From Beckhanalian to Beckonomist

Happy Birthday USA! Your 229th birthday marks the birth of a new era in my life. Today is the last day that I am truly free in the land of the free and the home of the brave. It has been an eventful weekend, and a nice way to end this chapter in my life. It all began on Saturday when I made the long drive out to New York. Besides the sing along with Pat Benetar and Madonna, the ride to Syracuse was quite uneventful. A couple interesting things I noticed: cell phone service sucks in Central Vermont; the roads suck in Central Vermont; gas is about $0.15 per gallon cheaper in Vermont than in New York; New York has a state speed limit of 55 mph (the speed limit signs all mention that the limit is set by the state, implying if it was not the limit would be higher); New York does a nice job of posting what route you are on frequently in case you forget; each town in New York has a welcome sign mentioning the recent accomplishments of its high school athletes. Anyways the trip was long, and I was very thankful that I had a friend in the city to help me get through the always tough first weekend.

After moving my stuff into my new room, I ventured out for a night on the town with Tiff and some of her friends. We went to three bars in the Armory Square area: Mully’s, Ambrosia, and Teddy’s, and when they closed their doors at 2AM grabbed a slice of pizza at a local pizza parlor. I found out that Labatt beer is a popular brew in the area, which is great because Blue Light is one of my favorites! As if one night of partying weren’t good enough, we spent the next evening at her friend Jamie’s house. His family was having a Fourth of July party, and there was plenty of food and drink to go around. We planned to go back out to the bars later in the night, but found that most were empty and some were closed. I guess people really do like their barbecues on the Fourth.

The Fourth was just another day in a new city. I drove around town trying to figure out where things were. I found Dinosaur BBQ and also experienced Wegman’s. I started making the transition from a Granite Stater to a New Yorker, although I will never abandon my Red Sox. What would the Fourth of July be without patriotic music and fireworks? I knew last year would be tough to beat, since seeing the fireworks explode over the Washington Monument while listing to the National Symphony is pretty special, but the Syracuse Symphony was excellent and played a nice selection of music. The fireworks, well that is another story. They started out pretty nicely and were exploding at a higher frequency than the fireworks in Gorham do, until at once everything stopped. There was no grand finale. People were booing and complaining about how lame the display was, and everyone started to leave the vicinity. The radio station who was one of the sponsors ended up coming on the air and saying that the finale was being delayed because of some type of incident. Who’s ever heard of a delay in fireworks? It was pretty funny because after a half hour of waiting, the bursts and bangs of fireworks sounded and the sky was filled with color- for a whole two minutes! Ah, it was nice though, and it definitely beat having no fireworks.