This weekend started off boring, but I had no idea how it would end until now.
Saturday was a really crappy day. It wasn’t raining, but it wasn’t not raining either, and by that I mean it was stuck in this ‘rain ambivalence’ while it started and stopped at random intervals with no predictable pattern. It was also kind of cold out, so there wasn’t much to do.
Around 2:15 in the afternoon, that changed. Leanne (my hockey-obsessed friend from Erie, Pennsylvania) tells me that she’s singing the national anthems at the Otters game Saturday night, and her friend bailed so she had no one to go with. Thus, she invited me, though she was mostly joking considering the distance between Kitchener and Erie and the fact that the game started in five hours. Who would be crazy enough to jump right in the car and drive 350 kilometres into another country, through two states, to see an OHL game?
Me, obviously.
So I jumped in the car and booted it for Buffalo. Traffic was great, except for the daily shitstorm that is Highway 6 (between 401 and 403). I drove faster than I probably should have, feeling guilty as I cruised by the warning signs about how much I’m going to be fined if I get caught exceeding the limit, but by 4:00 I was waiting in line at U.S. Customs. Damn, I’m good. Unfortunately, it took about half an hour to clear because some guy was trying to cross with this huge boat that looked like it Titanic’d and someone glued it back together, and the border guards thought it was a little suspicious. Fortunately, I had no trouble. I guess a Canadian guy wearing flannel going to see a hockey game was a pretty believable story.
I got to Erie by 6, easily in time for the game’s 7:00 start. First, I’ve got to mention Leanne’s performance. She tore that place up. I’ve heard her sing briefly in the past, but she’s kind of shy and it’s hard to get her going. But this was incredible. I can’t remember the last time I almost shed a tear during O Canada. And she absolutely nailed The Star Spangled Banner. Anyone who sings knows how hard that song is to sing well because of the massive vocal range it demands. When she finished the song, everyone in the place was going nuts, all fired up and ready to watch some hockey. Then the Otters came out and sucked bigtime for 20 minutes while the London Knights slid by their non-existent defense and pounded in cheap goal after cheap goal.
The second period was perhaps the best twenty minutes of hockey I have ever seen in my life. It started with some fighting, which kicked ass. Then, London scored one of the weirdest goals you could imagine. There was some serious goalie interference. He was physically tackled and pushed down and could not get up in time to stop the puck. The interference was so obvious that a gorilla could have seen it and called off the goal. But the referee didn’t (or at least he acted like he didn’t, and just had his head jammed securely up his ass). Apparently the guy has a reputation for being a tool, or as a nearby fan put it, “I think he hates America.” After that call, everyone in the arena was banging on the boards. I thought they were going to start a riot right there. When the puck dropped at center ice, brawling ensued immediately, instigated of course by the disenfranchised Otters. At the end of the second period, it was 5-1 London, and it looked like a lost cause.
The third period was about as unpredictable as my entire trip. We joked about how it would be impossible to score 4 goals in 20 minutes. But it wasn’t. The Knights appeared to be slacking off, and Erie was edging themselves back into the game, goal by goal. The fifth, tying goal was on a 6-on-5, empty net situation with 5 seconds left in the third. It doesn’t get any more exciting than that, folks. Unfortunately, the Otters couldn’t get the win, as the Knights prevailed in overtime. But I didn’t care. It was a fantastic game, almost like a “sampler” of your typical hockey season with a little bit of everything: fighting, controversy, and an improbable comeback.
I left Erie this morning around 10:30, did a bit of shopping, and hit the interstate. But something was bugging me. I’d probably be home by around 2, at which point I’d be bored, probably in front of my computer, probably writing crap on this site. No, I’m not just going to go home. I’m going to drive around Lake Erie. Why? Because I feel like it.
My next stop was Tower City in downtown Cleveland. There were a lot of people out, since it was a nice day. Downtown Cleveland isn’t my favourite place to go, but the skyline is absolutely fantastic. I’d get a picture, but as I said before, I didn’t have my camera. After that, I drove all the way to Toledo, via State Road 2 rather than the Ohio Turnpike on which highway robbery literally occurs. From Toledo, I took 280 to 75, then 75 through Detroit and across the border. It was pretty uneventful after that.
1200 kilometres later, I’m home. And I’m still not tired. If I didn’t have to work tomorrow morning, I’d probably be chillin’ at a bar in Kentucky. But since I can’t be there right now, I brought a little bit of the USA home with me:
Coarse ground corn. Hell yeah.
Can’t wait to do this again sometime soon!