All Downhill From Here, Part 2

Previously, on THE UNDESIRABLE ELEMENT:

"I decided to challenge my longstanding losing streak against gravity and outdoor sports by going skiing at Seven Springs."
"I failed."
"All is not well."
"flying out of control"
"crashing into bystanders"
"totally humiliated"
"heckling and demeaning comments"
"Everything clicks!"
"I've got the requisite basics to at least make it down the easiest long hill."

AND NOW THE CONCLUSION...

So I await my lady companion's return from her most recent trek up the mountain with great anticipation. I'm convinced that I'm going to conquer this mountain with style and panache, and confidence radiates from my being. Then I see my lady friend come down the slope, and she starts limping toward the lodge.... limping toward the lodge. What the hell is this?

I haul my ski-strapped ass over to her. She's quite the avid snowboarder, so if she's injured, that doesn't portend good things for my future. Apparently, while up on the slopes, she saw what was clearly a novice snowboarder ahead of her, and she tried to pass him. Unfortunately, just as she was beside him, the newbie suddenly lost control and veered sharply to the left, colliding with her and sending her crashing backwards to the ground. The newbie was uninjured, but my snowboarding friend was left with quite the bruised hip.

I sit with her in the lodge for a few minutes while she recovers, and I tell her that we could just leave now if she wants. It's getting late anyway, and the resort is closing in an hour (10:30pm) or so we think. "Oh no!" she says. "You're not leaving until you go down that mountain. Come on, we're going up."

Now I'm not the world's most masculine guy, but if a woman is willing to drag herself up the mountain in considerable pain just to take me down once (that's totally NOT a euphemism), man-honor demands that I follow. So she shrugs off her pain, and we head back over toward the ski lift.

Of all the challenges associated with the ski trip, this lift was the one I feared the most. I've always had something of a problem with heights (to say the least), and perching myself precariously on a swinging park bench as a cable drags me up a mountain while I'm 30 feet above the ground struck me as a potentially nerve-wracking experience. But with my pale imitation of male machismo firmly in place, I pretend not to be bothered by it, and we make our way to the lift. At first, the experience was rather pleasant. This isn't so bad, I muse to myself. It's just like a weird roller coaster. But then we get higher..... and higher..... higher. And then the air gets colder... and colder... and colder. I wrap my arm tightly around the back of the ski lift bench and grip the side bar like I'm Luke Skywalker clutching the bottom of Cloud City.

"Not as easy as you were expecting?" my lady friend asks.
"I can't believe I was thinking about skydiving." I reply dejectedly.

Despite my childish caterwauling, we make it to the top of the ski lift, and I'm suddenly feeling very pumped about successfully using the ski lift without crying like a baby or falling to my doom. "Let's do this!" says I.

We start our sojourn down the mountain, and for the first ten seconds, everything seems to be going well. I'm zipping along at a controlled clip, feeling confident in my ability to successfully navigate my way down the precipice when suddenly....

CRASH!!!! I face-plant hard into the snow. My skis come flying off (as they're supposed to), and after wiping the snow and ice off of my face, I work to put them back on. "No worries," I say to my friend. "I just got discombobulated for a moment." - Yeah, that word will totally make me sound cool.

I pick myself back up and start moving again, but this time there's trouble. I start careening out of control in a very scary way, and I hear my lady friend call from behind me: "JP!! Watch out!! You're going the wrong way!!" Holy shit!! The last thing I need is to end up on some sort of slope of doom, so I do the only intelligent thing and deliberately throw myself into the snow. Again, my skis pop off, and lady friend catches up to me. "You were about to go down the black diamond path (the hardest one)." She points to a path off to my left. "That's the one we want to do."

We successfully make it to the proper track, and I ski about twenty yards when, once again.... CRAASSSHHH!! This time, I land directly on both of my knees. This hit doesn't look particularly bad; however, all of the force goes straight into my knees, and the pain radiates through them in a thoroughly unpleasant way. My faithful lady friend stops whenever I crash and waits for me to re-orient myself.

"What's the problem!?" she yells.
"My knees feel like they got smashed by a sledgehammer!" I call back.
"What??? You crashed into the log jammer??"
"Never mind. I'm coming!"

I get back up once more. But before I get moving, I hear the distinct sound of WHOOSHING behind me. I turn around to see a whole cavalcade of skiers barreling towards me. Oh shit! I think to myself. I'm about to re-enact the wildebeast sequence from The Lion King. Fortunately, this graceful stampede consists of experienced skiers and they breeze right by me, but the stream of skiers never stops. The slope is now inundated with people.

I start moving again, and my downhill velocity begins to increase dramatically. I've never felt so completely out of control as a result of my own incompetence. The instructor told me to turn my skis into a letter A to slow down, and I do so repeatedly. "LETTER A!! LETTER A!!" I say to no one in particular. But the advice does no good at these speeds, and I keep going. The "Letter A" business continues for a few yards before I look down and see that I've managed to get my skis crossed. They're in the letter "A" position alright, but I can't get them straight again. A few foreboding seconds pass where I know I'm in trouble, and I can't do anything about it. I literally say, "Oh shit," before falling face-forward down the slope. Now this is a fall of epic proportions. Since I have no balance whatsoever as a result of my crossed skis, I proceed to tumble down the slope over and over and over again. My poles and skis go flying in four different directions. I finally come to stop, staring at the night sky. Lady friend sees all of this and makes her way over to me.

"Oh my god!!! JP, are you okay!!??" She told me later that she thought I'd really hurt myself badly that time. In reality, the knee drop hurt far worse than this spill. As comically ridiculous as my endless tumble must have looked, it really didn't hurt at all.
"Nothing bruised except my ego," I moan.
"Can you keep going?" she asks.
I gesture to the slope - the only way back down the mountain. "I don't really have much of a choice." I say.
"Do you want me to go in front of you or behind you?" she asks.
"Why don't you just head on down the rest of the way," I suggest. "I'll probably fall at least six more times, and there's no sense in you stopping each time."

She agrees and glides effortlessly down the slope. I stagger to my feet, but now my hands and knees are shaking. Not only do my knees still ache from that previous fall, but my nerves are completely shot now. I know full well that another wipeout is imminent, but I don't know when it will come.

The slope has now become a full-fledged ski-way, with skiers whizzing by me at every moment. I hear their whooshing and swishing, but I can't see them as I concentrate on what I'm doing. CRAAASSHHH!!!! Down I go again, but I pick myself up once more and continue. "WATCH OUT!!" I hear a stranger say to someone to my left, but his cry of alarm breaks my concentration and I face-plant again. CRAAASSSHHH!!! It turns out that the resort, in fact, closes at 10pm, so everyone still around has come up the mountain to get one last trip in... right as I'm going for the first time ever.

At this point, I realize that my own confidence is to blame. In a wondrous moment of self-reflection, I recognize that my own nerves are causing me to fuck up the whole process. I briefly consider just sitting on the slope and gliding down the mountain on my ass, but I figure that nothing would be more humiliating. So I say to myself:

"Self, you are not going to give this shit up. You've already been mocked, humiliated, bruised, battered, and emasculated. The least you can do is hold your fat head high as you tumble down the rest of the mountain. You may not look graceful or impressive, but dammit, you'll win the day on your own steam."

So that's exactly what I do. By the time I make it back to the lodge, I've fallen at least a dozen times, and I'm covered head-to-toe in snow and sweat. Every joint in my body aches, and my ego has been shattered. I see my lady friend resting comfortably on the bench outside the lodge.

"Hey! You made it!" she cheers genuinely.
"I must be the most uncoordinated man to ever fall down this mountain," I mumble dejectedly.
"At least you never gave up," she says. "And you're not as full of yourself as most of the other guys here who think they're God's gift to the mountain."
I think immediately of the asshole frat boys in the sauna with their waxed chests and derogatory jeers and heckles. Fuckin eh! I'm totally better than them!

We go to return my equipment, and every muscle in my doughy body aches and creaks. As we hobble back to the car, I say, "You may not believe this, but I think I want to try this again."
"Oh thank God!!" she says, breathing a sigh of relief. "After watching you today, I thought you'd never want to come again. I figured this turned you off of skiing for life."
"Nah!" says me, waving my hand dismissively. "As badly as I did on the mountain, that was still leaps and bounds ahead of where I was when we got here."

The way I see it, I'm not taking all of this punishment for nothing. I'm going to learn how to do this thing and zip down the mountain in a manly fashion. Six-year-olds can do it! Hell, I even learned that former Mrs. Employer, a sixty-five year old rotund woman, can ski. If they can do it, so can I. I'm going to master that mountain like the Agro-Crag.

In fact, I'm going again this Sunday, so we'll find out if I get any better or if greater hilarity and misfortune will ensue.

-----------------------------------
"Skiing is the only sport where you spend an arm and a leg to break an arm and a leg."

All Downhill From Here, Part 1

Last weekend (because my blog updates are so very prompt), I decided to challenge my longstanding losing streak against gravity and outdoor sports by going skiing at Seven Springs. When the girl I went with suggested the idea, you only need to read as far as the word "girl" to understand why I agreed to go. But alternatively, skiing did seem like a lot of fun, and looked challenging but not impossible to do. Additionally, I've never done ANYTHING even remotely cool with my life, so I thought this would be an easy way to get the adrenaline pumping by some other means besides watching my career opportunities careen wildly off the precipice of failure.

I have two goals as we're riding up to the ski resort:
1. Do not embarrass yourself in a spectacular fashion.
2. Don't become overwhelmed with paralyzing fear on the ski lift.

I failed on both counts.

But let's return to the beginning, shall we? My lady friend works for a very, shall we say, well-to-do engineering company, and they buy discounted stuff from Seven Springs all the time. Through Machiavellian strategies I have no way of comprehending, I was able to get a free skiing lesson and a discounted evening pass for the ski lift and equipment. So at this stage of the game, I'm really excited to get my ski on. I figure it will kind of like staying on a balance board - just stay standing and let gravity do the rest. Of course, I was being willfully ignorant of my past experiences with balance boards, and I underestimated the more complicated maneuvers required of the downhill skier.

My first clue should have been the skiing boots, which are designed to snap into the skis and provide some traction should your skis pop off as you tumble down the mountain (SPOILER ALERT: I become intimately familiar with this feature later in the story). Unfortunately, these boots weren't made for walkin' on a normal surface, so I start traipsing around the lodge looking like I'm wearing those old Moon Shoes. I can't even walk up the stairs without looking like a gag reel from the first Home Alone movie. Nevertheless, I assume that I simply need to get out on the powder and then all will be well.

Then I get out on on the powder... all is not well.

On the way up to the resort, I joked with my lady friend that the skiing lesson would probably consist of me and a bunch of five-year-olds. We laughed, but I didn't think it would actually be true. To be fair, it was me, some old dude, and about a dozen 12-year olds, and I don't impress even when I take my first steps out onto the snow. Now, I have size 15 feet, so I'm used to walking while taking such length into account; however, 6-foot skis are a lot more challenging to maneuver than I would have thought. I can barely move forward to take my place next to the impatient 7th graders. Lady friend chuckles at my misfortune and heads off to her own advanced snowboarding lesson (also free). I send her a withering glare as she's walking away, but she fortunately doesn't see it. Meanwhile, my ski instructor, a woman in her mid-sixties, prepares us for our lesson.

Parallel skis make you go forward. Making the letter "A" with your skis (i.e. pointing the tips together) makes you stop. This sounds straightfoward enough, but on my first try, I careen out of control and nosedive into the snow. Laughter abounds from all the 7th graders who got it with no problem. Memories of middle school gym class flash before my eyes. The lesson continues in this manner, but the ski instructor does a great job with me. She gives me the personal attention I need... much like the slow kid in a public school class. By the end of the lesson, I've actually improved considerably. I still can't maneuver worth a damn, but I can get down the hill without flying out of control or crashing into bystanders.

My big problem, however, is that I can't get the hang of turning on skis. I learn from the ski instructor that is the most pivotal (pun intended) skill of skiing. Turning controls your speed and prevents you from careening off the mountaintop in an alarming fashion. As I have no desire to pull a Sonny Bono, I stay on the bunny hill until I can figure out how to turn adequately. Never mind the fact that I'm totally humiliated by this point. It doesn't help that I'm dressed in the most ludicrous manner possible, with my old winter coat (which is now two sizes too big for me), a pair of my brother's windbreaker pants over sweatpants (both of which are two sizes too big for me), and a big fluffy hat. For all intents and purposes, I'm so poofy that I look exactly like I did when I weighed over 300 pounds. This does not bring back good memories, and I don't look very suave on the slopes.

Regardless of my fashion faux pas, I spend the next two hours on the bunny slope. For the life of me, I can't figure out the turning thing. Six-year-olds are whizzing by me, and I'm feeling like such a chump. To make matters even worse, three frat boys from the ski lodge (which overlooks the bunny slope) appear from the sauna balcony and proceed to heckle me: "Hey! Look at the big guy on the bunny slope! Hey big guy!! You can really move! Wooo!!!" I look up at them. This doesn't help. "Hey! He's looking up here!! Why don't you man up and go on the mountain! Booo!!! BOOOOOO!!!!" My face... it burns like a thousand exploding suns, but I can't do it yet. Much as I despise their heckling and demeaning comments, I can't adequately turn my ass to go where I want to go. I begin to lose all hope.

But then suddenly.... everything clicks. It's like a lightbulb just flicked on in my brain. "Ohhh! The weight needs to shift onto the foot in the direction you turn, but you also need to lean weight onto the opposite ski but in a very particular way." It was tricky, but once I got the feel for it, I was zipping around the bunny slope in no time.

With my new-found confidence tucked under my hat, I headed for the ski lift to meet up with my lady friend, who had long since gone up the mountain at my request (both because I wanted her to enjoy herself and because I didn't want her to see me humiliate myself in front of the entire resort). I'm convinced that even if I don't look pretty coming down the mountain, I've got the requisite basics to at least make it down the easiest long hill.

Oh, hubris, thy name is JP.

CONTINUED IN PART 2.

------------------------------------------------
"It feels like I'm wearing nothing at all... nothing at all... nothing at all!"

Ice Ice Baby

As I've stated several times on this blog, I'm not a sports kinda guy. If left to my own devices, I'd watch a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine marathon over just about any sporting event. However, due to extreme summer boredom, I've been religiously following the Penguins playoff games this year.

When I last blogged about hockey, I pointed out that I knew next to nothing about the game. At the beginning of the playoffs, that was still true. The extent of my hockey knowledge was limited to a few basic facts:
1. Get puck in goal
2. Look good doing it
3. Beat the shit out of the first motherfucker to get in your way of accomplishing either one

When I saw the Penguins play in Buffalo back in January, I was too busy worrying about my nuts freezing to the bleachers to worry about the game, but even then, I seldom care about sports (though I do like to watch football games sometimes). However, as if planned as some sort of cosmic joke, all of my friends in Kittanning are hardcore sports fans. They typically drag me to all sorts of sporting events that I care nothing about, and I make witty (at least in my mind) comments about ugly spectators, seemingly random game rules, or the referee's exposed ass-crack (I'm very sophisticated). This summer, I've been heading to one of the bars in Kittanning every other day or so to watch a Penguins game, and what's incredibly surprising to me is that I got really into it.

Over the last month, I think I've been able to figure out how the game of hockey is played. It doesn't seem like random back-and-forth stick tapping anymore. I even understand most of the penalties, though I still don't fully understand how there can be a penalty for "roughing" in a game where it's legal to body slam a man into a fucking wall. It's an advantage for the team if a player bleeds, so who really gives a shit? I say the only rule should be to get the puck into the other net by any means necessary. Let them sucker punch each other, crack each other in the face with their sticks, or slice the thorax of another player with their skates. "Death Hockey" could really take off.

Unfortunately, despite my loyal following of all their games, the Pittsburgh Penguins lost to the Detroit Red Wings in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals. I was genuinely disappointed. I really wanted the Pens to win, but I have to admit that Detroit deserved to win. As far as I could tell (and just about everyone except Totos and a loud six-year-old who was sitting behind me last night agreed with me) the Red Wings played the game better. In the first two games, Detroit owned the ice; we were playing on their terms. Even when we stepped up our game in the last four games, Detroit was just bafflingly good. I was told that there can only be five men on the ice at any one time, the Red Wings could have had me fooled. It seemed that no matter where that damn puck went, Detroit had someone there. Even when it looked like they fucked up a pass or we knocked it away, there was STILL someone there. I suspect they have a Borg-like collective consciousness that they were using to communicate at key points in the game... but I think I may have been the only one in the bar who was thinking that.

The only goal that was a real kick in the nuts was the last one scored against the Penguins in tonight's game. Henrik Zetterberg shot the puck at goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, who stopped it, but the puck fell between his legs and came to rest about six inches behind him. To try to stop keep the damn thing from going into the goal, he flopped down, trying to sit on the puck. But against all laws of physics, his ass propelled the puck right into the goal. They replayed that moment at least six times, and I still can't figure out how it was physically possible.

It's a shame that it ended that way too, because Fleury is an amazing goalie. He blocked something like 50 shots in game 5 alone, which, I'm told, is incredible for a single game. Sydney Crosby may be the big name for the Penguins, but they would have been owned in four games flat without Fleury covering for them. I hope the guy doesn't have to take a lot of shit for what is essentially a one-in-a-million occurrence.

Side Note: I also can't help but love that an ice hockey player is named "Fleury." I guess it would have been equally amusing for him to be a weatherman, but I think the hockey angle works too.

So I guess I'm a fair-weather fan, but I'm sorry that the Pens lost. On the plus side, at least the Stanley Cup trophy is safe for another year. I'm told that the last time the Pens won the Stanley Cup, some guy jumped off a diving board with it in a moment of drunken revelry causing rather severe damage to said trophy. I can appreciate that because it seems like something that I'd be able to convince one of my friends to do for a Klondike bar.

--------------------------------
It's too damn hot for a penguin to just be walkin' around... so he better be skating.

Land of the Giants

I've never blogged about sports. Not once. Not one single solitary time. Zilch. Zero. Nada. (Okay, except for that one time when I talked about the outdoor Pens game... guess I showed myself.) That's because I don't much like sports. More importantly, I don't really know all that much about sports. It's hard to be snarky when lacking information.

And yet I watched the Super Bowl this year.

Of all the sports, I actually kinda like watching football. Granted, if I'm not with anyone else, I'll seldom watch. Internet porn provides the more attractive draw (and after the last two posts, I have to salvage the remnants of my masculinity somehow). However, there's something about football that I really like. I think it's that every part of the game counts. In basketball and hockey, the game goes back and forth in a seemingly endless cycle, with the only interesting bits occurring near the end. Baseball is too slow (though my one friend will tell me I just don't understand that it's a game of anticipation).

Thus bringing me to Super Bowl XLII. I didn't really care about most of the game since the Steelers weren't in it, and as I said, I don't know much about football. I have, however, been following the news well enough to know that the New England Patriots had an undefeated season in both the regular and post-season. They've also won three Super Bowls in four years. I sense a team that brings a whole new meaning to the word "egocentric."

And the center of the Patriots' little monopoly on victory was their quarterback Tom Brady. Words like "perfection" and "destiny" were being tossed around on the news. I may not be a religious man, but even I know that impersonating a deity earns you a huge ass-kicking from irate other-worldly beings. It seemed like all over television, Tom Brady was being treated like God. Not even "a" god - like Apollo or Thor or something - but I think Brady was being compared to THE God... at least by people from Boston, who are already way too full of themselves as it is (JP awaits comments from a random Bostonian reader).

I love rooting for someone to take down people like that. I can't stand it when people think that they're "destined" to succeed. There's no such thing as destiny... only bad karma with the Morgantown traffic authority.

While I wasn't going to be all that upset if the Patriots won, I was still quietly rooting for the Giants. The Giants even have Eli Manning, who always seems to be treated like the pale imitation of Peyton Manning. He was like the Robin to Peyton's Batman. The Giants also had some mammoth guy named Justin Tuck on their defense, who finally gives my first name some manly props by sacking Tom Brady several times (as opposed to that squirrel-fucker Justin Timberlake, who does nothing but associate the name "Justin" with metrosexuality).

The fourth quarter was actually pretty exciting. All the way down the last second, I was convinced that somehow Tom Brady was going to pull off some crazy pass to win the game. I'm glad they didn't. A team that overconfident needs to be brought down a few pegs. I'll admit that they're a solid team that plays well, but no team needs to be described as "perfect." Fuck that shit.

And Bill Belichick looks like a douchebag. I don't know why, but something about that guy just SCREAMS "I also serve to clean women's crotches."

Congratulations Super Bowl XLII. I actually cared more about the game than the commercials in between. That's a first.... Though I did like the FedEx commercial with the giant pigeons. That was pretty choice.

------------------------
The New York Giants: I'd be happier for them if New York wasn't filled with egocentric sports fans too.

Sudden Death Overtime

A few months ago, I wrote about a few religious zealots who had parked themselves on campus to protest abortions (See this link). They passed out these little cards entitled "Who Will Jesus Damn?," which detailed how the almighty would unleash his wrath upon the effeminate, drunkards, the abominable, whore-mongers, and sorcerers. I got a big kick out of it.

I have a new addition to my religious collection. I got this one at the hockey game on New Years Day (see below) but forgot all about it until I was cleaning up some papers on my desk. It's a little blue pamphlet called "Game 7: Sudden Death Overtime."

Using metaphors is the lifeblood of the English major (see, I just used one), but this pamphlet takes its hockey metaphor to the extreme.

One of the most exciting events for hockey fans is a Stanley Cup Game 7 Sudden Death Overtime. At any moment, it's over instantly. The next goal wins it all-- and the team that loses is sent home empty-handed.

(Thank you, religious pamphlet. I know next to nothing about hockey, and even I know what that is.)

You may wonder why someone gave you this to read. (Because I needed a coaster?) The reason is because life is exactly like Game 7 Overtime (emphasis theirs), except there is no "next season" in life. Instantly, your life could be over. We all think it won't happen to us, but one day will be our very last.

(Maybe I wasn't paying attention in Sunday school, but isn't the whole premise of religion that there IS a "next season" after we die?)

You may think you'll live a long time, but so did over 3000 people on 9/11, many students at Columbine and Virginia Tech, and those who die daily in tragic accidents. Suddenly, they had a "face off" with eternity.

(Now they're bringing in the big tragedies. One can almost hear the violins playing as the black-and-white montage begins) (And a "face off" with eternity?? That doesn't sound scary... that sounds fucking awesome!)

You may not think seriously abut what's "on the other side." Think of it like this though. Sabres fans were quite upset when the team got rid of their two best players, Daniel Briere and Chris Drury. (The pamphlet shows its street cred with its up-to-date sports stats) But the fans had no say. Those who own the Sabres get to decide what to do with their players. (Where are they going with this, you ask?) Like it or not God made this world. The Bible says, "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth." (Genesis 1:1). Hence He owns it. The God of the Bible owns this human team in this stadium called Earth.

(The pamphlet has a faulty understanding of capitalism. My dad built my neighbors' million-dollar super-house, but he doesn't own it just because he created it. Maybe God was a sub-contractor for some other supreme being. Let's get our facts straight here, pamphlet.)

God made the rules and if we don't get familiar with his playbook -- the Holy Bible -- we suffer the consequences.

(If real playbooks included swarms of locusts, plagues of frogs, blood rain, and leprosy, I'd probably be a bigger sports fan.)

Let's see how prepared you are to meet God. (Oh goody!!)

God's word says if you lied, even once in your life, you're a liar. Ever stolen? (If yes, you'd be a thief.) Ever used God's name in vain? (that's blasphemy.) Ever looked at a person with lust? (Jesus said you then committed adultery in your heart.) Had sex outside of marriage? (Then you would be a fornicator.) Been drunk? (That would make you a drunkard.) Ever hated someone? (The Bible says that would make you a murderer.)

(Wait... what?? I was following along until that last one. If you hate someone, you've actually murdered them? If only this were true. I wish I could think a thought and have people burst into flames. It would make English 101 a lot more interesting.)

See, we all deserve to spend eternity in God's "penalty box" -- Hell -- because we are all guilty before a holy, perfect "Owner."

(So if I understand correctly, everyone's guilty no matter what? Then I can pretty much do whatever I want anyway! This is my kind of religion!)

I've got nothing against religious people at all; I respect their beliefs, but the zealots always sorta make me chuckle. I mean, God as hockey owner? Are you kidding me? Who was converted at this game? I want to meet the fan that was reached by this pamphlet alone.

For more information, you can contact the Old Time Baptist Church at endtimesvolfireco@gmail.com (that address isn't even made up).

---------------------------------
Religious pamphlets : the only place I can still see words like "drunkard" and "fornicator" in context these days.

Forever DeYoung

For once I feel like I rang in the new year with style! What a helluva time I had.

My friend Joe (the same one mentioned in the previous post) got tickets to the all-important outdoor Penguins/Sabres game in Buffalo for New Years Day. Nothing screamed "FUN" like being outdoors in Buffalo in January, so I agreed to go. More importantly, since we were going to be up that way, we decided to go to Niagara Falls for New Years Eve.

Crossing the Border: We had the best customs guy ever. My one friend was all worked up during the whole trip because she couldn't find her birth certificate for the border crossing. Then we got to the border and there was this guy leaning back in his chair. He glanced at us and the following exchange occurred:
"Where you from?"
"Kittanning, Pennsylvania"
"Bringing anything in?"
"No"
"All right go ahead."
Either this is the most jaded security guard ever, or it's his last day on the job and he's giving Canada a huge middle finger before he leaves. Either way I love the man.

Haunted House: After gambling away about twenty bucks (I'm a cheap gambler who loves the dime video poker), we hit up one of Niagara Falls's many haunted houses. If you ever go up there, this one was right next to The Wild Mushroom. I was scared shitless. Fuck that place and anyone who ever owned or worked in a haunted house. I clung to my buddy Fryar like a Trekkie to Shatner. Even my catty comments during the walk through weren't enough to keep me from screaming like a five-year old when people jumped out and grabbed me. I left that place feeling violated, abused, and trembling (sort of like how I feel after a grad school class).

Rocking Out: We tried to hit up a bar, but there was a 20 dollar cover charge. I like booze, but I like Andrew Jackson even more, so we headed down to the falls. After a luxurious dinner at Burger King (the only place without an hour wait), we went down to the falls. On our way through Queen Victoria Park, my one friend says, "I think I hear Styx music." We travel a little further and another friend says, "Hey, that's a pretty good cover band." We see a huge crowd of people around a stage, so we had over. It's fucking Dennis DeYoung from Styx (pictured above)! You should have seen this guy go. He was wearing something that looked like a sea captain's coat, and he had this huge mane of white hair. He actually sort of resembled John O'Hurley. It was cold and since I was driving I was sober, but my pure and unadulterated love for 80s music kept me warm. There was a really big group of people there, but I crooned along to "Mr. Roboto" and "Come Sail Away" without a single care for who might hear me. I even did a really terrible robot jig during "Mr. Roboto." There's cell phone footage to prove it. A free outdoor Styx concert in Canada (which was broadcast all across Canada as the announcer informed us) is exactly the right way to ring in the New Year.

If Foreigner had made a cameo appearance, I would have blown my load on the spot.

Gambling and Things: After the new year was successfully rung in, we headed back to the casino for an hour. I'm such a terrible gambler. I don't really know how to play anything that's not in machine form, and I'm not skilled with those either. I come up with at least ten different "strategies" for winning during any 20 minute period. "Okay, I haven't gotten anything in the last five hands so I think I'm due for a flush.... MAX BET!!"

And what's the deal with Canadian money? I hate walking around with a giant pocket full of octagonal gold money. On the plus side, I always feel a little bit like a pirate with a handful of gold doubloons when I get a whole bunch of it. Maybe it's not so bad.

Tailgating: I got maybe three hours of sleep that night. Joe was convinced that we'd hit a huge line of cars on our way out of Canada, so we left early. In actuality, there was absolutely NO ONE in line at the border when we got there around 9am. I thought for a second that the country was closed (I think weird things at 9am... I'm not a morning person). But we made it through and got to the Buffalo Bills Stadium (Ralph Wilson Stadium I believe; I'm too damned lazy to Google that shit right now). The parking lot was surprisingly populated. We ate sausages and sang along to 80s songs. I think we were all still keyed up from Dennis DeYoung from the previous night.

The Game: I dressed warmly for the whole day. I was wearing thermal underwear, a long sleeve shirt, jeans, regular socks, thermal socks, a hooded sweatshirt, my normal winter coat, gloves, and a snow cap. I still froze my ass off... literally. Many people had the foresight to realize that we'd be sitting on metal bleachers and brought pads to sit on. I was not so fortunate. I think I lost 50% of my body heat from sitting on that metal bleacher. I don't know what it'd be like to get hypothermia of the ass, but if I froze my ass off, I'd probably be down to my target weight, so maybe that's something to consider.

The game itself was pretty good or so I'm told. I really don't know much about hockey. I can't tell when something important is happening or when the hockey players are just doing their usual back-and-forth crap. My friends and I have traveled to Boston, New York City, and Cleveland to attend Pittsburgh away games, but they've always been for the Pirates. It was nice to actually be able to cheer for my home team and have some confidence in their abilities. At the Pirate games, the home fans would always jeer, "BAAAHHH!! THE PIRATES SUCK!!" and we'd say, "Yeah, you don't think we've noticed?" So it was fun, but it was colder than a snowman's ass in that stadium.

The Long Road Home: We spent an hour and a half in the parking lot literally going nowhere. When we finally got on the road after getting some dinner at a Denny's (again, we're high rollers), it was about 8pm. The trip to Kittanning should take about 3 and a half hours. We were on the road for six hours!! It's like the Winter Warlock decided to make us his personal finger puppets. Of course, I would have been perfectly content to find a hotel up there and make the trip home the next day, but my one friend has a legitimate job and wanted to brave the elements. Fuck you, Fryar!

I drove the first half of the trip. I had my parents' car (see previous post), which has 4-wheel drive, and I spent four years going to school in Erie, so I was pretty confident about getting us home, but I hate driving with other people on the road in the snow. BRAKE, SPEED UP, BRAKE AGAIN, SLOW DOWN, BRAKE, BRAKE, SWERVE... Morgantown may have the market cornered on the sheer poor quality of its roads, but Erie is still the champ of horrible precipitation. By the time we got past Erie, my nerves were shot, and I made Fryar take over. I don't know where this storm came from, but somehow it covered the entire length of the trip. Either it was one gigantic storm, or (as I am prone to suspect) this one little storm just hovered over our car the whole way home.

The whole trip only spanned about a day and a half, but we packed a lot into it. Dennis DeYoung rocked my new year! Canada, you may not be my home and native land, but you know how to entertain a few Kittanning slobs for a day.

-----------------
Canada: Keeping Dennis DeYoung from going into a spiral of depression since 2007.