Dim Sum Day

In the movie For Love of the Game, Vin Scully says of the character played by Kevin Costner, a once-great pitcher who is making the final start of his career: "Tonight, he will make the fateful walk to the loneliest spot in the world, the pitching mound at Yankee Stadium, to push the sun back into the sky and give us one more day of summer."

So, on a 90 degree day in late September, with grad school just a couple days away, I recruited three of my good friends to join for me an afternoon of fun, to try and have one more day of summer. We met in Pasadena and had a pint of Guinness, then rode the Gold Line down to Chinatown. We ate at Empress Pavilion and it was great, as usual.

I can't remember every thing we had, but it was a lot. Dumplings with shrimp and broccoli, shrimp and spinach, spring rolls, pork buns, potstickers, and several others, all washed down with Tsingtao. At one point my friend Tracie made some guttural noise and said "I feel like I'm climbing Mt. Everest."

Still, we weren't completely stuffed, so we decided to get one more dish. We got two, including a second order of pork buns. It was delicious, although a bit much. Finally we all pushed away from the table. "Well, Tracie," I said, "we knocked the bastard off."

Then I went to one of the shops in the plaza and visited my penis psychiatrist.

After lunch we decided we needed a walk, so we went down to Olvera Street, walked around, and headed over to the Traxx bar at Union Station. Union Station is perhaps my favorite structure in all of Los Angeles. I drank a cold Deschutes Black Butter Porter and then we headed back to Pasadena on the train. A perfect last day of summer.