The Parade

After the Phillies clinched the World Series on wednesday we immediately started making plans for getting down to the parade on friday.  We ended up deciding to take the train into the city with Jen's dad, and her friends Kelly and Meg.  

This whole experience was crazy, with lots of fun moments and a couple of nerve wracking ones.  It was also truly enormous, and from our tiny perspective and with our tiny camera it may be hard to give an accurate representation.  We're not going to be able to show anyone mind-blowing shots of the parade itself.  In fact, it was difficult to get many parade pictures at all.  Maybe, however, by seeing the whole thing through our eyes you'll get a sense of what it was like just to be there- surrounded by 2 million other jublilant fans.  

Just to be clear: it was pretty cool.

But I'm getting ahead of myself!  Before we could go anywhere we had some preparations to take care of.  Here is our creative sign-making session on the night before the parade.

On friday we got to the train station nice and early.  By the time the train came, the platform was packed with so many people that our one stop took up the entire train!  It's a good thing we got there when we did.

Jen and her friend Meg showing their team spirit.

On the train.

As we rode into the city the rocking of the train car put Aiden to sleep on my shoulder, and he slept like this for most of the ride down.  In a day filled with lots of crazy excitement, this may be one of my favorite and most cherished memories.

The train ride was pretty uneventful, a little bit relaxing even. Although we did occasionally feel bad as we sped by all the people waiting at other stations who couldn't fit into our trian.  After about an hour's time we arrived deep into the heart of the city of brotherly love.

Walking towards the parade route with City Hall in the distance.

People were packed shoulder to shoulder in one direction...

...and back the other direction.

My favorite sign of the day.

William Penn.

Friends.

Mom, Dad, and son.

Father and son.

Father and daughter.

People everywhere...

Although it took a lot of time and effort getting to this point, the actual parade was pretty quick.  We got glimpses of the floats as they came by, but it was ridiculously hard to get any actual pictures of anything interesting.  I tried to get as many as I could, but most of the pictures ended up being of the back of someone's head, or the side of a building.

Here is a fuzzy shot of the Philles fuzzy mascot.

And this is the only picture that I have that actually has players in it.  Don't you feel like you could just reach out and touch them??  Ok, so it's not much of a close up, but I'm pretty sure Cole Hamels is in there somewhere.  Mabye if you look really hard...

After the parade was over we quickly realized that the biggest challenge of the day was going to be just getting home.  If possible, the train station was even more crazy then when we arrived in the morning.  There were lines of hundreds (and hundreds) of people for each train, and we figured we'd be waiting a couple of hours at least.  By no small miracle, however, we found Kelly and Meg who had gotten back to the station early, allowing us to get on the first train home. Whew!

I did my best to capture as much of this whole adventure on video as possible.  It turns out that 2 million jostling people do not necessarily make for ideal filming conditions.  The video may seem a little chaotic and unsteady, but then again- that is pretty acurate depiction of what the experience was actually like.  

Hope you enjoy...

Well, after a long season and an incredible post-season I'm thinking this rightly ought to be my last Phillies post for a while.  As our blog reflects, this house has really been swept up in the excitement that this baseball team has generated.  Not only has this been a welcome escape from discouraging world news and political name-calling, it has also provided us with memories that we'll talk about 20 years from now.  It's hard to ask for much more from a game, even a game as great baseball. 

So thanks from the Jones' to the Phillies.  It's been fun!

Oh, by the way: just 5 months 'till spring training...