New York, Buffalo

This has been a very special trip!  Rudy has a hockey tourney in Buffalo this weekend and Michael and Rudy invited me to join them.  They flew in Thursday night.  I drove (about a 7 hour drive).  I started on Thursday (blogged the first part of the trip on my knitting blog).  But I drove in a snowstorm that was big enough they had named it.  The drive was crazy terrible….but never scary terrible.  Just RAIN, SNOW, all of the phooey weather you can think of.  But I did it right.  I started mid day both days so at least I was getting the best weather of the day…..It is only a 7hour+ trip, but it felt like two days of driving.

Buffalo is very interesting.  It is at the very …..hmmm….I am not sure if it is the beginning of Lake Erie or the end….but I think it is the beginning….formed by Niagara River and maybe Buffalo Creek?  So here is a photo of the sky line from Lake Erie:

We are staying right down downtown in the Westin Hotel.  Oh, Wow, this place is amazing.  I love the hotel!  The building is owned by Delaware North.   I can only say this is exactly my kind of place.  Nice but not fancy.  Young people taking care of every detail!  The same young person who drove you to the rink might deliver dinner at 9:30 to your room.  And then be at the desk to answer a question at 10:39.

Rudy played great tonight.  It was fun.  Honestly this may be my favorite sport to watch as a spectator.  It is FAST!  There are almost no time outs and when there is a time out it is so brief you almost can’t ask a question to the person sitting next to you.  The tournament is exactly on time!  And that includes the machine that comes out and “fixes” the ice between games.  Michael was kind enough to introduce me to the other grandmother who was attending the game tonight.  So we sat together.  I was so excited to sit with her as she honestly knows a lot about hockey and was glad to answer all of my questions, so I learned a lot.  Her name is Susan.  

Susan has one son, Jerome Iginia.  Jerome was a big time hockey player who has just retired.  He is a co-coach for Rudy’s team.   Susan says that Jerome LOVES being retired because he can now spend time with his three children and wife.    Michael chose this team for Rudy because of Jerome.  Here is the Wikipedia article about Jerome:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarome_Iginla