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.
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Canada: Keeping Dennis DeYoung from going into a spiral of depression since 2007.
The image is only sorta applicable, but I couldn't pass up this image of what was labeled the "toilet snorkel"
