Fun and Games Dept

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.

I like roads. I like driving on roads, I like designing roads, I like following roads to see where they go and I like seeing what signs say on roads.

I’m a road geek. I always have been and I always will be.

I have a whole website devoted to the roads of Upstate New York. Some people don’t understand why I have such an obsession with all things roadly, but I do. I have been known to drive two hours out of my way to see what the new exit signs on an interstate look like.

I haven’t been as engaged with my road hobby over the past year or so as I would like to be. Work has crept into my personal life a bit and I have been busying myself doing hobby things on tech with tech. I’ve been futzing around with Linux, tweaking config files and the like. While these little tech adventures occupy my mind and keep me busy, they don’t invoke a passion like being a road geek does. Tweaking tech feels like a job and when it doesn’t work right I start to get cranky. I don’t want to feel cranky, I want to enjoy the passion I have for a hobby.

I like it when I feel passionate.

This morning I dug out my little pocket video camera and mounted it on the dash of the Jeep. Earl had bought me a nifty camera mount specifically for this purpose and I hadn’t used it before. It’s nifty! I took some video of a stretch of road that I thought other road geeks, well, actually road scholars, might find interesting. I’m going to be adding it to my road website in the next week or so.

Taking that video made me realize my passion for this geeky little hobby of mine and it got my day started off on the right foot.

And starting the day off on the right foot is always a good thing.

Earl and I have a lot of travel planned over the next several months and much of it involves driving.

I’m going to be one happy man.

So yesterday we drove the final leg home from our trip in Florida. Saturday night was spent with our friends Jeff and Mark north of Durham, N.C. We were on the road by 10:30 yesterday morning.

As we drove up Interstate 85 and crossed into Virginia, I noticed that the outside temperature was dropping and that it was hovering just around freezing. This didn’t really worry me because after all, we live in Upstate New York where we deal with this type of weather well into April. So I just kept moving along and everything was fine. It was raining and the road didn’t seem to have ice on it.

There were cars going off the road all over the place.

As we got closer to Blackstone, Va., I noticed that there was a little bit of slush in each of the lanes on the Interstate. If you stayed out of the slush, the road was wet. I slowed down a bit, just for safety’s sake. But then I had a brief moment of panic. What if the reason that I am able to drive in winter conditions in Upstate New York is because the folks up here take good care of the roads in the winter? There were no signs of salt or sand or brine on the roads; just a little bit of slush and a lot of wet.

More cars off the road all over the place, but not us.

I had a hard time trying to figure out why these cars were going off the road. Were they texting? Did they hit the slush and not know what to do? There must have been a dozen cars off the road within a 15 mile stretch and judging by the conditions of these vehicles, they must have hit the guiderails going pretty fast.

When the roads are wet with a little bit of slush, there’s no reason to panic. Just ease up on the accelerator a little bit and take your time getting to where you’re trying to go. And put down the phone and pay attention to what you’re doing!

All it takes is a little bit of common sense to be careful. Happy motoring!

So today we are doing something at Disney that we have never done before. We are not going to a park today. Instead of getting on a bus/boat/monorail train, we are going for walks, relaxing by the pool and just taking a few moments to slow down, breathe a little bit and just chill out. Later tonight we’ll be headed over to Downtown Disney for dinner and a little bit of strolling amongst the shops.

The weather has been gorgeous thus far. My spirits have lifted considerably with seeing all the sunshine. It feels good. I walked a couple of miles through the woods this morning and organized some of the extraneous thoughts in my head. I had a brief conversation with a woodland friend.

Sunday upon our arrival we carried on our tradition with our first stop being Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom. We always ride the TTA first and we enjoyed our annual ride. Afterwards we stopped at the Carousel of Progress (which is starting to show a couple of technical difficulties that I’m sure that Disney will correct soon) and then we were onto Space Mountain. For the first time ever we rode the ride on the “right” side instead of the “left” side (using the line into the attraction as a guide), even though we didn’t use FastPass. The lines at all the attractions thus far have been less than 20 minutes. Riding Space Mountain felt like an entirely new ride because it was assumedly a mirror image of what we’re used to. It felt faster, but I think technically the ride is the same regardless of the which side you ride on.

We had dinner at the Crystal Palace for the first time and was able to hang out with Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore.

Yesterday we went to the World Showcase at Epcot. This was the first time that we took the Monorail instead of a bus. Since we are staying at Wilderness Lodge Villas instead of Saratoga Springs, we took the boat to Magic Kingdom, then the monorail to the Ticket and Transportation Center and then a second monorail train to Epcot. It was kind of exciting for me because I had never ridden the Monorail through Epcot before. Even though this is my ninth time here there’s always something new happening. I love it.

World Showcase is one of my favorite attractions in all of Disney and we toured it clockwise this year. Like at Magic Kingdom on Sunday, wait lines for the attractions were less than 20 minutes; we were able to get on most of the attractions immediately. In the past we’ve usually waited 45-60 minutes for the ride at Norway but not this year, however, I was able to sneak a quick picture of the Norway Cruise Line lady; I take her photo every year. I don’t know why I do this.

While walking through China I snapped a photo of a Happy Cat.

Another first for me this year was enjoying one adult beverage while in Germany. I didn’t snap a photo of the Altenmünster Oktoberfest I enjoyed, but it was quite enjoyable. One is enough though, after all, we’re at Disney.

Of course we made a stop at Canada where we enjoyed the “O, Canada” film in 360 Circlevision. This is my favorite film in World Showcase and the geek in me enjoys the fact that many elements of the original film from the 70s are still present in the new version that was produced in 2007. Canadian Idol winner Eva Avila rerecorded the beautiful “Canada, You’re a Lifetime Journey” track at the end of the presentation.

Last night we went to Downtown Disney for dinner at Earl of Sandwich. I bucked the trend and went with a salad. It was delicious.

The stress has melted away considerably and I’m finding my solid footing again. Ah, the magic of hearing the words “Welcome Home”.

So tonight we made it the farthest we’ve ever gone the first night on this trek to Florida. We are in Harrisburg, Pa. for the night. Tomorrow morning we’ll be making our way down US Route 15 into Maryland and finding our way over to Interstate 95, where we will undoubtedly join many others as they head south.

It is 20 degrees warmer than it was at home when we left this afternoon. This has already brightened my mood.

Tomorrow we have 11 hours of driving ahead of us. This keeps my mood bright. I’m looking forward to the drive.

For now, we sleep.

In four hours we will be on our way to a warmer climate. I haven’t started packing yet, but the pet food is in place and Tom has instructions on how to torment the house sitter.

Judging by the weather today, we need to get the hell out of here.

So I read in an online forum today that Sirius/XM is thinking about adding commercials to their political talk station, POTUS. One of the things I like about POTUS is that it doesn’t have ads every 30 minutes, especially since Sirius/XM seems to only be able to sell male enhancement ads and spots for Christian Mingle. (The two might be related). I have always wondered why God needed to run an ad to get Christians to hook up in the biblical sense, or why he even needs the Internet to accomplish his destiny. I mean, he/she is God, after all. I don’t see God as the point and click type.

I hate advertising more and more each day. And I struggle with the fact that as a Sirius/XM subscriber I still have to listen to commercials. I shouldn’t have to pay to listen to commercials, it just seems backwards to me. Well, actually more irritating than backwards. If I wanted to listen to commercials, I’d listen to terrestrial radio.

I understand that the talk show hosts need to take a break to pee and the like once in a while, but there’s no reason that Sirius/XM can’t just run promos during these periods instead of paid ads. The idea of putting ads on a currently ad-free site makes me wonder if Sirius/XM is going to be around in five years. Could they be going belly up? Maybe instead of renewing I should just use the money to beef up my data plan on my phone and just stream music or talk radio that way. My music or talk on my schedule without the ads.

Now that is something to ponder.

I was happy to see that Delta Airlines cared enough about my travel experience that they sent me a survey to complete for them. It was waiting for me in my work email this morning. I filled it out honestly and provided the feedback they were looking for.

Though the cynical side of me thinks that the surveys are for marketing purposes only, after all they just want to convince me to fly their airline more often, there’s part of me that hopes that this is a demonstration of concern for the wellbeing of the airline traveling individual. I know that I enjoyed my Delta experience to Texas and back and that I look forward to flying them again to North Carolina next month. Aside from the GoGo being a NoNo on the longest leg of my flight, the experience was flawless. Some passengers in Detroit tried to make the check-in counter attendant’s life hell, but that’s what passengers in sweat suits and velour do. They make everyone’s life a living hell.

I wonder what folks in Texas would say if they were surveyed about what life is like here in Central New York. I wonder if people in Central New York realise that there is life outside of this area. Everyone seems tuned into their own little world and only take very brief glimpses at anything that could resemble a bigger picture.

Perhaps there should be a survey on what’s in the big picture.

As many men have proclaimed loudly over the years, “Survey says!”. Were there a ding sound, the card would flip over and say, “needs a nap”. And that is what I shall do.