Road Trip: Hartford

      I'm not able to take as many road trips as I used to.

My work schedule is different and even my time away from work has been changed, so when you consider that with the takeover of minor league baseball by MLB, they have eliminated Monday games (one of my off-days), it would have made it difficult to attend games even if I wished.

But this trip was planned well before my job changes and this is the biggest trip of the season, so while there were a few disappointments, there were some great times and as always great memories made with Fred Landucci on the trip.

I've never been to Connecticut or Massachusetts before so it was a chance to not only add a ballpark to my list but also a chance to add two states to the states that I have been to as well.

The drive up was uneventual, we stopped in Connecticut for lunch at a place called John's, which was pretty good.

I ordered the daily special a fish sandwich, which was good but had far too much bread for my tastes.

I left a lot of bread on the table, which I feel bad about because I hate waste, but it was too much.

The legendary Northeast traffic did arrive as we neared Connecticut and Hartford, so it did take quite a bit of patience as we approached the ballpark.

Dunkin Donuts Park is a downtown stadium with its both positive and negative aspects. Still, it is almost directly off an exit into the city and that does make it a bit easier for visitors to find and park easily with a massive parking lot across the street from the field.

With Fred along, we were able to use handicapped parking, which caused one of the funnier moments of the trip in the parking lot

As we were moved along the parking lot by one person, another one followed us yelling "Where's their stickers, where's their stickers"?

Maryland vehicles have a handicapped symbol on the license plate but since this was a rental and non-handicapped plate, we only had Fred's Pennsylvania placard, which the first person had seen but the second one had not.

This lady chases all around the lot, only to see the placard and say "It's ok" in between huffs from running.

The main reason we picked this weekend was for the Hartford Yard Goats' "Whalers reunion weekend" with many former stars of the Hartford Whalers returning and we picked Friday so we could do other things over the next two days.

Unfortunately, not all of the players were there for the first night (which wasn't noted beforehand) but I still was able to meet and talk to a handful of former stars including Andre LaCroix, who was the all-time leading scorer in the defunct-World Hockey Association, and defenseman Gordie Roberts.

I didn't get as many as I hoped but I was able to get everyone that was there which was enough to please me.

Dunkin Donuts Park is a nice stadium and I really liked the wide concourses that despite the large crowd felt plenty roomy as we moved around.

We also were lucky enough to have someone sing the National Anthem (I wish I remembered her name) that sang it well yet not in a look-at-me way and it was very cool to see the home team run onto the field with the Whalers fight song "Brass Bonanza" playing in the background.

I liked the Dunkin Donuts cup on top of the scoreboard and on the right field roof, there was a large Deer (or Stag or Buck whatever) looking towards the outside of the park that I'm going to say is from "The Hartford" insurance company as that only makes sense considering the location.

It looked very statuesque from the distance and I bet it might look better had I seen it from the streets of Hartford.

We stayed at a Doubletree Hilton near the Hartford airport and when we checked in, we asked for a good pizza place.

There was a place literally a crosswalk away which would have been convenient to visit but when I asked the two ladies behind the desk about it, they both looked up sadly and nodded their heads no as in we didn't want to do that!

They recommended a place about a mile or two down the road but it was straight down the road so not hard to find our destination- a place called Tunxis Grill and Pizzeria 

Tunxis was busy (it was Friday night) and the pair of couples beside us were very loud but the wait was worth it for our pizza, which was "The Works" off their menu and might have won my favorite meal of the trip.

We returned to the hotel, which started my issues with the outside world on both nights.

I travel with a Roku stick, so I can stream and watch what I wish, even when away from home but Doubletree used what is called a "Clean Remote", which is reputed to be anti-germ and anti-bacteria and targeted toward hotels, hospitals, and nursing homes.

The Clean Remote worked fine but you need to be able to change the input on televisions to use Roku, Playstations, etc and if you go to the link, you can see they have omitted a button to access the input channels.

So if you replace all the television remotes with the Clean Remote, you would have no way to change the input and essentially render the object of choice useless and that meant no Roku and the streaming channels that it provides for this night.

I did have internet, so I used my Ipad for the night, so it could have been worse but my adventures with these issues weren't over as night two would prove.

I enjoyed day one and I liked Hartford, although I wish they had been clearer with their notes that most of the Whalers would be there on Saturday only.

I'd go back under certain circumstances and I had a nice time traveling to a new state.

I'll be back with day two of the trip sometime soon when I have time to write.