What Were You Doing In Canada?

Well, we made it back from the great white north. The game was, in a word, awesome. The spectacle was all they made it out to be. I'll give a quick travelogue and save the resolution post for tomorrow, I guess.

Monday - Terri went down to her parents to drop off the little man and I headed to work for a half-day. I quickly ran around trying to accomplish everything I needed to have done before leaving and then just as quickly headed back to the house. I hurriedly packed (since I had procrastinated the night before). We got on the road and after an ill-advised stop at the local Barnes and Noble we headed up toward Canadia land. After stopping for dinner and a restroom break or three we arrived at the hotel. We checked in, got to the room, and realized we didn't get what we asked for. Instead of a queen sized bed, we were confronted with two double beds. Annoying. So, I went back to the front desk and asked the woman why I didn't get what I had reserved. Some excuses later and I gave up and hauled in the rest of the luggage. Then I booted up the computer and pulled up the available rooms at the hotel and then called customer service. They looked at the records and found out that I had guaranteed my room with my credit card and absolutely should have gotten what I asked for and had a print out of. So, they said I had three options. Option 1: If the hotel couldn't accomodate me correctly, I could find another hotel in the area and the stay would be on them. Hmmm, tempting but I'm in another country, no clue what's nearby, it's New Year's Eve, and 73,000 people are fluxing in for a hockey game. Not really an option I guess. Option 2: They could see what the hotel could do for me and if that was acceptable it would be finished. Option 3: If it wasn't acceptable, they would file a complaint for me and the service department would review and do something retroactively. I chose option 2. The front desk came back with 10% off the room which was ok. It wasn't dire. Just an annoyance. We could either sleep separately or very very close together. The customer service gentlemen, by the name of Philipe, decided he was going to file a complaint anyway. 1/2 hour later the front desk gave us a student travel rate and basically we ended up with about a free night out of the deal. After all this we opted not to venture out to either the Buffalo celebration or the celebration at the Falls, or the casino celebration. So, I watched Canadia land television (which, by law, incorporated part of Strange Brew) and then we found Dick Clark's rockin' Eve which was done in a split screen with the Buffalo celebration and ball drop. I found out that Buffalo has the second largest ball drop in the United States. Apparently about 40,000 people were there. Terri was asleep by 12:05. I watched some more hockey highlights (which was about the only thing Canadian television was good for) and then went to sleep.

Tuesday - We got up, showered, and got on the road by about 10:15 or so. We got to the border and were singled out and examined both front and back. The question that puzzled us the most in the string of questions was the fourth one. 1. What country are you citizens of? Um, United States. 2. Where do you live? Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 3. Why are you traveling here? We're in town for the Winter Classic hockey game. 4. What were you doing in Canada? Um, sleeping? 5. How do you know each other? We're married. 6. Whose car is this? Terri's. Fine, go ahead. I would have thought the fact that we were in town for the game had pretty much answered what we were doing in Canada. After making it through Customs we followed the directions and got within two miles of the stadium and stopped for lunch. We got back on the road quickly, but ended up in a ton of traffic. We sat in traffic for over an hour and were just waiting to park anywhere. A gas station one block from the stadium was waving people in and just before we got there they paused. Then the guy held up his hand for 1 more. We slid in, parked, and basically sprinted to the stadium. We got through security and luckily had walked in the gate right next to our section. We found our seats and were enthralled by the show the NHL put on. I have to give Buffalo credit, they were great hosts. Yes, we had to endure all the chants and horn blasts of "Let's Go Buffalo" and the booing of Sidney Crosby, but the rink was great. Inexplicably they sang "O Canada" and "God Bless America" and then had a Blackhawk helicopter formation fly-over. I'll direct you here for pictures since my camera decided to erase mine (more on that later). The Pens fans were present and even managed to get a sustained chant of "Let's Go Pens" going a couple of times. The weather was great and I'm told the game was excellently translated to the television but I haven't gotten my copy from Tom yet since he won't be in town til the weekend. So, I'll be excited to see the game from the television prospective. Just an aside, I loved the AMP commercial with ex-Pens goalie J. S. Aubin. It's nice to see he's still freezing in clutch situations. I won't rehash the whole game since you can pretty much hit any sports site and get the highlights. But, you have to wonder who Gary Bettman paid off to get a 1-1 tie, sudden death overtime, and a shoot-out that's won by your league's most valuable player. During the overtime I pulled the camera out one last time to get some player pictures. Then I hear the bing of the camera, look down and see it blinking "Disc Error." I put the camera away and finish watching the game. You can click on Section 143 at this site to see the vantage point from our seats. It's taken from row 10 and we were in row 12 so it's close. After the game we headed out to find a souvenir for Gage. We decided on a mini-stick since we knew he'd love that based on Tom's gift from the Phoenix game he attended. Stand 1, sold out. Stand 2, sold out. Stand 3 outside of stadium, sold out. Stand 4, sold out. So, we gave up and headed back to the car. Then we saw one last stand. We walked over and there they were. So, we started making our way to the front. Just as Terri got there the last one got sold. Thankfully she didn't move since they had more on the side that we didn't see right away. So, Gage got his mini-stick and loved it. We got back to the car and ordered sandwiches from the Subway inside the gas station where we parked. Then we asked the attendant for better directions and avoided 80% of the traffic and got back to the hotel pretty quickly. After a quick trip out scouting for snacks we were watching more Canadia land television which included a ton of highlights and clips from the game. I won't get tired of watching Crosby go five-hole on Miller. We turned the camera back on and it said, "Repairing Disc" for about 20 minutes. Then when it was finished we looked at the pictures and the last one shown was taken at our house on Christmas morning. So, all the pictures of my family's Christmas and everything taken leading up to the Winter Classic and all the pics at the Winter Classic are currently gone. I'll see about recovery, but I don't hold my breath. I even had a picture of the two retards that didn't understand the concept of sitting down to watch the game. I imagine it would look something like this.

Wednesday - not much to report. Got up, had breakfast, packed and got in the car. We explored the duty free shop for a little while and I'm curious as to why, if you can only bring about 1 litre back per person all the specials were for 3 mix and match litres on most sales. Other than the sales, I wasn't impressed with the prices there. They weren't all that cheap in my opinion. We stopped for a late lunch in Erie and went to a sports shop and came close to buying a pair of skates for Gage. The salesman recommended getting them fitted, though so we'll have to find a place around here. I'd also like to find a used sports store like Play it Again Sports to pick up a pair for me. We finally got to the in-laws, picked up Gage and then headed out to run some errands making it home fairly late.

So, there's the travelogue. I'm sure there's more detail, but that should suffice. Resolutions and such to follow. Hope everyone's New Years was fun and fulfilling.