NOTE: This “reminiscing” travel post features the crappiest photos taken with my digital camera used at the time.
Let’s go back in time.
The year was July 2000 and I had the opportunity to travel to Phoenix, Arizona and St. Louis, Missouri. While staying in the city of Clayton.
At the time, I was the senior web services manager for numerous newspapers in the west coast for Pulitzer Newspaper Inc. which owned the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and way before Facebook, years before MySpace and Friendster, the thoughts of creating communities online were very much on the forefront of our mind.
In fact, I was excited for the prospect of developing something new with the technology that was invested by the corporation.
Having worked in tech PR in the Silicon Valley, it was mind-blowing that I was in Missouri for this developing technology, and it was not being exploited by Yahoo!
My memories of my trip to Clayton and St. Louis, Missouri was way before we had decent digital cameras and to document my trip back then, looking back, it’s hard to believe that picture quality such as what you see on this post was the norm.
At the time, digital cameras were overpriced and I was using the crappiest Panasonic PV-DC2090 1.3 Mega Pixel Camera. Nevertheless, it was my primary camera to use during my trip.
And what a wonderful trip I had.
There was one thing that will forever stay in my mind, the dedication by the fans to their sports teams. May it be the Cardinals, the Rams and the Blues, St. Louis were hardcore about their sports teams. And makes it even surprising that the Rams are moving back to Los Angeles in 2016.
While it surprised me to see the Rams leave Los Angeles, St. Louis deserves a football team and may it be an expansion team or a team wanting to move to the city, I hope to see the NFL return back to this wonderful city.
As for my passion for baseball, watching a Cardinals baseball game at the old Busch stadium will be a memory I will forever cherish. While enjoying the experience, one thing I will not miss was the intense humidity. The game hot and humid in the top seats and it was something I never had experienced before.
Humidity… It was something I wasn’t expecting as I was dressed up for the entire week and by 7:00 a.m., I felt my clothes sticking to me. Nevertheless, it gave me an idea how life was in St. Louis and one of the other big memories I had was seeing the architecture of the city, especially the homes surrounding Clayton and St. Louis.
Last but not least, the hospitality of the people I will always remember. I remember visiting Washington University and I was allowed to watch a class.
But the biggest memory of my trip to these two cities was the many delicious lunch and dinners I had.
I do remember the lasting memories of having to stay at the hotel for several days, extending my trip due to the multiple tornadoes and storms in the area. But nevertheless, I had a lot of fun and the people I encountered in this trip were wonderful.
It’s been awhile since I have been to Missouri and I definitely want to travel to the area and visit the current baseball stadium and watch a game.
