Day 3 (2011) - You Get What You Pay (or don't pay) For

Today was a relatively uneventful day, at least until towards the end of the day. We started out by leaving the hotel in Boston around 10:00. The original plan was to hit the Bed, Bath & Beyond near Fenway on the way out of town, with the possible addition of Staples to get some office supplies. However, we looked up Bed, Bath & Beyond store locations in the Syracuse area, and instead decided to get on the road and pick up the air bed in Syracuse. We left the hotel without eating, so at the first rest stop we pulled in for a gourmet breakfast of bagels. Some of us jazzed it up with cream cheese, with the others went with butter. And Debbie had a banana. She may have splurged and had two. I know, thrilling.

I had estimated that the trip to the Boxing Hall of Fame would be a little under 5 hours, and the daunting thing for me was that the ride essentially consisted of all of one road, I-90. Driving itself is pretty boring, but at least when there are decisions to make and roads to change it keeps me interested. This time, it would be about 300 miles of Mass Pike. And the ride did not disappoint. There are some roads that are fun or at least interesting to drive – Taconic, Merritt. Then there are others that I dread – NJ Turnpike, Rt. 84 in CT. I think today’s ride was in the latter category. But, to get from Point A to Point B, you have to get there somehow, and this was the only way to get there. So, I sucked it up and stared ahead for 300 miles.

At around 1:00 the troops were getting hungry, and I saw that there was a Panera Bread restaurant at the next exit. So I got off to head for lunch. Turns out this was a somewhat populated area, and there was also a Walmart next to the restaurant. This would kill three birds with one stop. Lunch, get the Air Bed and get the office supplies. The day was looking up.

After lunch we did the Walmart shop and got back on the road, now equipped with a new handy-dandy air bed that we really didn’t need in the long run, but did need in the short run (this trip). Finally at around 4:00 we got off of I-90 and looked for the Boxing Hall of Fame. Didn’t take much effort to find it, as the HOF was literally next to the exit. Once inside, we read a little about why the Boxing Hall of Fame was where it was (Canastota, NY). It’s not that boxing was invented there, or that there were a ton of champions from there. Nope, the reason given was basically that no one else had come up with a place for a Boxing Hall of Fame, and this place was as good as any. At least that’s how I read it.

This Hall of Fame was a little different than other Halls we have visited. At the Baseball Hall of Fame you get a plaque with your face displayed on it. At the Football Hall of Fame you get a bust. Here, you get a playing card with a little photo on it. Or that’s what they looked like.

 We have been at a lot of Halls of Fame by now, and most take some time to get around. This one could have fit in my living room. And for those of you that know my house, you know that my living room is not large ($0.75 in a cab all the way across, we’re talking small – ba dum bum).

Shortly after starting to look around, one of the proprietors came up to me and asked me who my favorite boxer was. Now, I like boxing a little, or did when it mattered and everyone knew the champs, but I am not a huge boxing guy and the only reason we even stopped there was because it was on the way. So, I did some quick thinking and tried not to just go with the obvious (Ali) and instead said Marvin Hagler. Big mistake. Turns out they had a whole slew of Hagler-signed things in the gift shop, and he then spent the next 5 minutes or so telling me all about them and what great deals they were. In hindsight I should have said Boom Boom Mancini or someone else. I nodded nicely, as if there was a 1% chance I might buy some of the Marvelous Marvin Hagler items, then excused myself to look around. Some of the displays were pretty interesting (Primo Carnera had HUGE hands), but after about 15 minutes of so we headed over to the gift shop, where they housed the original ring from Madison Square Garden (in which they held the 1st Ali-Frazier fight, among many, many other famous fights.

We looked around for a while, and after once again getting the hard sell on the Hagler items, we headed out at around 5:00. We could have stuck around for the evening, because it turns out they were going to have a concert there tonight. Who was it? Was it worth staying? Ah, nope. It was an Elvis impersonator. Evidently he must be very good, because when we left there were a bunch of people that had already set up their chairs to make sure they had a good view of the Fake King.

After turning down the chance to see the would-be King, we headed to the hotel in Syracuse. Actually, it was East Syracuse where we would be staying. See, we were going to have a free hotel room tonight thanks to a raffle that my mother-in-law won. The free night was at a Red Roof Inn, and I had booked it knowing we would only be in the area for a short time. We got to the hotel, and the first sign of trouble was the exterior doors. Second sign of trouble was the lobby/check-in area that was even smaller than the Boxing Hall of Fame. Third, and perhaps scariest, sign was the two-ton woman who came out of her room with a cigarette dangling from her mouth holding the leashes of two monster-sized dogs.  The final sign was the 2-by-nothing room. To give it credit, the room was clean and smelled fine. We could have stayed there. But the way Debbie and I operate is that at night when the kids go to sleep we process the More Than Paper orders for the day, and Debbie answers emails. Debbie has to print things, and we need light to work, so it would have been hard to work there. Did I mention it was tiny?

This area had a lot of other hotels, and I had seen an Embassy Suites on the way in, so we decided to check it out. On the way to the Embassy Suites, we saw a Hampton, so I went in to see about rooms. They did have a room, but I wanted to see about the Embassy. After entering the lobby at the Embassy it took me all of about 2 seconds to decide that we were not staying at the Red Roof Inn. What a difference! The lobby is large and beautiful, they had a Manager’s Cocktail Hour going on with free drinks and snacks and they have a free breakfast in the morning. Plus, we opted for the room with a separate king bed with the kids in the living room area on a pull-pout couch and our new funky air bed. Now we were living baby!

We unloaded all of our crap, er, luggage, and headed down for the free drinks/snacks and afterwards went to a local restaurant for dinner. The dinner place served good Italian food, but it was a mistake because it took too long to get the food after such a long day in the car, and it was a little more expensive than we really needed. On the flip side, when we were done eating the waitress came to the table with this ginormous plate of cotton candy.

After settling up at the restaurant, we headed back to the Red Roof Inn to take a picture of the room that we rejected.

The cleaning lady will like us in the morning, as nothing will be disturbed. We then headed back to the Embassy where we got the kids ready for bed, stared our nightly work and decided to take this chance to do some laundry. The laundry might have been a mistake also, since there is only one washer and dryer in the hotel, and they are a little old. Plus, we have had to jockey our way around two other people trying to do their laundry, so we lost a lot of time. But at least we will have clean stuff as we head to Niagara Falls, and Canada, tomorrow.