Tag: travel

Waynesboro, Virginia, the land where professional wrestling stood still

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I recently went to an indy wrestling show out in the sticks of Virginia.  Waynesboro, to be exact.  This was actually the impetus for a trip I made in order to spend some time with my family, since I frankly don’t really spend nearly enough time with them.

The decision to go to this show was really quite an easy one, because when it first came onto my radar, Juventud Guerrera was listed to be on the card, among a pretty star-studded guest list, especially for an indy show as this one was; guys like Sting, Lex Luger, Vader, Ron Simmons, and the Rock ’n Roll Express were also slated to be at this show.

But as legendary as some of those guys are, I have this ironic love for the weird, and the jobbers, and the guys that don’t get nearly the credit they deserve, like Juventud Guerrera.  Plus, I really wanted a Juvi mask to essentially complete my collection of luchador masks on my shelf, since the Juice is somehow considered “too old” in Mexico itself, to have his masks for sale on the streets of la Playa del Carmen. Without question, Juvi was really the only reason that I wanted to go to this show at all.

So plans were made, flights were purchased, tickets were acquired, and I was on my way back to Virginia for a long weekend of family, friends and Juvi Juice.  I was looking forward to it greatly.

And then as the show neared, I went to the promotion’s website to refresh my memory of what else was in store; and noticed that Juventud’s profile was no longer a part of the promotional banner.  To make matters worse, all mention of Juvi was gone from the site.  My friend messaged them on Facebook, but because they’re a yokel backwater promotion, they never responded, but all signs were pointing to the idea that Juventud was no longer going to be a part of it.

“Card subject to change” is one of the bigger tropes of the business, and because professional wrestling is full of flakes and bums, it’s the thing said to easily Mentos out of just about any sort of card changing, like Juventud Guerrera not being a part of it.  Unfortunately for those of us outside of the business, the real world doesn’t work as conveniently as the scripted one inside of it.  I still had plane tickets and vacation time punched out at work.  Juvi or no Juvi, I was still going to be going to this show, disappointed as hell that I wouldn’t get to meet the Juice and pick up la maskara for the colleccíon.

Oh yeah and Vader died, so that was another blow to the card that was going to be hard to cover up.

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Eleven years later

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After the Texas Rangers hung five runs on the Colorado Rockies in the first inning, it seemed like the home team would prevail on my first trip to The Ballpark in Arlington, or whatever Globe Life corporate name that’s attached to it now.  However, the Rockies would proceed to answer back immediately scoring six-runs in the second inning to take the lead, and then tack on three more unanswered runs throughout the rest of the game, all while holding the Rangers to effectively a two-hitter the remainder of the way.

I suspect that my divine blessing by visit isn’t going to work this season, and that the Rangers probably won’t make the playoffs in spite of my well-documented history of personally ushering teams into the postseason.  Then again, at the time I’m writing this, the Rangers have won five in a row, and there’s a lot of season left to be played, so who really knows what’s going to happen?

Anyway, the point really is that with my trip to Texas and having seen a Texas Rangers game in their ballpark, I have effectively finished a life’s goal of visiting all 30 Major League Baseball ballparks.  Sure, since the time I started in 2007, several parks have closed and been replaced with ones that I’ve yet to visit, but for all intents and purposes, the goal was really to catch a home game at every team’s park, regardless of which it was when I visited.  I have successfully been to every team’s city, watched baseball, and often times, ate a fuckton of food along the way, sampling the local cuisines all across the country.

One of these days, I’ll have a baseball park site up again in some way shape or form, so I’m not going to straight up review Globe Life Park outright here, but I have to say that I’m very excited and left in a state of disbelief that I’m actually finished with the journey.  I mean, after 11 years, it felt like one of those things that never felt like it was ever going to end, despite there being a very finite number of 30 teams to visit, and that I was gradually chipping away at the remaining total.

Although it averages to like three parks a year, the fact of the matter is that my general fandom, despite still loving the game itself, I’ve just grown less gung-ho of feeling the necessity to be physically at games these days.  And it’s never been more evident in the fact that the last few parks have been some of the only games I’ve been to over the last few seasons, and I’ve literally hit Texas, Arizona and Cleveland solely in the span of the last three seasons.

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Photos: Globe Life Stadium, home of the Texas Rangers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note]: this is unposted content back from 2018, of my trip to Dallas, Texas, to visit my brother, but also to knock out the last ballpark in my journey to visit every single MLB team.

It only took 11 years to accomplish, and by this time, my fandom was pretty unenthusiastic due to the Braves sucking all the enjoyment out of baseball over the last few years, but I wasn’t about to give up on a quest that was so close to being completed.

When I started, it was still called The Ballpark in Arlington, but as is often the case with modern baseball parks, corporate naming rights swoop in and take all character out of these venues, and Globe Life was no exception to the rule.  But for what it’s worth, it was a fine baseball establishment, nice scenics, good backdrops, and most importantly, a pretty epic $27 chicken sandwich, and I enjoyed my time there spent with my brother and his wife.

I think I made the right call by having this one be last in the journey.

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Pokemon Go Fuck the Rules

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Admittedly, one of the things I was really looking forward to on my trip to Seoul was that I would have the opportunity to catch a Farfetch’d in Pokemon Go.  Why am I even still playing this game? is this notable?  Because Farfetch’d is a regional exclusive Pokemon that’s exclusive to Asia, and Pokemon Go wasn’t even allowed in South Korea until literally like two weeks after I had left the fucking country last year.

So the only people who had Farfetch’ds were those who lived in Asian Pokemon Go countries, those who cheated and spoofed their IPs to look like they were in Asian Pokemon Go countries, or tryhards like me that traveled to other countries and actually tried to capitalize on the local Pikachus, wanting to fill their coffers with Pikachus with geostamps listing the places of the world they’ve been to while playing a kids game.

Anyway, during my first morning in Seoul, I went out on a walk because according to the Seoul Pokemon Go Map, I noticed that there was a Farfetch’d within a reasonable walking distance from where I was.  I needed to catch this motherfucker because I really wanted to knock this task off of my list as soon as possible, because I didn’t really want to be the asshole not seeing the world around him, because my face was buried in my phone; the irony of this statement is not lost on me, considering at any given time, 80% of the South Korean population has their faces buried in their phones.

So I get to the location where the Farfetch’d was noted to have spawned, and sure enough it spawned on my phone.  Through bated breath, I unloaded the full arsenal of raspberries and Ultra Pokeballs and hoped that I could catch it and it wouldn’t break free and run away.  It took three tries, but I secured the catch, and then I felt a tremendous amount of satisfaction at getting to be the ultimate tryhard that had just secured a regional exclusive in North America, Europe, and now Asia.

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Forever questions

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The afternoon after I wrote my last post, I got home from work and I went into the backyard with the dog for some routine ball time.  In between throws, I scoured the ground and all the numerous patches of clover, looking for a four-leaf clover.  I know that at my old house, the backyard was rife with four-leafers, but it never took away from the happiness from finding one, with the hopes that somewhere in the world, the magic of the luck of a four-leaf clover could be cashed in, in some capacity.  And given the intensive dread that existed at that time concerning my family, I felt really, really hopeful that I could find just one more four-leaf clover in my new backyard.

I couldn’t.  Even after nearly 45 minutes of looking for a four-leaf clover, there were none to be found in my new house.  Even the dog was tired of running for the ball at that point.  There simply wasn’t one that I could find.

But it’s not that it would have mattered anyways.  About an hour or so later, I received a phone call from my sister, who let me know that her husband, my brother-in-law and father to my niece and nephew had passed away two hours earlier, well before I had begun my search for a four-leaf clover.

Even now, I replay the conversation in my head, and it brings tears to my eyes every time, hearing details of his last moments, and how he seemingly held on just long enough for his kids to make it to the hospital so he could say goodbye to them.  It’s difficult to even type out these words and keep my composure, thinking about it.

The thing is, all this happened right on the day in which my vacation was starting.  My first flight out was just hours away after getting off the phone with my sister, and I felt trapped in this unwinnable bubble that whatever I did was going to be the wrong decision.  Despite the fact that my sister insisted that I go anyway and try to have the best time I could given the circumstances, I still felt like an asshole embarking on an international vacation when someone important to my family had just died.  Sure, I know my sister, and I knew my brother-in-law well enough to know that they’d both have wanted me to go, but it still didn’t entirely feel right.

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Photos: Seoul, Korea / Manila, Philippines Vacation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note]: this is a photo dump of the vacation that mythical then-gf and I took to Korea and the Philippines, by virtue of gaming the layover system on a trip to Manila and staying in Seoul as long as possible.

As enjoyable as the trip was overall, it was still a difficult time, as my family was going through a particularly difficult time, culminating with my brother-in-law’s battle with sarcoma coming to an end, just days before the trip.  But still, mythical then-gf and I made the best of our travels, and I did enjoy getting to see Seoul through her eyes, in spite of the blustery cold, and then our brief adventures in Manila, where I lost my phone in an Uber like an idiot, but thankfully got it back, but not before it took a huge dump on one of our sparing days there.

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Life is complicated

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I specifically earmarked this particular day to write about how I was about to embark on a vacation back to Korea, with a brief stop in the Philippines, and how excited I was.  It was exciting to be going back to the Motherland, because I had such an amazing time when I went for the first time last year, and I was really pumped up about this time going with mythical gf, since she’s such a Koreeb, and it would be fun to kind of witness the excitement of a first visit through her eyes as well.

This is a trip that had been planned for the better part of the entire 2017 year, where lots of money, planning and more money had gone into nailing down travel and lodging in order to get the optimal prices at the optimal times in order to accommodate both our work schedules and allotted vacation times.  But it was done a long time ago, and since then, it’s always been the constant milestone to look forward to, the thing we’ve been counting down the months, then the weeks, and then the days, up until today, when we eventually embark.

But as its often said, life doesn’t operate in a vacuum, and an infinite number of things exist all around us at any given time.  I don’t really know to segue to it in a smoother transition, but based on the title of this post alone, it should be expected that an unfortunate turn is bound to happen.  But there’s a medical issue in my family and to cut to the chase, there is an uncertainty on the amount of time this person has left. 

As far as I’m concerned, this could not possibly have happened at any worse of a time, but naturally I am not the actual person concerned.  But it doesn’t make it suck any less that a life hangs in the uncertain balance, and I’m in a trapped feeling position of not knowing what I can do, because life isn’t about me, there are others involved, and every choice affects others in a variety of manners.

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