Streak Royally Screwed, Mastiff Centrale and multiple Brians.

As we'd previously ventured across Arizona a trip to an 'Indian Reservation' Casino had sparked our interest somewhat and with a few hours before meeting our next hosts what better way to kill some time?

Argosy Casino is a depressing place, packed to the rafters with locals seemingly faced with a choice between another spin of the slot machine and a day out in Kansas City. Faced with the latter Phil and I perused the various ways to lose our precious dollar.

100 Hand Poker proved my conquerer whilst Phil suffered at the hands of the Blackjack table, the money I had so brashly extorted from the race track was quickly returned to the Penn National Gaming Corporation without so much as a whimper.

Tiffany and Jeremy met us outside their home at around 10:15pm, it was with slight surprise that the largest member of their family was on four legs. They call him Brodey and he is huge.

Some quick maths told us that 220lb of dog equates to just under 16 stone and as he looks every bit of it. The Wikipedia entry suggests that whilst the Great Dane and Irish Wolfhound are generally taller than the English Mastiff, they are nowhere near as robust.

Robust he was.

Over the next few hours we explained the rules of Cricket to Jeremy who seemingly maintained interest whilst I used various garden props to explain the intricacies of the game. We spoke of movies, baseball and local life until we retired to the basement in their front garden, it was a strange arrangement but in the end we slept ok.

The following day was spent watching films including National Lampoon's Summer Vacation, The Foot Fist Way and Paranormal Activity before Phil and I drove towards Kauffman Stadium in hope of attaining a 6/6 strike rate.

The Kansas City Royals ended our run in fine style with the equal worst result in their
existence since 1969 losing a mere 19-1 to the Minnesota Twins. We drove back forlorn for another night in the the underground, it should be said that as all that have gone before them Tiffany and Jeremy were great to us throughout.

Nine hours North and East we arrived to meet Brian who has a pretty swish apartment in downtown Milwaukee. We headed out with his flatmate (also called Brian) and their friend Zain for a few beers and some dinner.

It turns out that peanut butter on a burger tastes pretty good and that Milwaukee is a pretty cool area to live. It's known for it's brewery history and if any of those reading this have supped on a Miller beverage then this place is probably responsible.

Although our luck in the casino hadn't been great something seemed to have fallen in our lap when Brian informed us that his firm had given him 4 level 1 tickets. The seats were only 14 rows from the players on the field, about 100 rows closer than we had been up until this point. Quite frankly we were delighted and the news of imminent tailgaiting fun the next day had us barely able to sleep.

Brian took us to meet Greg, a colleague and owner of the remaining ticket to the game.

In the UK tailgaiting refers to the practice of driving too close to the driver in front of you.

In the US tailgaiting refers to driving to the event car park, plenty of beers, a BBQ and a game called 'long toss'. Quite why it hasn't spread across the Atlantic I have no idea but it's splendid fun and even our 2-0 tossing defeat to the hosts couldn't dampen our spirits.

The view was excellent and as the sun baked down we enjoyed the Brewers going 2-0 in front before subsequently losing 10-2. The streak was long a thing of the past though and to be honest we weren't nearly as choked as in KC.

A stroll through the city, some Mexican food and a quick summation in the bar with Brian later we returned home with Cincinnati, Ohio the next port of call in our adventure.