Spring Training Vacation 2013 Recap: Day 3

After a most eventful Day 2, we began Day 3 with the first of several full breakfast included free of charge by Thunderbird Suites.  I love these free breakfasts.  They were very comprehensive, with eggs, waffles, sausage, toast, and a few other delights.  The only thing was, it was missing bacon.  Hard to imagine breakfast without bacon, but after a while I asked one of the fellas roaming the dining hall if they had any bacon.  To my surprise, they did!  Do the dance!   They brought out about a dozen extra strips and I partook in several of them.

Thunderbird gets stingy with bacon, who knew?  Thankfully they had strips on demand, so I was happy to oblige.

Next destination: Scottsdale Stadium, home of the Giants.   Well sports fans, if you thought Game 1 was an adventure, wait until Game 2.  Coach tried to buy the tickets off stubhub the day of the game which works 99 out of 100 times.  I have bought many tickets to many games in several places the same day and it was never an issue.   First we tried to print the tickets using the Hotel's in-lobby computers and the tickets wouldn't load at all.  Stupid Adobe Flash and IE extra secure settings...  We then went back to the hotel room and I broke out my small Netbook.   We loaded the tickets successfully this time and saved them to USB.  Or we *thought* they loaded successfully.   After printing them out back at the lobby, I noticed something really peculiar -- NO BAR CODE!  The rest of the ticket printed fine but the bar code went missing.  What the *hell?*  So we thought the computer was faulty so we took the USB drive to FedEx Office..

First of all, it was the wrong FedEx Office locations.  I had no clue that some of them were partial scale operations, i.e. only some of the services offered instead of the full assortment.  So we had to go UP another mile to a different FedEx Office.  We found an internet station to bring up the ticket and it still had no Bar Code.  Oy vey!   Then we checked Coach's iPhone... still no tickets.  This was outrageous!  I called Stubhub  (I called because Coach was driving at the time so I figured I might as well mediate).   It turns out there was a HUGE snafu between MLB, the Giants, and Stubhub that couldn't generate the ticket barcodes for that day's Giants game.  I mean *can you believe this?*

Coach was fuming... he was suggesting we cancel the order, so I asked if that was possible, and started to go HAM.  Then Stubhub calmed me down and said that it was still possible to bring the bogus ticket to the Giants' Will Call office and exchange for hard tickets.  I went with that idea, and we eventually got to Scottsdale Stadium.  By then it was quarter of one, or roughly 20 minutes before game time.   As it turns out, dozens and dozens of other fans were also at Will Call with missing barcodes.  What an epic fail by MLB and Stubhub, who are partners in ticket resales.  With all that said, the Giants did a good job handling the situation and providing replacement tickets.   We were in and didn't even miss a pitch.

The Giants pitched very well that day against the Rangers.  Matt Cain got in 3 innings if memory serves and he was lighting it UP.   Cainsie had amazing pitches, tremendous control of the plate and knocked everything down.  One guy from the Rangers that got my attention, by the way, was Jim Adduci... I mean this guy came from nowhere but was really stroking it with the bat.   He had some pop!  Two home runs in the game, one from Hunter Pence.  It was that kind of game, but the Giants dominated.

All ended well from a baseball standpoint, and the crowd was just packed for this one.  It was packed to the gills, but nonetheless a very enjoyable atmosphere.   Dinner that night was at a Mexican Food Cantina called "El Santo."  It was the only restaurant I've ever seen that had its own pool bar, yet was not attached to a Hotel or Casino.   Coach and I tried it out, and it was just my luck that I wore a green shirt.

...the shirt matched every single article of furniture at the pool bar!!

People up and down the bar were telling me "Wow you match everything at the bar!"  Haha, I got a kick out of it.  In fact, some people were asking to take pictures.   LOL.  El Santo's a pretty sweet place, especially for happy hour.  Wait until summer time when babes start to crowd the place and start swimming.  Good times ahead for "El Santo."

The rest of the night was uneventful.  Instead of old town Scottsdale, we tried bars within walking distance.  It was a joke.  Scottsdale Quarter is the epitome of the "sleepy town."  Nothing was open past 11 and anything that was was pretty dead.  There was one bar at Mastro's Ocean Club restaurant, but it was packed with older folk.  Not my scene.

Day 4 Recap is next!