The spring training cycle begins anew

PHOENIX -- You'd think after 12 consecutive years of following the Brewers to spring training in Arizona that I wouldn't be absolutely giddy to be here, every second of every day that I'm awake.

But, you'd be wrong.

In fact, sleep isn't coming particularly easily to me so far, since I'd rather sacrifice a few winks to soak in the desert sun as much as humanly possible on this trip.

Our rag-tag group of reporters, golfers, photographers and general hangers-on has been filtering in since Tuesday. I arrived at about 10:30 p.m, local time -- 12:30 a.m. Milwaukee time -- on Wednesday night. Before I crashed from eight hours of flying cross-country, I made sure to grab a carne asada burrito from Filiberto's -- a genuine Mexican chain that I would frequent at all hours if it ever came to Milwaukee.

Thursday morning was an atypical first full day of this trip, as the Brewers were scheduled to play a night game, instead of the usual 1:05 p.m. start. I'm scratching my head to remember a Brewers spring training night game, and I'm pretty sure I haven't seen one. So, we had plenty of time, for a change, to wander about the valley in broad daylight.

We enjoyed a leisurely continental breakfast at our headquarters at the Sheraton Crescent -- more on this property in an upcoming travel blog -- and scooped up our remaining comrade in at Sky Harbor Airport before heading to Mill Avenue for lunch with our friends from the Tempe CVB (Convention and Visitors Bureau).

Lunch at La Boca was quite good -- healthy even -- perhaps one of the only green things I'll eat here between burritos and ballpark fare. Even though March Madness doesn't do it for me when I don't have my alma mater in the tournament, our group headed to the patio of Gordon Biersch to take in some of the action.

Sitting outside, I made a point to stop, look around and savor this. I'll hammer this point over and over again in the next few days, but a spring training trip is both doable and pretty accessible for the uber Brewers fan. I find it important, however, to savor it, since we won't likely see this kind of weather in Milwaukee until the Fourth of July.

With time to spare, we convened at the hotel pool to plot our night. It was hard to step indoors, as a perfectly sunny, 84-degree day felt oh so good on our pale and pasty Wisconsin skin. Eventually, we jumped in the rental car and began the ridiculously long one-hour commute to Surprise Stadium to watch the Brewers take on the Rangers.

Like every year, I find it hard to focus on the first game of my trip. I'm more attuned to my surroundings, watching equally giddy Brewers fans roam around the park. We split our time watching the game from the seats and the outfield berm, and took occasional breaks to throw the ball around on the lush, green grass.

Unfortunately, Surprise is so far from Phoenix, we had to leave early, lest we squander our entire night in traffic. We made a beeline to Scottsdale's Old Town where we parked ourselves at Dos Gringos and then the Coach House, two old favorites. The nightlife here is top notch.

This morning, I felt oddly fresh after a mere four hours of sleep, and we drove down to Tempe to have breakfast at the Fiesta Resort. Even though we're not staying at this hotel, it was still worth a visit because of its Frank Lloyd Wright inspired design (I'm a huge fan of this style). My muenster, bacon and avocado omelet was really good, and our contacts at Fiesta -- one was a Kenosha native, of course -- gave us tons of advice on more good stuff to check out on our trip.

Now, we're heading out to Maryvale for the game. There's talk of an informal "tweet up" on the berm. I'll do my best to focus on the actual on-the-field action (after I check out this year's crop of T-shirts).

This is what I daydream about for 11 months out of the year. Tonight? Who knows, but I bet it'll be fun. This might technically be work, but it's also about the most fun I can imagine.