Columbia Part One A Success

Park visited: Twin Oak Complex
City: Columbia, Missouri
Food of the day: Chicken Fajita Pizza from Uno Chicago Grill
iPhone song of the day: "Free" by Brad Johner
Miles traveled: 140

Due to a heavy volume of baseball tournaments over the next week or so, the Show-Me-State will be showing the Road Trip a lot of games during the next several days. Our first stop in Missouri was in the heart of Mizzou, home of the D-I Tigers on Thursday evening. We set up shop at the Twin Oak Baseball Complex for the "School's Out" tournament, which featured about 50 spirited teams, mostly from nearby counties.

The enthusiasm in the air was quickly evident as the tents went up and the merchandise was being unloaded from the trailer. And as soon as baseball cards and Airhead candy went flying, teams and players rabidly descended on us, much to the displeasure of some of their coaches who wanted them to focus on warm-ups.

Several hours into our Twin Oak visit, we had once again made a ton of new friends and really connected with a lot of players and their siblings. It was really sweet when the girls in line at the prize wheel got excited over winning stacks of Upper Deck and Topps cards so that they "could give them to their brother."

Today we checked out of our Columbia hotel, and after lunch at Cracker Barrel, we headed back to Twin Oak for another night of tournament baseball. Unfortunately, however, the area was under severe thunderstorm warnings and tornado watches, and as we initially began to begin our set-up, the rains and winds really moved in. As a result, we packed up our things and headed for St. Louis. But our goodbye to Columbia was short-lived, as we will return later next week for the TBN World Qualifier.

As I mentioned, the Road Trip crew is now in STL where we will be working the June Baseball Classic in Kirkwood all day tomorrow. At the top of this post is a mini breakdown of some of the details from our travels. From now on, I will be including these features, which most importantly include "food of the day." I figured that with us eating out a couple times a day, who better than us to offer solid suggestions for lunch or dinner choices at various restaurants and eateries? If you have other suggestions for information you'd like to hear about our trip, please feel free to leave a comment!

Until next time,
Chris