Brock and Roll

This morning was really cool.  I managed to explore Pewter City a little bit, and even checked out the museum again.  I know I'm 17 and all, but I still think that Kabutops fossil is killer.  I wonder if anyone will ever be able to bring Kabutops back to life?  I hope so.  That would be great!

The space exhibit was really cool too.  I met this old woman who said she bought a color TV just to watch the first lunar landing.  But I thought that it was only broadcast in black and white?  I don't know.  Maybe I'll write to my grandpa to find out if he remembers it.  Mom and dad were way too young to remember.

And I got to see an example of what appears to be a Moon Stone.  I wonder if my journey is going to take me by Mt. Moon?  It could be really neat to get a couple Moon Stones for myself. Although I don't really know what they do, but they look really cool.

I think Pidgey, Beedrill, Nidoran, Charmander, and I are going to spend some time training together later on this morning.  And we might even head over to the Pewter City Gym.  I've heard that to be a real Pokemon Trainer you have to make it past Brock first.  I've also heard that fire is at a serious disadvantage when it comes to dealing with Brock's rock type Pokemon.  Which sucks, cause Charmander is my best friend and I really wanted him to be able to win this battle for me.

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I don't really know what I expected when I entered the Pokemon Gym for the first time, but Pewter City's gym was not it.

Maybe I expected something more like my school's gymnasium where everything is fakely bright, and smells like bleach and cleaning supplies.  But I was definitely not treated to that when I stepped through the double doors of Brock's gym.

Instead, I found myself in a darkly lit large room.  Surrounded by different kinds of boulders and stalactites and stalagmites.  I definitely could smell the musty, damp smell that seems to accompany earthy caves.  But I couldn't even see Brock when I first entered the gym.  Instead, there was some weird maze-type thing that I had to navigate first.  Charmander might not be good at fighting rock type Pokemon, but he does have a good light source for spelunking!

I saw someone standing in the dark, who I thought was Brock, but when I approached, he told me that he wasn't Brock and that I wasn't even close to be able to challenge Brock.  He sent out a Diglet and a Sandshrew, but Pidgey was able to distract them with Sand-Attack and actually managed to beat them with its Gust attacks.  Pidgey also showed me during the fight that it knew how to temporarily boost its speed to perform a quick attack.  How cool is that?

Finally, after continuing our way through the maze, I found a large platform with someone standing around nearby.  Turns out that person was actually Brock.  He seemed to think it was weird that I was challenging him without any grass or water type Pokemon, but he was willing to accept my challenge in the end.

Pidgey and Beedrill were able to easily take down his Geodude.  They used Sand-Attack to distract him, and when nothing that Geodude was doing, Beedrill came out and used its brand new Fury Attack to chip away at Geodude's rock hard defenses.

Brock's second Pokemon, Onyx, was a littlle trickier.  I tried the same technique of blinding Onyx with Pidgey's Sand Attack, which worked out really great, but Beedrill's Fury Attack couldn't chip away enough at Onyx's defenses before it caved and got really tired.  So I tried using Nidoran's Horn Attack, which seemed to be more effective.  After learning that Onyx could absorb damage for two turns and then deal it back out, I started to keep an eye on when Onyx prepped to use that move, switching to Nidoran's defense lowering Leer to keep damage at a minimum.

It seemed to take all afternoon, but I finally defeated Onyx and won the Boulder Badge from Brock.  He also passed on TM 34, which would teach one of my Pokemon Bide too.  I think I'm going to wait and see which Pokemon can take the most damage before I teach them that move though.

Tonight, my team and I will have a good dinner and then we'll start our journey to Cerulean City tomorrow.  Oh, and I guess I better check in with mom, dad, and Professor Oak tonight too - just in case they aren't reading this blog.