Road Trip: Erie/Buffalo/Niagara Falls

    I haven't hit the road very often this season.

With the changes in my work life combined with the various reasons that drove me from the autographing hobby (from the in-person version anyway), there had been only two opportunities to go anywhere, both with Mike Oravec for day trips to Fredericksburg Virginia and Washington Pa for two new stadiums.

However, I had planned this trip for months with Cherie as there was a convention scheduled in Indianapolis with Dave Foley (Newsradio and Kids in the Hall) attending.

Dave Foley, along with Tim Daly, is at the top of Cherie's celebrity meet list and I was excited to have the chance to make that happen for her but something that constantly looms in the celebrity convention business reared its head and changed our plans with just two weeks before the trip.

Celebrities usually book their convention appearances months if not years in advance but there is always a clause for the actor/actress that if they are offered a role in a film, television show, or stage show, the celebrity can take the part.

While that sucks for the attendees, I can certainly understand why an actor needs to take the role because one never knows where that could lead but Dave Foley had to drop out and with neither of us having enough interest in the remaining attendees that would be worth the drive to Indianapolis, I didn't really know what or where we would do or go.

The saving grace was of all things YouTube as over the summer I had watched a video on an excellent antique center with multiple buildings and many of the things that I collect and I had remarked on a few occasions that I really needed to go to this place and see what I could find.

So, I was surprised when Cherie mentioned that she'd like to see Niagara Falls (Mike and I had seen the Falls on a visit to Northeast New York a few years back) and added that she picked that so I could hit the antique center as well!

I was pretty happy with that and hoped to do well with items for the collection!

I decided to avoid the Pennsylvania Turnpike and go by Erie, Pa for a figure store named Action Toy Man.

We drove through the remnants of the recent Hurricane/Tropical Storm that had drifted north throughout the day and going into Action Toy Man, I was amazed at the amount of space and figures from various decades!

If you collect anything, three floors of items that have both opened and unopened figures from sports, comics, or any other genre' that generated collectible items are available there.

I actually felt like I didn't see as much in the store as I would have liked!

I purchased one item, the 1976 Mego Muhammad Ali figure for thirty dollars and I plan to take this Ali, which was missing gloves, robe, and headgear all of which I have with my childhood figure, and use the accessories with this Ali as my Ali is missing a hand which was a problem with the Ali figures.

Leaving Erie, we had questioned whether we should try Niagara Falls today as planned or wait until the following day when the weather was expected to clear but we decided to hit the Falls and brave the rain.

It was a good decision as, despite the rain, the views were very good, the other visitors were few, and even though we did get quite wet, we had an excellent visit.

I parked closer to the Falls than I did for my previous visit due to the rainfall and it did make a difference in my enjoyment as I can only imagine the amount of water that would have sunk into our clothing without the parking proximity.

On our way to the Falls, we drove through Buffalo and its Skyway that takes their interstate over the city rather than through it, and on the exit that we needed to connect on our way, we ran near Orchard Park, the home of the Buffalo Bills.

Cherie was kind enough to allow us to move a little out of the way to see the stadium and take some pictures of the exterior.

The Bills are building a new stadium in the next few years, so I was happy to visit the place that so many great players called home in the last fifty years.

I had reserved our hotel through my good friend Derreck and stayed in Batavia, which I had visited on a baseball trip a few years ago in my previous Buffalo/Niagara Falls visit.

Batavia was close enough to everything that we planned to visit yet far enough away to avoid the crowds from the weekend home game for the Bills and our hotel seemed pretty close to new with excellent breakfast and room.

We hadn't eaten all day and with dark approaching, we were looking for anything close and fast, so we chose a Chinese buffet when we wound up in its parking lot after a wrong turn.

The food was fine but the waitress was very rude but an added bonus was a loud concert from the cashier who apparently decided that tonight was her big break in the entertainment industry and made sure she made the best of the opportunity.

After dinner, it was back to the room to recharge for the next day with a warm room waiting to dry us off!

I'll be writing more about the remainder of the trip and a trip I took this weekend over the next few days.

Cleaning out the inbox

Apologies for missing a few days.
It's been a busy week with lots of things to do and work hasn't helped with some unexpected things at the road office, but things are slowing down a bit.

The inbox cleaning starts with a problem with something dirty-Water.
I know most Americans don't think about water problems often and if they do it's about other country's problems or maybe the issue in Flint, Michigan where the answer to saving some money was to ruin the water supply and make their citizens sick.
The situation is far worse than that and many of those affected are right here in America.
This piece from Time magazine through the Pulitzer Center is just shocking in what people in rural communities have to go through to get clean water and how people live in places that cannot have.
It's ridiculous that we have Americans in this country living in this manner and spare me the 'bootstrap" comments, please.
If anyone on the political spectrum had their entire access to clean water be so limited by the location in which they live, they'd be screaming about it as well.
It's not about left or right- it's about people in this country not having to live like third world residents.
It's sad, sickening and downright terrible.

I stumbled on this article from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) from last year that celebrated the then 50-year-old anniversary of the shutting down of the American Falls portion of Niagara Falls.
In 1969, there was concern that the American Falls were endangered by rock erosion, so the Army Corps of Engineers built a temporary dam to divert the Niagara River to the Canadian side of the falls to inspect the rock face for potential problems.
Slate goes into more detail on the project, what it found, and what was done to shore things up a bit without major reconstruction.
I had known about the drying out of the Falls but had never read about it in detail before and found it quite interesting.


Charlie Sykes of The Bulwark writes this for Politico about the similarities of the upcoming Presidential election to that of the 1972 version with Richard Nixon steamrolling George McGovern.
There are parallels, especially should Bernie Sanders earn the Democratic nomination and they make me think of one "What if" question that I place in my top ten of Presidential questions- What would have happened had Edmund Muskie won the nomination instead of George McGovern to face Richard Nixon?
Nixon was a generally unpopular President that instead of facing an opponent that was more palatable to the mainstream, would face an extreme candidate with more limited appeal and won big.
That just might be the result of a Donald Trump-Bernie Sanders race.

In one of the better stories in sports, the Carolina Hurricanes were forced into using the emergency goalie in a recent game in Toronto and managed to win the game.
The emergency goalie is in place for a situation when both (or occasionally three) goalies would be unable to play and the ailing team would not be forced to play a skater out of position and with ill-fitting equipment.
42-year-old David Ayres, who is the Zamboni driver for the AHL Toronto Marlies and practice goalie for the Marlies and Maple Leafs, entered the game in the second period after starter James Reimer was injured in the first period and backup Petr Mrazek left in the second after a collision with a Toronto player.
Ayres entered the game with Carolina leading 3-1 and would make eight of ten saves as the Hurricanes notched a 6-3 win.
Ayres was named the star of the game in a very classy move, received five hundred dollars for his pay and was allowed to keep his game-used jersey after the victory.

And it wouldn't be the NHL if they didn't find a way to find something bad out of something good as the league will discuss potential changes to the emergency goalie rule at the general managers' meetings this week in Florida.
It never ceases to amaze me just how many times sports entities manage to screw up what should be what's good about sports.

Wrapping up with Stan Fischler, who writes of the impact of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" on the New Jersey Devils.
Three players from the 1980 gold medalists would play for the Devils- Mark Johnson, Jack O'Callahan, and Neal Broten, with Broten playing a key role with the 1994-95 Devils, who would be the first of the three Stanley Cup winners for the Devils.
Two various owners of the Colorado Rockies were enticed by the Miracle to bring hockey to New Jersey with the attendance-challenged Rockies a good selection to make the move to the Meadowlands.
Fischler looks at this part of the move as a portion of his weekly columns on the history of the franchise.

Road Trip:Auburn and home..

The road trip season concluded with our trip to Auburn New York for a visit to the short season home of the Nationals.

Mike and I awoke early and began the drive to Niagara Falls for my first visit there.
I expected a kitschy souvenir-filled place and it was that, but the actual falls were anything but that.
I mean really, you could see all of the various tourist places from "scenic" overlooks, "walking" under the falls and the boats going around and under the falls (memorable to me for where Jim and Pam were married on "The Office") and it was all of that.

However, there was more to them than that. There was a lot of walking (I bet Mike and I walked at least 3 miles round trip by the time we got back to our car), but the view of the actual falls was so worth it.
I have to be honest as we walked and saw several less-than-impressive falls, I was starting to think that Niagara was way overrated, but then we reached the "real" falls and it was breathtaking!

Mike's not the greatest heights guy so he stayed way back.
I'm not that bad, but I'm not a person who likes to peer down over the side, so the above picture is as close as I am going to get to do that.
Mike and I walked and checked out a few of the shops as I looked for a souvenir for Cherie and Rachel (I would eventually go with a keychain for Rachel and a snow magnet for Cherie) and it was fun looking through those stores, even though I was concerned I was boring Mike a bit!

Mike and I had to make our way back through Niagara Falls and we had scoped out a place near our hotel to eat at-Buffalo Wing Joint and Pub.
We were the first people in the "joint" and I hadn't eaten in almost 24 hours, so I was starved.
I ordered a burger and wings, figuring that if I was full, I'd put leftovers in the cooler.
I walked around the pub while we waited and the decor was cool- This autographed jersey of longtime TRS favorite Jim Kelly was at the table across from us and they had my favorite arcade game of all time (USA vs USSR hockey) that I spent so many hours playing as a high schooler and even occasionally Cherie and later even Ryan.
I didn't play, but I had to have a picture of a game that meant so much to me years ago!
When our food came out, the wings (2nd hottest) were delicious!
Ranking among the top I've had, but I turned to the burger and Bleech!!!
Those of you who know me know I order my steaks very rarely, but my burger medium well- this was barely rare, so it had to go back.
The waiter was very apologetic and offered a new burger, but I took more wings instead-it was a great call!

We left Niagara and moved towards Auburn.
Our original thought was to do Auburn and then hit Rochester after that to mark that park off on the schedule.
However, Rochester would be an hour in the opposite direction of home, so it would be two extra hours on the road. so we stopped at Auburn early to prep team sets.
We were treated so well by Shane Truman, the assistant general manager that I remarked going to the car, that I would almost rather skip Rochester and spend extra time here all things considered and Mike jumped on that idea quickly, so we killed a little time in town before returning to Falcon Field.

Falcon Field is an old-time park that doesn't look its age.
The field is maintained incredibly well and looks much better than many fields that I've seen at higher levels.
The food is varied and reasonably priced and one can tell that the management and community care about its team and its facility.
I really liked Falcon Park and I would prefer it to our other old-school stop in Batavia.
It seemed that the people in the office and in the stands just care more, which isn't a knock on Batavia.
My only issue came in graphing-Mike graphed visiting State College, I took the home Auburn and I had asked beforehand about where I could go and where I couldn't and was told that since there was not a party I could go to an open area very near the clubhouse.

I moved to this area and immediately started knocking off cards and felt I was about to redeem myself for my poor day in Batavia!
It was too easy and I was loading when an older employee moved down and told me "This is a restricted area, you can't be here".
I tried to explain that I had been given the OK from the assistant.GM to be down here from earlier and this response was "The GM sent me here, he outranks the assistant, you have to go".
I finished the two players I was getting and followed directions.
I'm the outsider, I wasn't going to be "that guy" from out of town who acts like a jerk, I hate it when others do that on our circuit and I wasn't going to be that way.
I did ask what the problem was as I packed up and the response was great.
"Well, Jerad Head (Auburn Manager) had been complaining that kids were asking for autographs during the game".
"Well, I'm far from a kid and there are still 45 minutes before the game, so that doesn't fly"...

I moved to a different spot and was able to have all the position players except one sign their Auburn cards, but I would only add one more pitcher because the access wasn't good for them.
The pitcher though was the National's number one pick, Seth Romero.
I had taken three baseballs for Fred and Michael Landucci, thinking that Romero didn't have any baseball cards.
Auburn had done such a good job with the team set (Brigham Hill was one of the NY/Penn top prospects and had left Auburn maybe 10 days before, yet the turnover time had Hill, not in the set) that Romero was included.
Normally, that would be good news, but now I suddenly had 4 cards (I was working on 4 team sets for others) and three baseballs, so I'm not especially smooth with many things, to begin with.
Seth was very nice as I explained I was from Hagerstown, getting stuff signed, etc, and said no problem as he signed he said: "I got you, no problem".
I switched from cards to baseballs along with Sharpies to pen and talked with Romero-very cool and the opposite of how he was portrayed to me, which goes to show that you really have to see for yourself about people and even then, things can vary from night to night.
Regular people like anyone else.

We watched about half the game and hit the road for home as we finished our road trip with plenty of driving.
I had a great time on all of my trips this year and I'm already beginning to look at schedules to toss around trips for next year.
Thanks to all of my friends for the great trips this year and now it's onto the offseason, lots of work and replenishing that war chest to be ready for next year...