Road Trip!

I apologize to my thousands of readers expecting a rant on the Syracuse vs. Maine throwdown that happened over the weekend. This post will not be including Cupcakefest '09 because I was out of town and could not attend the game. There's no way to tell how many people have read this, so I'm just going to assume the best and think that 75% of the greater Syracuse area are avid followers of my work. I know this is shocking to many that I could miss a Cuse game after my previous comments, but a ride to Boston for the weekend presented itself.

Now, I'm as pro as you can get for mass transportation, but a car ride is a car ride and a bus ride is a $100 hell that you get to spend 11 hours in on the way to your destination. That's why I'm pro mass transit- if I support it enough maybe it'll start to suck less. That's why I was so pleased when I found out about the Pittsburgh-Philly maglev line (currently in the planning stage and miles away from construction). I'll get absolutely no use out of it, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. I'll even provide a link to an article about it, as long as you promise to read it after you finish this. Pinkie promise? Ok, here it is.

So I arrived in Boston more or less in one piece after getting up at 4 AM to make the 7 hour trip. I was immediately in awe of the city. It is, for the lack of a better word, nice there. I'm used to the rough and tumble world of Syracuse. People find live hand grenades in our parks, you can't walk anywhere without fearing for your safety, and now 6'0 and 5'8 individuals are teaming up to rob all the groups of students that they can get their hands on. Sounds like your classic crime team- the short witty guy named Mugsy and the big dumb muscle named Louie.

Boston is absolutely nothing like it. It's so clean that it's almost sparkly. And let's face it, who isn't attracted to shiny objects? Walking around, there's some open plazas that are paved and have fountains and such, as well as green parks with plenty of open grass to throw the old Fris around. Oh, and not to mention the tall imposing buildings. I cannot tell you how amazingly fun it is to go up to the 22nd floor of a building and to spit out the window. Who knows why, maybe I'm a romantic, but I feel like the loogie fluttering in the breeze as it slowly descends earthward is a metaphor for all of us. Inevitably traveling towards some destiny, making small course corrections of our own design but ultimately ending up where gravity says we're supposed to be. I know what you're thinking, but I never took philosophy so it's the best I could come up with.

Out of all the sites I saw, I probably enjoyed the Boston Public Library (BPL) the most out of the sites I saw. (You mean you didn't enjoy shopping with three girls at H & M Tim? No, of course I did, but I thought the BPL sounded manlier...like some kind of obscure sports league- the British Pro40 League. It's a real sport. Look at this. Wow this is a long parentheses. When is this idiot going to get back on track? How about...now) Yeah, so a blog and a penchant for visiting large libraries. Ladies, please. One at a time. Ok now to get back on track for real. I think the library was awesome because it had a section for pretty much every language you could think of. Mandarin? Ta men you. Spanish? Ellos lo tienen. Icelandic? ......Umm they had it. Who knows how to speak Icelandic anyway? Even languages I'd never even heard of. Punjabi, which is apparently an Indian (in Asia, not American Indian) dialect, had a section. And they had books in the language, not about the language. So you could see all kinds of character systems which I thought was very cool.

Another thing that kept me entertained for a while was the indexes. People will write about anything, I know. But the things that so many people write about that need to be indexed are pretty eclectic. Here's what I found:

• Index to Jewish Periodicals
• And to counter...The Catholic Periodical and Literature Index
  
• Index to Handicrafts
• Pollution Abstracts
• Garden Literature
• And finally...the Great Soviet Encyclopedia

This kind of makes me think. If you can fill up volumes of giant books with just references to these things, you could literally pick any subject on the face of the earth and write a book about it. Or, as I just realized, a blog. I think I'll stick to the latter because they'd never let me write a book and then say it was by "The Puma."

Wow, I just realized how long this is getting. I should probably knock off for the week. I'll sum up. Syracuse is 2-2. Bowl game perhaps? Boston is a great city and I hope to go back soon, this time with an actual plan on places I want to see. I would like to give special thanks to my awesome roomie who drove, my awesome best friend who put up with me for the weekend, and her crazy friends who made my weekend that much more interesting.

PS- On the way home I got myself some BK onion rings. I did not find any BK fries in them and it was AWESOME.

Syracuse wins. Finally.

My ideal Saturday is a lovely sunny day spent indoors watching Syracuse win a football game. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened too often in recent memory. In fact, until last Saturday, my beloved Orange had won 10 games over the past four years. Thanks a lot, Greg Robinson, you jerk. The "one yard and a cloud of dust" offense was not very effective.

However, the time was ripe for Syracuse to start winning. After going 3-9 last year, Syracuse finally manned up and fired G-Rob. His replacement? Disciplinarian Doug Marrone fresh from an offensive coordinating gig with the New Orleans Saints. Apparently from what I've heard, he came out of the womb with a headset and clipboard. This man was born to coach and all he ever wanted was to coach the Orange.

Admittedly, the first two games didn't go too well. First, a heart wrenching overtime defeat at the hands of Minnesota, with the Orange stagnating in the second half. Next came Penn State, which I had the misfortune of attending. Greg "Unnecessary Longsleeves" Paulus had himself a terrible game and the Orange got shallacked.

Then Northwestern came to town. Begging to get beaten after a narrow escape against Eastern Michigan the week before. Syracuse was all too happy to oblige. But not before they sent half their fans home with heart attacks. They got out to a 17-0 lead thanks to some passable play by their quarterback (pun 100% intended) Greg "College Brett Favre" Paulus. And then the defense got bored with the game and decided to make things interesting by allowing 3 straight touchdowns. Syracuse responded by scoring 10 more points to come within a field goal of equaling the score against fellow compass school Northeastern the previous year. It was not to be, however, as kicker Ryan "Ulrich von" Liechtenstein decided to kick a field goal as low as he possibly could and it was blocked.

The defense continued its "Let Northwestern score" tactics, enjoying success similar to the first half. Northwestern gets 2 more touchdowns to make it 34-27. And misses the extra point. Who knew something so simple as letting a team drive the ball down your throat and letting them miss the extra point could charge up the fans so much? Well, it did. Syracuse scores a touchdown to tie (with everyone waiting with breath held during the extra point). Northwestern gets the ball back and can win with a field goal. Unfortunately their quarterback unleashed a Greg Paulus-esque pass to Syracuse safety Max Suter with no Northwestern receivers in sight. Syracuse drives, kicks a field goal, wins. Pandamonium.

It's awesome winning a football game at a school that sucks at football. We appreciate it that much more. It's like finding an onion ring in an order of Burger King fries. You don't expect it, but you're wicked excited because, let's face it, nobody likes BK fries. I apologize to whoever read this blog who doesn't like sports. Sucks to be you, because this one was entirely about sports. But, at least you read it. Your life is now better that you included me in it.