Spring in Buffalo? Good one.

Friends,

This post finds me in Buffalo, NY, where I will be working tomorrow before heading to Youngstown, OH tomorrow night and finishing the week in Pittsburgh on Friday. Driving to my hotel tonight, the snow was falling pretty heavily, with temperatures hovering around freezing. I wasn't expecting sunny weather, but if you told me it was January, I would believe you. I guess I'm lucky I'm here in March and not the middle of winter. I do wish I was here for the weekend so I could spend some time at Niagara falls.

The last couple days I've been in Central NY and Northern PA, and I've come across some pretty interesting places. Yesterday, I drove through New York's wine country in the Finger Lakes region near Corning. One of the attached pictures is a vineyard surrounding Seneca Lake. Today, driving through rural Northern PA, I stopped for lunch at a diner that was uprooted, literally, from its original Jersey home and its second home in Bethlehem, PA, to its final resting place at the location shown. I'm thinking I may chronicle the diners of America this year, as I suspect this was the first of many stops to come! The guys I work with have a bit of a grease fetish... I will say, though, my lunch today was only $3.75, so I guess they're on to something! The last picture you see is what's left of Austin Dam, a dam in Potter County, PA, which served the Bayless Paper Mill in the early 1900s. Due to its poor construction, the dam failed in 1911, killing 78 people and destroying the mill and much of the town of Austin. Willie Nelson narrated a documentary on the disaster. Locals in the town were talking a lot about it, so I wanted to make sure I snapped a picture before I drove by. By the way, I totally ripped all that information from wikipedia...

Anyway, pretty cool stuff and that's what I've been doing lately. As always, thanks for reading and I hope you're all doing well.

On the road,

Matt