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Wegmans is a required destination for visitors and Ithaca newbies alike. It’s a supermarket that took the "super" part to extremes. One half is like going to an old fashioned covered market where bakers, cheese makers, and butchers gather but without the stench. The other half is a huge supermarket with an endless international food section, general services, and (most importantly) daycare.

But I’m not here to praise Wegmans. Let’s talk about the most important thing that men who are truly boys at heart must do there:

Ride Shopping Carts!

Why at Wegmans and not some other store? Wegmans was purpose built for this past-time. It all begins after we have smiled and nodded our way through the market area, fruit and veg sections, makeup aisle, and finally the huge cooking section. Something calls to us as soon as we reach those long, wide aisles on the far side of the store (near the beer, of course). We can’t help but give the cart a push and jump on the back leaving wives, girlfriends, and fill-in-the-blanks behind. Chances are, they are too busy looking at EVERY SINGLE ITEM IN THE STORE!!!! AAAARRRGGHH! (deep breath!) This is only the start. We men go on to endure the checkout - stoically, I might add. For us it is not a chance to catch up on the gossip from the front of trashy mags or peruse the chocolate selection. (Men, here is a tip. There is a candy-free checkout to the far left. Search for it.) We patiently wait for the part we have been practicing for: leaving the store. We know what’s out there.

A slope.

That’s right. The people who architected Wegmans had their hearts in the right place. They gave us a slope from the front door, across the road, and into an endless parking lot. If you choose your cart carefully and your fill-in-the-blank didn’t weigh it down with too many beauty magazines, beauty products and chocolate (beer does not count, btw) you can gain awesome speed here. Don’t worry about the cars, there are stop signs just for this purpose. Exit the store, push off, try to steer a 200 pound cart around reversing Volvo 240’s and smile.

Why do we do this? That’s easy. Freedom.

We long for the wind in our hair and the hard rumble of the wheels on asphalt. It’s a skateboard for men who should know better.

Now, more advice. If you had found the right parking spot when you arrived, you can ride all the way to your car, throw in the groceries, and get the hatch closed before your fill-in-the-blank can see how you piled in the bags and complains. You might even get the car started and the heat on. This will give bonus points and mitigate the inevitable complaints of "why do you always leave me behind?" Enjoy.

Ithaca Is The 3rd Safest Small Town in America!

Most people in Ithaca know they live in the best small town in the US. Now we have the data to back it up. Sperlings has posted their list of most secure towns and cities in America. Ithaca ranks 3rd (< 150,000 pop) behind places you wouldn’t want to live in anyway. Did this happen because of notorious hanging judges, strict zero-tolerance policies, or brutal cops working on their "tough on crime" merit badges? Nah. Contrary to what the average sheep thinks, those things actually increase crime. (Yes they do, smarty, look it up! Baaaahaaaa!) To understand why, you need to look at another recently released study:

Ithaca Has The 2nd Best Schools in The Country!

Good job! You got the connection in one try. Have a sticker. Expansion Management magazine, a business mag for companies looking for relocation sites, just published a study stating that Ithaca has the second best schools in the US. And, since Ithaca fell into the category of cities with populations under 500,000, it was up against even greater competition. Of course it comes as no surprise that the town that came in at #1 cheated. That’s right, they did. Obviously the school board had their teachers plan their curriculums around this study. There is no other explanation.

For those of you in towns and cities where you have to send your kid to private school and alarm your home (oooh! That’s a long list), here’s some advice: Move! Alternatively you could put your money in your local public school and boot out any elected official who claims to be "tough on crime".

A few of you can move here, but send me an email first so I can see how many graduates students moved home this year. There just aren’t houses for all of you.

Here are some helpful bits and pieces for you Californians coming to Ithaca or upstate (mid-state, whatever-tier) New York

• Cascadilla is pronounced "Cascad - ILL - La". I know it’s wrong, but it’s their street. Pronouncing it the correct way will make you sound like an idiot.
• A burrito is a delicacy - I was once served a burrito filled with black beans and yellow rice. YELLOW RICE???? Are burritos from Cuba?
• Salsa is an artificially colored milk-like substance served in tiny plastic cups. There is no difference between mild and hot except the color.
• Chonies are called boy’s underwear or girl’s panties. I can’t tell you how many strange looks my kid has recieved talking about pulling up or down his chonies.
• There are no freeways and if there were, they wouldn’t have names.
• Don’t try to figure out the difference between the City of Ithaca and the Town of Ithaca or all the villages that seem like they are part of the city. After living here a month or two you will just get used to it.
• Because of the Ithaca College music school, the brass bands playing Christmas music are actually in tune.
• Roads are rarely straight.
• Stopping for red lights is optional.
• Intersections are a free-for-all when turning right or left. It’s best to close your eyes.
• There is an unwritten rule that manhole (sewer) covers must be 6 inches (about 15 cm) below the street level. This makes all roads a slalom and improves driving skills.
• 30° F (0° C) is still t-shirt weather if you are under 35 years old.
• On some roads, cars are considered snow plows, this saves the city money and makes driving more fun.
• If you don’t have 4 or more bumper stickers supporting left-wing causes, you can’t stay longer than a week.
• Anti-Bush yard signs are mandatory.
• Dogs aren’t allowed on the Commons (see webcam) but stoned teenage hooligans are.
• You must shovel the sidewalk in front of your house, then magically make the ice disappear (chemically or through hard labor). If you don’t, a friendly neighbor will insert a snow shovel in you.

Welcome to Ithaca! 10 square miles of sanity surrounded by normality.

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As I mentioned in a recent post, there has been an ongoing war over the amazing Ithaca dog park. The last vote officially killed the dog park by two votes but if you think that was the end of it. Think again. Ithacans take their political battles seriously. (If you doubt it, try to count the number of "Bush Must Go" signs in people’s yards across the Ithaca area. It would be easier to count the houses without a sign).

As you know, a couple of elected officials decided that voting wasn’t so important and took the night off. That was like gasoline on a bonfire. Not only did the pro-dog park supporters get a re-hearing, the 2nd vote was UNANIMOUS in favor of saving the park.

Most of the population here may be registered Democrat (the rest are independent or Green Party), but unlike the Democrats, Ithacans can get things done. BTW, someone in my family has made the news for the 3rd time since moving here. Check out the two handsome gents and the impatient dog below. (For those who can read Kanji, yes I know my shirt says "Dirty American Devil". That’s why I bought it.)

"Hey! I know, let’s go for a drive in a car that was born and raised in southern California when it just might dump snow."
"Great idea! Have you prepared your car for winter yet?"
"What’s that?"

Everyone knows where this is going so I will get right to it.

Yes. We all went for a drive just as it started snowing on Saturday morning. We wanted to go somewhere and how bad could it be? The first hint came from the dog. She didn’t think it was a good idea and turned around to come back in right away. She could sense something was coming.

The snow came down so fast that the road disappeared immediately. Forget finding the center line. I couldn’t find the curb. To add more fun into the mix. It was COOOOOLD and the snow began to ice up the windshield. But that’s what wiper fluid is for, right? But not when it’s a block of solid ice somewhere under the hood.

Must be one of the winter prep things.

When we finally got home (with 2 jugs of -20° F rated wiper fluid and a bag of salt), we played a new game called "find the driveway under the snow without falling into the ditch). Marker poles anyone?

Must be another one of those winter prep things.

The wiper fluid jug said to drain all the non-winter fluid out first which can’t be done in an 18° F garage so I cleaned the windshield for 3 minutes to drain it out. By the time I was done, smart California boy had frozen over the entire windshield and passenger door.

Between then and now, a winter storm, with lovely lake effect snow, froze the 3 inches of snow already on the ground then gave us 4 more inches on top it. Today I tried to drive a car up our long inclined driveway 4 times before sliding off the road completely. My five-year old was laughing hysterically and my wife held up a score card.

I got an 8.

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I am proud of my newly-found fellow ithacans for their silent protest during former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s speech yesterday at Cornell (see 100 walk out on Ashcroft talk). This is one of the reasons we moved here.

The population here is aware of what’s going on in the world and is not afraid to disagree. We have lived in two places (both in California, sadly) where the majority felt that if something didn’t happen in the strip of land between the waves and the hills, then it just didn’t happen. This is a town where people stand up to be counted…

…except for one woman who really could have made a difference.

The awesome Ithaca dog park is gone. The Wednesday night vote sealed its fate. It didn’t have to be that way, but Robin Korherr (a council member who supported extending the site’s lease) decided not to show up for the vote. AGAIN! According to the Ithaca Journal "Had she been present, the resolution to extend the leash law exemption until April would have passed." It goes on to say that according to the minutes, she has missed at least 5 meetings this year.

Perhaps we dog park users should give Robin Korherr the same treatment that Ashcroft got if she ever shows up for a Common Counsel meeting again. Now that John Ashcroft has skedaddled from Ithaca, there are plenty of black shrouds available.

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At the start of deer season everyone is armed. Not really "everyone", mostly head trauma patients, drunks, or meth addicts. Even though Ithaca is left-wing central and often referred to as "10 square miles of sanity surrounded by normality", that normality leaks in at times. When hunting season starts, it gushes.

My one neighbor who counts as a "leak" is really just a squatter in a trailer on someone else’s land. Recently I ventured out at dusk to throw a stick for my dog not 20 feet from my front door when I heard a shot come from his direction. I’ve heard it before so I ignored it. Suddenly there was another followed by the "wzzzzzzzz" of a wild shot not that far in front of me and the "smack" of something hitting my neighbor’s house. A deer careened through my yard as if on fire. I was pissed off. He was shooting toward a cluster of houses aiming (and I use the term loosely) at deer standing on my property. Most importantly, he was shooting towards ME. I wanted to put his gun to imaginative uses, but that would be legally messy and slightly hypocritical. I resorted to yelling in his direction not to shoot toward houses.

At sundown, December 9th the madness ends.

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I am so into this winter thing.

According to my wife from northern England, we saw some REAL SNOW the other day. I thought I was looking at snow when some little wispy things blew out of the sky. Supposedly those are snow flurries, not snow. Thicker globs of white stuff poured out of the sky about a half hour later. She gave that her "snow" nod of approval when visibility dropped to 50 feet.

I was ready for it. The previous night I had gone to the hardware store just to buy a snow shovel. I called a friend in Montana from the snow shovel isle itself and had bought some huge bent green thing based on his qualified advice. Unfortunately, all the snow melted an hour later. I am now the proud owner of an extra long, orthapedic snow shovel and nothing to clear. I laugh now, but it won’t last.

We’ve had a surprise temperature drop here today which is also a new experience. Sure I’ve been in cold temperatures in California, but that was when I thought 32 was low. As I write this my thermometer says 18° F (gs- it hit 20° F before midnight). Here are some things I have just discovered as the mercury headed south.

• Long underwear is your friend
• Gloves were invented for a reason
• Take your gloves off before peeing in the woods - important!
• Grass is crunchy and glitters in the moonlight
• At 20° F Fluorescent bulbs are worthless
• At 20° F packing tape craps out - so much for packing away summer stuff.
• Unless you were raised to roll in snow wearing only underwear, a t-shirt under any jacket is nothing.
• When it’s 25° F outside, a 62° F house feels like a sauna
• At 28° F the dog won’t stay outside for long without serious retaliation in the chewed sneaker department
• At 22° F the dog runs out, squats, and runs back in before you can even close the door
• At 15° F the dog won’t go out

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Not Uma Thurman, but an Unidentified Munching Animal. While on a business conference call (stressing business here), my cell phone rang. It was my wife upstairs. "A strange animal is in the apple tree! (Everybody panic!)" I watched the tree for a while from a nearby window and there it was, a non-turkey, non-deer, non-rabbit animal. Now is the time for reader participation. What the hell was it? Eyewitnesses claim it was the size of a very fat cat with a reddish belly, brown coat and dark brown tail. It may have had some white on its face (or not) or a lighter colored face. Fact is, it was fat and not a squirrel or raccoon. It was crawling out onto thin branches to get apples and almost falling. Any guesses?

After all the extensive research I could do in 4 minutes and the countless emails I received on the subject (countless == zero), I have determined that the mystery animal that attacked our defenseless apple tree was a woodchuck. Everybody panic! At least a woodchuck won’t dart out in front of me at 3:45am.

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Daisy (our new puppy) had to widdle in the middle of the night. It was my turn, so I put on her leash and went out the front door with the light on. We only walked about 15 steps when the sound of "big rushing animal" stopped us cold. We must have looked ridiculous as she and I stood there like meat popsicles watching a giant bunny (okay, hare) bolt from the house to the woods only five feet in front of us. At the time, I was completely dazed and nothing registered for at least 15 seconds. By the time I got back to my bed I was thinking "what if it had been a bear?" Of course, there aren’t any bears in Ithaca. Right?

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