Sunday’s bike ride took me and the Surly downtown for a historical tour of Oriole Park and Camden Yards, another hit brought to us by the folks at Baltimore Heritage. To be honest, I was a tired out bicyclist after Saturday’s ride, and if I hadn’t booked this tour weeks earlier, I might have chosen to stay home and rest up with all the homework I saved for the very last day of spring break (yep, teachers do that too), but I’m glad I went. The short six mile round trip helped me work some kinks out of my system, but more importantly, oh my goodness, I learned so much. Camden Yards, the original B&O Railroad building, was for some time the longest building in the country. If you stood it straight up, it would be only 9 stories shorter than the Empire State Building (minus the antenna). Power washing the thing turned the grout into taffy, so each individual brick had to be washed by hand with boric acid; they stopped counting at 3.5 million. There are 400 miles of cables snaking the place, just for communications and press. No one sets foot on the field unless they’re playing baseball–not even the pope, who had to stand on a dais when he performed a service here. The grass is grown in sand that can absorb 15 inches of rainfall in an hour, which means the field is ready for play ASAP after a rain delay, and nobody has to sweep the water to midfield for drainage, like those goofballs at Wrigley Field. I could go on and on, just like Mary did, about 30 minutes too long, but stop and look at that picture. Isn’t it pretty? Summertime is right around the corner, and I’m itching for it and its long warm nights, $9 baseball tickets, and for everybody to get back out on their bikes. And Oriole Park, can we please get some more bike racks? Oh, they’re coming, are they? Most excellent. The ride back home was anything but summertime and Monday brought a cold wet snow, but I know we are almost there, right?