Around-the-World Trip Slows Down During Rush Hour

Karen Thorndike completed a 33,000-mile around-the-world trip alone in a sailboat last week. The odyssey took two years and 13 days, but she said one of the most difficult parts was the final 35-day leg from Hawaii to San Diego.

“It was like a freeway,” the 56-year-old Seattle woman said of the ocean traffic. “There were so many boats that I felt I should use turning signals to change lanes.”

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Trivia time: What was the result of UCLA’s first football game?

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Comparisons: Florida Marlins owner Wayne Huizenga recently paid more for his house on Nantucket, $7.5 million, than the payroll of his current Marlin roster, reports Peter Gammons in the Boston Globe.

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High finance: There are no athletic scholarships in the Ivy League, which can pose quite a financial burden on families. Jake Bittner put in three years as an offensive lineman while getting an engineering degree at Yale. Mai Lindstrom, Indianapolis Motor Speedway director of public relations, said that financing her son’s education was like “pushing a brand new BMW over a cliff every year for four years.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1922, the Chicago Cubs beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 26-23. The Cubs led, 25-6, in the fourth inning, but the game ended with the Phillies leaving the bases loaded.

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Surf’s down: When Atlanta Braves outfielder Ryan Klesko attended Westminster High he spent a lot of his time surfing. So when the Braves came West, an Atlanta TV crew wanted to get some shots of Klesko on his board.

However, his agent reminded him that his contract had a clause preventing him from surfing. Klesko showed up at Huntington Beach with his surfboard, but he didn’t surf.

“It was awfully tempting, so I sat on the beach and moped,” he said. “I watched a surf contest, ate a bagel and read the newspaper.”

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Mike and Jeff: Stock car driver Dale Jarrett, trying to explain why Jeff Gordon seems so unbeatable in Winston Cup competition, compared him to the Chicago Bulls’ Michael Jordan.

“You can’t stop Michael Jordan from scoring points or setting records, can you?” he said. “Well, going up against Gordon is sort of like the same thing. You know it’s going to happen. You just hope you can stop him from time to time.”

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As others see us: From Carlton Thompson in the Houston Chronicle: “Tommy Lasorda once sought the [Dodger general manager] job, but he has proved to be so incompetent during his brief trial period. At least give Lasorda credit for abandoning the job before the Dodgers had a chance to fire him.

“Whoever ends up with the job will have his work cut out for him . . . not to mention all the advice he can stand from Lasorda.”

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Trivia answer: Manual Arts High defeated UCLA, 74-0, on Oct. 3, 1919.

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And finally: There were 31,000 fans there when the Cincinnati Reds held a Beanie Baby Day, but one woman called the Reds’ front office and threatened a lawsuit if she didn’t get one of the Beanie Babies as the youngsters did.

She said she deserved one because she was pregnant with her first child.