When I decided to attend a conference in Scottsdale, Arizona at a resort called The Boulders, I noticed that because of St. Jean Baptiste Day, I didn’t have to be back in the office for work on the Tuesday of the coming week. Everyone else flew out on the Saturday but I decided to stay one extra day and take in another Baseball game at a park I never thought I would get the chance to attend; Chase Field for a game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

After a 45 minute drive into Phoenix, I found a parking spot pretty close to the stadium. When I got outside and started walking in the 41 degrees Celsius weather, I was suddenly worried about how I was going to sit through a full game in the heat! No matter, I bought a pretty good seat a bit up from behind home plate and hoped for the best. Happily, when I walked into the stadium I noticed that it was covered because of the heat. As a Canadian, it never occurred to me that a stadium would be covered because of heat!

• It was Star Wars Day so there was a lot of people in costumes and related graphics on the scoreboard. It was quite surreal
• The price of the food and drinks was quite a bit less than other stadiums I’ve been to
• There was an oversized Randy Johnson mascot running around the concourse
• John McCain was only a few rows away from me and was constantly being asked to take photos between innings.