 40 degrees and raining. We picked the perfect time to be gone!!

Oh yeah, we are so cool! Too bad there isn't video of me and Ashley doing our white girl dancing in the car. Actually there might be, but we all agreed NOT to share the videos we took (sorry). :)

We made reservations at a place called Fleming's Prime Steakhouse (evidently this is a chain restaurant with locations all around the U.S., including Texas, but I had never heard of it). The service, atmosphere and food were all WONDERFUL! I ordered the filet mignon and it was quite possibly the best filet mignon ever. The Caesar salad was also very good (I'm a connoisseur of Caesar salads- I can tell you where and where not to order one at). :) I might do a post on that one day! :) It was a nice relaxing day in the middle of our trip. I want to give a big shout out thank you to the friend who bought our dinner that night! THANK YOU!!! :)

Lovely ladies. Like my dress? Found it for $13 at Ross. ;)

I never remember which side of Tonya's phone the camera is on, I'm always looking the wrong way! :)

I'm patiently waiting on our food.

Yes, I'm one of those people who take pictures of my food. Yummy. Now I want steak again! :) The mushroom dipping sauce was okay, but I wasn't a fan of it. But remember, I'm picky. I'm sure to normal people it was very good.

A VERY full Rachel leaving Fleming's.

That's all I have time for today, tune in tomorrow for the Day 4 recap!! For more Day 3 pictures, click here.

XOXO!!

Spring Training Trip 2012 Recap-PART TWO

If you missed part one of my Spring Training Trip 2012 recap, go here to see yesterday's post. I think my recap is probably going to go to three posts, possibly four. It was a long trip!! :) I don't want to leave anything out!

So, on Day 2 of our trip (we count the travel day on Wednesday as Day 0), we went to the team practice. We meant to get there by 10am, which is when the gates opened, but we were delayed. It was another beautiful day in Surprise, so of course, we enjoyed the convertible ride to the stadium.

I.Am.A.Nerd. :)

God blessed us with the best weather while we were there!

It was closer to 10:30 before we got to the practice fields, and it was already packed (obviously everyone except the three of us knew about getting there early). They had different "stations" set up. There was a field where they took shifts taking batting practice and fielding ground balls (and catching fly balls). There was an area that was mainly for the pitchers to practice at, and there were individual batting cages. There were also a few fields that were mainly for the minor league players. First, we checked out the field where a lot of the guys were taking turns at batting practice.

The 3 amigas ready for Day 2 of baseball!

Not sure why Craig Gentry looks so sad here. Guess he hadn't seen me yet! ;) (kidding!)

Michael Young waiting his turn to take some swings

Elvis Andrus. It was fun being so close because we could hear them joking around with each other.

Waiting to take some practice swings

Pitcher Derek Holland- we really hope that he cuts the mullet before the season starts!

While walking around the practice area, we ran into Emily Jones from Fox Sports Southwest. She knows us from Twitter, but we had never met her before in person (at least I hadn't). When she saw us, she came over and gave us a hug, and was sweet enough to take pictures with us.

Emily Jones from Emily's Outtakes and Fox Sports Southwest

Some of the players would stop and sign a few autographs as they were walking to different stations. Like I mentioned before my trip, my goal was to get pictures instead of autographs. I saw Mike Napoli signing for a group of people and worked my way over in hopes of getting a picture with him. I noticed these little kids were trying so hard to hand him something to sign, but their arms were too short to reach up where he could see them. I asked them if they wanted me to pass stuff over to him and they said yes, so I handed Napoli a baseball to sign. When I handed him something else for another kid, he looked at me as if to say, "one autograph per person", and I pointed to the kids saying they were for them, I was just the tall person they handed their stuff to. He laughed and said, "Oh, okay, that's fine." He was so nice. He probably signed autographs for about 40 minutes. I was trying to get close enough so Tonya could snap a picture of me standing near him. She kept waiting for him to look up and finally he realized what she was trying to do, so he was nice enough to look up for a picture!

NAP-O-LI

About noon we decided to head to the stadium (which was about a block from the practice field). We noticed the day before some players would stop and sign autographs while they were walking to the dugout, and we wanted to see if we could get some more pictures. You notice in the above pictures I'm wearing the Ben and Skin shirt that I made (courtesy of PlayerTees). If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know Ben and Skin are two of my favorite sports talk radio hosts (their show is on ESPN Dallas radio). We had just walked in and I heard someone yell out to me. I looked over and noticed Randy Galloway from ESPN Dallas radio (he is also Ben and Skin's boss). He was like, where did you get that shirt? I told him I made it. He said he wanted a picture of me and him so he could send it to Ben. I told him I was friends with Ben and Skin and could send it to them on Twitter. He thought it was the greatest thing ever!

With the great Randy Galloway from ESPN Dallas radio!

Ben sent out a tweet about the picture.

Before the game, I was able to get a picture with outfielder David Murphy- he was so nice. A few other players were close by signing, but never got down as far as I was, so I couldn't get a picture.

Just a couple of Baptist college graduates (Murphy went to Baylor)

Our seats were one section over than we were the day before (which meant we got in the shade a little bit sooner). Even though it was only in the 70s, it felt so much warmer (I guess it's that dry desert heat). The game was fun, until some jerk yelled something at Josh Hamilton (which I won't repeat). He yelled it when Josh was walking off the field on his way out, so I'm hoping he didn't hear the guy. I had to restrain from using the wrath of Rachel against the man. But besides that, it was a good day at the stadium!

Some pictures from the game

Nelson Cruz, Elvis Andrus and Michael Young leaving the game (the starters were pulled out in the 5th inning).

After the game, we decided to go rest at the hotel then head out to dinner. We went to a local place called Marley's. They had this awesome corn bread (I think it had peach flavor in it). I know it sounds weird, but it was good (and this is coming from a very picky eater). My chicken sandwich was really good, but Tonya and Ashley said the ribs were not that good. :/ 

Tonya did my eye make up for the evening!

After that we drove around for a while, just to see the rest of Surprise. It's really a nice little town. Pretty much everything is off this one road, Bell Road. Oh, yeah, we may or may not have driven around for about 5 minutes without headlights on after leaving Marley's. We were too busy looking cool in a convertible that we failed to realize they weren't on (to our  defense, the street lights were very bright so it was kinda hard to tell). I won't say who was driving, but it wasn't me. ;) We decided to rent another movie, so we went by Walgreen's again to the Red Box (sadly, there were no more encounters with any more baseball players there).

Okay, I've overwhelmed you enough for today. I'll post more tomorrow! Thanks for reading!! For more pictures of Day 2, please click here!

XOXO!