...Crossed Another Cold State Line

This weekend was spent working in Farmington Hills, MI (a suburb of Detroit), on Saturday, and Akron, OH, on Sunday. Saturday's event was a vendor fair that we had attended many times before. We normally sell quite a bit there, but sales were very slow this year. It may have been due to most of the attendees already knowing us, but I think it was more because of the economy.

The best part of the weekend was being able to convince my boss that we could make a little side trip to Cleveland on Saturday night. We only had to work until 2pm on Saturday, so we were able to make it to Progressive Field with plenty of time to spare before the Indians/Twins game.

The park is pretty neat, with a glass-walled restaurant taking up most of the third base line, where most stadiums would have a second or even third tier. There is a two-level monument park in center field, featuring bronze reliefs of famous players throughout all of Cleveland's history.

By chance, Bob Feller was in the stadium signing his new book, so Victor bought one and we had him sign that and a baseball to give to Dave. It was really exciting that we just happened to find this out, and we had plenty of time to wait in the line to meet him. I took a picture of him with Victor to send to Victor's dad, who had met Bob Feller many years before.

Our seats were great, just slightly to the first base side of home plate, field level, about twenty rows back. Those same seats in Yankee Stadium would have cost about $350 apiece, but in Cleveland they were only $50 each. We had a nice time, relaxing and enjoying hot dogs. We even found a beer stand that carried beers other than Bud Light and Miller Light! By the sixth inning, many of the fans had left, and we moved up to the second row. After the game, I picked up a shot glass for our collection, to go with the autographed ball, and we headed on to Akron.

We were able to get a decent night's sleep, since the organizers of Sunday's event knew that many of the vendors were coming from Saturday's event in Michigan. Overall, it was a productive day, and we found many new customers, but we didn't sell very much product. We also had fun, though it was very stressful, doing a cake decorating program with all of the school-age children. Because of that, the organizer really wanted to pay us something, which we didn't want to accept. In the end, Victor told her to make the payment check out as a donation for my Avon Walk! Very cool, and she actually turned out to be a breast cancer survivor.