Night of Pipe

(Crap.)

My first Fenway outing of the season was a total washout, doused by severe thunderstorms and a tornado watch. While it was bright and sunny on the South Shore yesterday, a late-afternoon flurry of emails from Brownguy and Bags was much more forboding. Outside their office windows it looked like "the Apocalypse was rolling in," that we were "being eclipsed by the Death Star." "It's Independence Day out there." Great.


(Come to think of it, it did look like Independence Day)

As always, the mere threat of rain brings the entire interstate highway system to a complete standstill. James and I began our excrutiatingly slow crawl up 93 as the skies grew darker and darker. I have never (never!) seen skies this dark outside of my stormchasing shows on A&E. Normally, I'm weather junkie. I love thunderstorms. I have tornado fantasies. I just don't want them to coincide with nights we have Pavillion seats and free parking for the Red Sox game.

As we drove (about 5 mph) past the gas tanks in Dorchester, it started monsooning.

An hour later, we met up with Brownguy and Bags at the sub-par but non-clusterfuckish Tequila Rain. At this point, we were soggy, a little grumpy and praying for a postponement so we could all enjoy the game on a summer night that didn’t involve Helly Hansen rain gear and obstructive-view brellies.

Apparently, we weren't the only ones. When news flashed across the plasma screens that the game had been called, there was much rejoicing. Moments later: A lengthy string of profanity and instant ticket scalping. The game would be played at 12:35 p.m. the next day. Which is just great if you don't have a job. What a buzzkill.

So, in an effort to turn around what James referred to as this "night of pipe," we fled to Southie and had dinner at the Boston Beer Garden. While it took us almost a day to get there, we DID turn the night around, enjoying a mood-elevating nosh with bonus guest stars: Neighborhood riff raff T-Bag and my brother P joined us around the table, just as we stopped shaking our fists at the sky.



(Screw you, night of pipe)