You Had Me at Hello

Just arrived back in the actual state of New York after snapping a 2-month plus absence from beautiful Cana...err Western New York. Apparently, the 5 years of bitching about how much WNY sucks means only one thing - I'm a hypocrite.

Some notes from the trip:
As Millman mentioned, I watched a 2-1 Bisons victory as Nelson Figeroa out-dueled a man I believed to be Dice-K, only with more control and less-electric stuff. Crhis Duncan and Mike Lamb did nothing. And there were 4 hits in the first inning, which we missed - and about 5 hits total in the game. Enjoyable pitching duel with a couple nice defensive plays however.
Brilliant fireworks display, was much more than I expected and the field looked cool as hell when they shut off the lights and it was moonlit...Dominic the Donkey playing as some background music to this wondrous display

More importantly though, what a bizarre place Buffalo is. You drive through the city and it's like being on a country road. It looks like a small city with some reasonably sized tall buildings, ramps everywhere and four lanes. Yet you'll find yourself the only car driving in sight. Always is strange to me at least.

Most importantly however. The greater Buffalo area supports what I discovered to be far and away the greatest establishment of all-time: the Amherst Off-Track Betting facility. I had heard the rumors, but it surpassed my greatest expectations. For one, the place was spotless, even the bathrooms were clean. It was huge, with a large sitting area, a smoker's room, then another "dining" area and then, amazingly, a bar. In fact, a nice bar. 2$ bottles all day every day, Blue Light, Bud Light, the works. Reasonably priced food, Fries for under 3 bucks, with enough to feed about 4 starving children. The only drawback was the high-tech betting machines, which I couldn't figure out in time cost me hitting the first Daily Double of the year at Saratoga. Either way, the place was beautiful.

Hit up the Niagara Wine Trail for some wine tasting. Ended up at a bar in Lewiston followed by a restaurant. This was with my girlfriend and her parents and siblings. My girlfriend doesn't remember anything about the dinner other than me knocking the macaroni and cheese off her fork every time she went to pick it up. Good times.

*Side note, my buddy just called me and said that two more names were released from that steroids list A-Rod was on: Manny and D Ortiz. No big surprises there really. Manny already got caught and Ortiz has had a very bad season.