Li'l Louie's Game Time World Tour: Peace Up, A Town Down

Louie found himself in my mailbox last week, completely to my surprise. At first, I couldn't figure out if I had ordered something off of eBay from someone from Maryland or what the box in my mailbox was. I popped the box open and lo, there was the l'll blue pantsless bear, staring right back at me.

Louie arrived in time for my spring break (aka - my job perk), but unfortunately this week was dedicated to dissertation work, so he didn't make it very far. He did, however, get a chance to meet up with Thrash, or at least his tiny doppelgänger. Atlanta, you may remember, used to have a hockey team once upon a time. Sadly every bit of evidence that team ever existed has been eliminated from Philips Arena and the surrounding area, so a tiny Thrash bobblehead was as good as I could manage.

This weekend, though, I was free, and the Cardinals were in town. Louie was going to be off to see the sights in Atlanta, and he was going to make it to his first Cardinal game of the year.

He's ready to go.

Of course, this being Atlanta, he promptly got stuck in traffic.

This was the theme of the day. My friend and I had a plan for Louie before the game - we were going to take him to some of the less tourist-y but still awesome areas of Atlanta. The actual real city. Instead, we got stuck in the nightmare hellhole that is the real city traffic. We tried several times to turn left to get to places, and every time we did, there was no lefthand turn signal, and traffic was a solid line in the opposite direction. His trip to Murder Kroger (we have a name for every local Kroger here - it's endearing!) will have to wait for Amanda.

He did get a chance to head to the Varsity!

Whaddya have, Louie? How about a bacon double cheeseburger, some onion rings, a Varsity Orange, and a peach pie?

Louie is obviously not watching his waistline

Afterwards, we decided to check out some gameday traffic - not bad downtown, but we knew it would be worse later on, so down the sidestreets to Turner Field we went.

We got to The Ted a little early, tailgated, and then headed in. Louie's seats were ok, I guess.

If you don't have the At The Ballpark app for upgrades, get it. These were $23.

The Cardinals absolutely stomped the Braves this weekend; Saturday night Louie got to see a 12-2 winner at Busch Stadium South. The entire third base side was composed of a majority of Cardinals fans.

On the way out of the park, I heard someone yell "BLUES SUCK! GO SHARKS!" As I was only wearing Blues socks, I figured that there were fans nearby me. There was! A whole family of fans wore their jerseys to the game. The youngest member of the family had a jersey signed by Ken Hitchcock, who he was very excited about meeting. He's also a participant in the Blues camps for kids, and an all-around awesome child.

Louie's adventures in Atlanta are just beginning. His next host has promised to take him to the storied Clermont Lounge.. Hopefully he'll have his shots before he's shipped off to his next destination.