Syracuse – the Great White South?

Just this past weekend we (Amy, Liam and I) took a trip, along with the Keans (John, Dana, David and Daniel) to Syracuse, NY. The purpose of the trip was to do some shopping, and take advantage of the high Canadian dollar. Truth be told, the trip was already planned before the dollar sky-rocketed and that just turned out to be an unexpected bonus.

I’m not someone who enjoys shopping so I wasn’t particularily looking forward to the trip, but figured JK and I would find something fun to do while we were down there. JK has just recently picked up disc golf again so with the help of Dave we located a few courses in the area. A few days before the trip I posted a message to the CNYDGA‘s forum just to make sure courses were still open, etc. I got some replies right away with offers for guides so we were all set – just had to clear it with the girls…

We left Ottawa around 1300 on Friday afternoon and headed south. You can imagine my surprise when about 2 hours into the trip we ran into some snow – I mean it hadn’t even snowed in Ottawa yet! I figured it was just a few fleuries and it would pass in a short time. Boy was I wrong! The snow kept up all night and even into the next morning! What the heck?! The Canadian dollar worth more than the American dollar AND snow down south?! What sort of bizzaro world are we living in? :)

Anyways, we had made plans to be at the golf course (Jamesville Beach) for 0700 on Saturday and we weren’t going to let a little snow (probably about 4″) stand in our way. When we arrived at the course, a guy named John P (or JP) was waiting for us. I certainly hadn’t been expecting snow and so I didn’t bring appropriate clothing with me. I was wearing jeans and a pair of sneakers. JK at least had nylon pants on, but since this course had concrete tee pads he opted to leave his cleats in the car and instead wore the only other shoes he had with him – a pair of sneakers. Big mistake! By the end of the round our feet were soaked and my jeans were wet up to my knees. At least I had another pair of shoes to wear…poor JK. Anyways, JP showed us around the course and we had a great time playing. I managed to lose my Ken Climo Champion Eagle on the third hole we played but I wasn’t about to go trudging through a boggy area in my (then) dry sneakers in search of an errant throw so with a little pang of regret I let it go. Thankfully JP took a quick look around a day or two later and managed to find my disc! I’ll pick it up from him next time I’m down that way. For anyone who is wondering, JK beat me by one stroke on Saturday.

The rest of Saturday was spent shopping at an outlet mall (Waterloo Premium Outlets) west of Syracuse. Note to self (and anyone reading this) – shopping with a 2 year old, a 1 year old and a 6 month old is not much fun! Leave the kids at home next time! :) We found some good deals and headed back to the hotel happy I’d say. We ordered Chinese food for supper and wow did we get a lot! Turns out they don’t call then chicken balls in Syracuse…who knew? JK and I made plans to visit the Oxbow course the next morning, but didn’t post and say when we’d be there – thinking we’d probably show up around 0900 or so.

The Plan on Sunday had been to drop the girls (and the kids) off at a Target that was on the way to the course we were headed to. After dropping them off, we’d head out to the course and play a round and then pick them up on the way back to the hotel where we’d get some lunch and check out etc… The drop off went ok, but despite our google directions, we got turned around a bit and it took us a little longer to get to the course than expected. When we showed up there, there were a couple of cars in the parking lot and as we changed our shoes (JK actually put on his cleats this time despite the concrete tee pads) a couple of guys came strolling down the hill towards us. Turns out it was Doug and Don, twin brothers who had designed and built this course themselves! They wanted to show us around and it was very welcome by us. Turns out these were two of the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet and they were proud (rightfully so) of the course they had built. We had another great time playing this new course and thanks to both Doug and Don, neither JK nor I lost a disc. I can’t say enough great things about the course and I’ll definitely be heading back there sometime in the future. Anyways, the round took us a little longer than expected to complete and as a result we were a bit late picking up the girls. Suffice it to say that was not a good thing. Oh and for the record, I beat JK on Sunday by 5 strokes.

After heading back to the hotel and packing up and checking out we headed to a mall which was on the way back home. We made a few more purchases (including JK picking up a couple of iPod nanos at the apple store) before hitting the road for the return trip. We opted to go back through Ogdensburg (in fact that was how we went down as well) and based on the total wait time of under 5 minutes at the border I think it was the right choice! We managed to leave quite a lot of our hard earned Canadian dollars down south during this trip, but that’s what free trade is all about right? :)

I’ll finish this post up with a quote from Dana. We were in a shoe store and I had on a new pair of sneakers (sketchers) which I wanted her opinion on. She said, “Well I like them way better than anything you currently own, but I’m not crazy about them.” That’s some nice work Dana! :) Oh and yes – I did end up buying them.