Mar. 7, 2008 (Day 42) - Pushing Westward

I've been in Tucson now for 4 days, which obviously means that I made it successfully across the country by car. The following are the highlights from my 3 days of driving.

Day 1 -
- Route 81 near Blacksburg was stopped for 1/2 hour because a tractor trailer ran completely off the road and was hanging off a cliff.
- I ate at a Famous Dave's (per my Dad's recommendation) outside of Nashville.
- I met some my Lambda Chi fraternity brothers in Memphis and stayed at their house for the night. I had to use our secret handshake to prove I was a brother.

Day 2-
-I crossed both the Tennessee and Mississippi River.
- Contacted a teammate who was also on the road and ended up being within an hour of each other on I-20.
-Made it to Van Horn, TX (1.5 hrs east of El Paso) and split a hotel with my teammate, the Days Inn (temp. 70)
- Woke up in Van Horne to snow and 35 degree weather.

Day -3
- Visited the City of Rocks in New Mexico. It was exactly was it sounds...a huge cluster of boulders that looks like a city.
- Tried to visit the Kurtchner Caverns in AZ but was too late to get a reservation on any of the tours.
-I made it to Tucson and dropped my stuff off after 8 hours of driving on day three and spent the night at a teammates apartment.

So that was my cross-country trip in a nutshell. Spring training has gotten off to a decent start. We've done lots of preparation for defense and hitting. As far as pitching goes, they split us up into 4 teams depending on your experience level. Within those 4 teams, they split all the pitchers into A or B groups. Every other day A's will throw a bullpen and vice versa for the B's. I've thrown one bullpen so far and it went well enough. I would have liked to have located my pitches a little better, but I try not put too much emphasis on the first bullpen of the spring. I will throw another tomorrow.

The hardest part about the first week of spring training is getting your "baseball legs" underneath you. Just wearing spikes for hours at a time and then doing running is enough to wear you out. I paid a visit to the hot/cold contrast tubs today to help wake the legs up. All of the position players start their first day tomorrow. What this means is that our days will gradually get longer until we start at 8ish and don't finish till about 3.

I got to go to bible study for the first time yesterday as well. There was quite a turn out and its always exciting to see some of my peers show interest in Christ the way I do. I am always taken back slightly when I hear what big leaguers have to say about how they believe in God. Its certainly refreshing to know that no how famous or common, we all worship the same God.