Who scheduled this trip?

We should have left days ago. I know this now. And we are still waiting on Nick. (Are you reading this or are you finishing your work?)

We'll be in Cincinnati on Sunday morning. I haven't been there since 2002 — the last year the Reds played in Riverfront. I can't wait to finally check out Great American Ball Park, which I have only seen on the TV and the Internet. My youngest brother, Dylan, and I had a great time when we made the trip out there to say good-bye to that grand stadium of symmetry that I spent so many wonderful, muggy days and nights at during the 1980s.

Dylan was born in Cincinnati but we moved to Connecticut when he was 3. I really wanted him to see a game in that glorious, albeit ugly, stadium that used to be home to Rose, Perez, Bench, Davis, Larkin, Rijo, Browning and Schottzie, former owner Marge Schott's Saint Bernard. The Astro-turf was gone but the smell was the same. The Reds lost both games to the Astros that August. But Dylan came home a winner. When he arrived he declined to have a Skyline coney. Instead, he got a coney — hold the Cincinnati chili. All that is is a hot dog, cheese and bun. For a native of Cincy to decline a coney is just weird. Of course the out-of-towners tend to think Cincinnati chili is weird: You either put chili and cheese on a hotdog or chili and cheese on spaghetti. But, unless you are the Mets TV play-by-play man Gary Cohn, you will find it to be one of the most miraculous culinary creations in America.

Well, I know Dylan has regretted that decision ever since the next day when I took him to our family's former Skyline haunt in Montgomery. After he had his first real coney, we ate Skyline for every meal but one breakfast at Perkins the rest of the weekend.

I now have what must be a similar feeling to what Dylan felt after he realized what he turned down our first night back in town nearly 10 years ago: We missed the coney eating contest in Fountain Square.

We'll have to make up for that, Nick.