Miles Driven: 24,419
Taking away the biggest city in the United States can be devastating to the outlook on the rest of the state. Look at Illinois.. without Chicago, you’re left with nothing. But New York, it’s a different story. Without the city of the same name, you still have a nice area. New York is a surprisingly pretty state that can make you forget about New York City based on all the things the rest of the state has to offer.
When you start from Vermont and are forced to head all the way to Lake Erie, New York can prove itself to be a pretty big state. But because of my traveling route, I got to see this big state from end to end. This is where I saw that it really is a nice looking state, similar to the landscape of New Hampshire/Vermont. It had pretty mountain ranges shooting through seemingly the entire area. It wasn’t that developed, which was surprising, so driving through proved to be a relaxing enterprise that will razzle and dazzle anybody.. simply put, it sparkle-sunshined.
Big cities are hard to come by in the rest of New York. I would argue that there is just one.. Buffalo. I was actually looking forward to being in this part of the state. I realize that any regular person would think.. “Buffalo? That place is D-E-A-D DEAD! Who the fuck would want to go there?” Well, I’ll tell ya.. a BILLS fan, that’s who. In a remarkably random turn of events, I’m a huge Bills fan. Whenever I think about how I’m a Bills fan, I laugh, because they are one of the smallest market teams in the league and are one of the least reported-on teams in the league. I guess it has to do with their famous four Super Bowl run in the early 90’s. I was five during their first of four trips to the Super Bowl, and in one of my earliest memories of my sports-following life, I remember a regular season football game being on with the ticker at the bottom of the TV showing some crazy number like “Bills: 45 Dolphins: 10”. I remember being like “oooh the Bills are so good! I want to be a Bills fan!” I guess you can call me bandwagon if you want, but as a five year old? How can you blame me. But after four straight Super Bowl losses before I was ten years old and enduring the past eight years with no playoff appearances and living “wide right” (I balled my eyes out.. give me a break I was five) and the “Music-City Miracle” (I was so fucking pissed!), I think you can call me one of the real long-suffering and die-hard Bills fans. So basically, being here was really special for me. One of the things that was must see for me was going to Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of the boys in blue. While it was surely nothing like actually seeing a game with the rest of the rabid fan base (which I will most definitely do some day.. they were away when I was there which was disappointing), it was cool seeing this place. I had a big grin the whole time and in awe of the place that Kelly and his K-Gun offense ruled supreme during the early 90’s. That’s not all I did though. Another thing that was tops on my list was going to what Buffalo is most definitely known for.. their chicken wings. I went to the Anchor Bar in downtown Buffalo, which is where the wings phenomenon began back in 1964. They were very good.. definitely the best wing I’ve had. You can tell they were very fresh and never frozen. They were incredibly juicy on the inside, and the meat clung to the bone more, which doesn’t happen as much with other places which no doubt freeze their chicken. I used to have wings a ton while growing up so going to the place that started it all was very cool and by far my favorite of the handful of places that I went to on this trip where culinary history was made. All in all I liked Buffalo, but mostly because of what the place represents to key moments of my developing years.
It’s debatable that Long Island can be considered non-New York City, but after going there, I don’t know how it could be considered part of the city. Part of it most definitely is with Queens and Brooklyn taking up its western corner, but the island is 118 miles long, so the city influence ends rather quickly. I didn’t know what to expect when taking this drive, but I was pleasantly surprised. I was kind of expecting it to be mostly suburban in appearance, but it really turned country-esque. I didn’t do too much here besides drive through it because of time, but I liked what I saw. I headed to one of its more easterly cities.. Montauk. You’re probably saying these exact words.. “that sounds so fucking familiar, Shawn.. why does that sound so fucking familiar.. tell me man tell me why why WHY?!?” Calm down, quit saying the F-word, and I’ll tell you. You calm? Okay. Well.. if it sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is a top ten favorite movie of mine (that sounds like nothing.. but with a movie buff like me.. that’s extremely high praise). This movie was really the only reason why I decided to go all the way on Long Island.. mostly because I had this crazy dream where Kate Winslet whispered in my ear.. “meeeet meeee in Moooontaaauuuk.” She had the audacity to stand me up, but whatever, ‘cause when I got there, I really liked the beach, which was of high quality. I don’t know how the view was, 'cause it was real foggy there, but that gave a cool vibe. So.. Long Island.. good place to check out.. even without Kate making an appearance.
I was talking about my trip with DJ Sites back in March, and the state of New York came up. DJ said, “well I take it you’re going to make a trip to the Hall of Fame over in Cooperstown, right?” I was like “why.. I haven’t even thought of that! How crazy is that? I haven’t thought about a visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame on a trip when I’m driving to every baseball park in the country.. how silly am I??” Pretty silly, but thanks to DJ for bringing that idea to light, I decided to make the most obvious trip I could possibly make. When I went there, I really liked it. It gave me a sense of the start of baseball and how special it really is to the fabric of our culture. I got to see things about some of the all time greats that I never knew about and how much they meant to the early popularity of the game that allowed it to grow to what it is today. I kind of wish I got to see this first, as I think I would have appreciated the stadiums I visited even more, since visiting this place really helped me understand the spirit of the game. If you consider yourself a baseball fan and get turned on by its history, this place is a required visit.
New York proved itself to be a nice area. The scenery is surprisingly nice and the vibe much more low key than that one big city that also calls New York home. Even though I liked the area and am a huge Bills fan, I don’t see myself living here. There’s no solid reason for that, I mean I liked it but I wasn’t "coo-coo for cocoa puffs" crazy for it. But one thing my time here did serve was to allow me to forget about New York, New York and let me know that New York can stand alone on its own.
0 comments:
Post a Comment