David and Shelby Tour the East Coast
May 27, 2007 - June 13, 2007
Saturday, May 26, 2007- Sunday May 27: While I worked at the winery (and didn't make goal!) David was in the city taking his boards then attend a party in Silicon Valley with a friend of his. We met back up at the house, grabbed the things we had packed the night before and left for a 2.5 hour trip on the Bart and a shuttle from SFO to a hotel we booked for the night near SFO for our early morning flight. I'm glad we did- it took 2.5 hours to get from the house to the hotel. Crazy. As it was, we still had to wake at 6 am Sunday morning for a long day of flight and travel. The flight took 5 hours from SFO to DC Dulles- and that actually went really easily. I watched Kevin Smith's new film, Catch and Release and cried for 2 hours of the trip- who knew Kevin could be so sensitive?: The flight was nice and was continuing on to Paris after a stop in DC, so I was kind of sad to see it go. In Dulles it was raining and lightning, and there is some kind of rule for FAA employees that when it's lightning, they can't get on or off the ramps to the small planes or something, so the people on our flight were on the tarmac, waiting to deplane while we were waiting for them to deplane so we could board. This lasted about an hour, David and I managed to sneak in a nap each while we were waiting after eating at a Freaking Ale House. We finally got out of Dulles an hour late for a 45 mintue flight to Buffalo. This also went smooth. We rented our green Plymouth G-6 and hit the road for a short srive into Blasdell to Gabe's house where he and Kristie and the dogs were waiting for us.
Sunday night I took David to Might Taco for a Super Mighty both to grease our constipated bowels and to introduce him to some of Buffalo's finest cuisine right off the bat. Mike K. came over to gabe's and we ended up watching Jackass 2 before turning into bed around 1am, feeling thoroughly violated and disgusting. Men.
Monday, May 28, 2007: Memorial Day Holiday: I'm not sure why, since my clock was still on california time and it was techincally 3am, i woke up wide awake about 6am and couldn't get back to sleep. I tried to go on line and buy a new computer battery (i'm basically a desktop without any battery life now at all) and deal with some eamils and money stuff. Kristie woke up around 8am and we had coffee on the deck while we watched Guiness play with his new baby sister, Leila- who is just 15 weeks old and already quite the barker. At about 10am David and I went to Niagara Falls, the Canadian side that is- to see the wonder of the world thundering away with all the other tourists out on the holiday weekend. I thought we'd be back in no time... silly fool.
The
falls were great, as usual, and we got soaked going over to the horseshoe falls
since the wind was blowing and the mist was crazy thick- then went back to Buffalo
via the Rainbow Bridge and sat in traffic for an HOUR AND A HALF waiting to
get over the damn bridge. Then we got "randomly selected" to have
a car search which delayed us further. Delightful. This and my family was all
gathering at gabe's house for a barbeque while we're getting a full-body-cavity
search by suly boarder partolmen.
In the afternoon we had a family BBQ at Gabe's with Molly and Akin, my parents, Barb and Kenny and Gam. David got a chance to meet the Edwards diaspora and i think it went okay. We played bocce and ate Gabe's awesome stuffed hamburgers with grilled kabobs and a ton of food. it was nice. Really warm, sunny day. Great day to be out in the yard. In the evening, we drove around the old Hamburg homestead and watched the sun set on Wanakah Beach. How old days...
At night we went to bed early, Gabe took off Tuesday to hang out with us, and Kristie went to work.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007: We spent the day in Buffalo today, I wanted to show David how great my city is- it's got a bad repuation and I'm sure none of it's deserved- we have amazing architecture and history- and the place is just so visually beautiful there is so much to see and there are so many gems in the city you need a guide who is very passionate about Buffalo to show them off to their best advantage. So we drove right downtown to the Albright and Deleware Park areas and walked through the park.
The
Albright across the pond.
We drove around seeing the best of Buffalo and showing David the sights (gabe came and was his usual acerbic self the whole time- how fast my naive boyfriend gets jaded by association) like Elmwood area, ate lunch at the Anchor Bar for a Buffalo's Best smorgasboard of pizza, hot wings, pizza rolls and salad. We agreed the diet will not begin until we are at least out of Buffalo for obvious reasons. We had a good time chowing down on all the artery-hardening finest Buffalo has to offer at the Anchor. It was a good meal.
Nothing like pizza face.
We spent the afternoon, at Gabe's request up at Fort Niagara, our fourth trip in 2 days out to Niagara Falls. Fortunately, no bridges to cross this time except the Grand Island Bridge and that's painless except for the tolls. We spent about an hour wandering around in there, they actually have the actual flag which served as a model for the union flag which came after it- it's this humungous thing in an obviously temperature and environment controlled room but is about 25 x 25 feet. It was really, really cool to see. Aparently, the canadian side has silt which seems to cough up relic after relic over the years and this still continues today.
You can see Toronto in the background of the picture with the flags.
After this we ran into the Niagara Falls Factory Outlet Mall for me to get into J.Crew to try on a dress for Lara's upcoming wedding. That accomplised, we met Kristie at Pearl Street Brewery for dinner. We split a huge tower of wheat beer and ate dinner. It was fabulous, but then again I absolutely adore Pearl Street. I bought a growler and 4 glasses to bring with David and I on the upcoming trip too.
****David's thoughts on Buffalo****
In the morning, Gabe and Kristie left for work and David and I hit the road after packing up about 9am headded for Toronto and Montreal. We had a quick, 2 hour stop in Toronto where we walked the length of queen street, stopped in the largest yarn shop I could have ever imagined existed, then ate lunch at the Queen Mother (LOVE that place) and got on the road for a very, very long drive to Montreal just in time to hit traffic going over the bridge out of the city center at 7am delaying our arrival at the camp by about 2 hours. What a nightmare! Making matters worse, as soon as we got near Montreal, the sky turned ominous with clouds, we had spatterings on rain and it didn't seem to be planning on letting up for the night. We managed to get to the camp ground while the manager was still there (only just) and check in. He was kind of strange, and wanting to joke with us but we were too tired and too crabby to be very snappy back- but he did let us stay in a cabin having paid for a tent site since it was raining, which was so nice of him. I worked on this page for an hour after a hot shower to chill out, a pint of the Pearl Street Brown we brought and fell asleep by 11pm to the sounds of rain on the cabin roof. Kind of nice after all.