Ride.

So yesterday morning Earl and I woke up at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Buffalo. We had driven to Buffalo the afternoon before for Jamie’s big photo book and gallery debut, which was a great success. It is always good to be amongst friends and family.

Normally the drive from Buffalo to home is a little over three hours.  Yesterday it took us around 11 hours to get home. And it was wonderful.

Our first stop was at the Buffalo haunt of Anderson’s for Beef on Weck. A western New York staple, it is one of my favorite sandwiches.  A pretzel type roll with some pretzel salt.  Delish.

From Anderson’s we should have headed east on the Thruway but instead we headed south on US Route 219? Why? Because they extended the US 219 freeway by a mile or two a couple of years ago and I hadn’t seen the completed work yet. Eventually the freeway will make it all the way to the Pennsylvania state line but the progress is slow.

When we got down to Ellicotville, the quaint little town that is home to the Holiday Valley Ski Resort, we finally turned east and started heading in a general direction towards home. The ride took us through the little town where, in 1990, I narrowly missed a cow, went into a ditch and was rescued by a guy that kind of changed my life, even though I only saw him only one more time after that encounter. Here’s the sign that standards where I went off the ditch. The man didn’t remember my name the second time I saw him, so he just called me Machias. 

North of Machias we ended up in Arcade and drove on my second favorite stretch of road in the Empire State, NY Route 39 from Arcade to the little hamlet of Pike.  It is much like my favorite road, NY Route 177, in that it passes through nothing but farmland, has an “open” feeling to it and it even goes through a wind farm!  Look close and you’ll see two farms in this photo.

We then stopped in the college town of Geneseo, where we had a little snack at Tim Hortons and we washed the car. It is spring, after all!

We continued our trek through the Finger Lakes, driving through the small cities of Canandaigua, Geneva and Auburn, where we finally ended up at Destiny USA in Syracuse. Syracuse had just made it into the Final Four, so the mood was celebratory at the Gordon Biersch at Destiny USA. To celebrate, I tried their Golden Export while Earl tried a sampler flight of each of their beers.

We then walked all three floors of all of Destiny USA, making an obligatory stop at the Apple Store, where we bought a new toy. (That will be highlighted in a separate post).  Sam the Apple store genius was very helpful. I really like the folks at the Destiny USA Apple Store. They are always courteous, always helpful and the facial hair on the guys is quite impressive. Unfortunately I didn’t feel assertive enough to take a photo of some of the impressive beards, so instead you get to look at my smiling face.

After touring the mall until its closing, we decided we should head home, but not without a stop at Turning Stone Casino to meet our step count for the day and perhaps have a little dessert. Surprisingly, we didn’t gamble at all!

We finally made it home around midnight. We were exhausted but happy. Earl called it our “date day” and quite frankly, it was relaxing and very enjoyable.

We both feel recharged.