"Have you crossed together before?" asked the US Border Patrol officer in Lewiston, NY yesterday just after 9am, in keeping with the well-established practice of making sure to ask a question that I have never been asked before. I was with a friend with whom I had never traveled anywhere. The only problem with him that I know of is that he's a long-time Miami Dolphins fan. So much so that he insisted on wearing his Ricky Williams Dolphins game jersey into the stadium (and it earned him a few comments too). He's also a doctor and one with a connection to the auto insurance/IME industry to which I have recently and quite unexpectedly been introduced in my own right. So, we talked a bit about that business and he sort of told me where the industry's bodies are buried and some other juicy stuff too. Turns out that people in the industry, like in all other industries, act in their own self-interest. But the system works more or less satisfactorily and is clearly the product of heavy political pressure to hold and/or lower auto insurance premiums in Ontario.
"No we haven't", I said to the border officer, making a mental note of yet another new question to add to the list. We then declared our alcohol and all other forms of contraband on board and a moment later we were on our way along I 290 toward the bridge to Grand Island on a spectacular November morning.
Being the closest home game to Veteran's Day, the national anthem was sung with an American flag almost as big as the playing field stretched out and then folded up with remarkable speed and precision by military personnel. And a hercules flew over low and steeply banked just as the anthem ended. Americans love this stuff, But they don't wear poppies like we do in Canada. I had a poppy on my Bills lanyard yesterday and it may have been the only in the stadium.
Poppies or not, the Bills didn't disappoint their fans yesterday as they snapped a three game home losing streak, powered by strong performances from some key players on offense like Sammy Watkins, LeSean McCoy and Tyrod Taylor. All looked healthy although McCoy was slow to get up on a fourth quarter play but Karlos Williams, himself back from a concussion a few weeks ago, finished the game, and the Dolphins, off. With me in the stands, the Bills home record is 2-0. Without me, its 0-3.
So the Bills, having swept the Dolphins this year, find themselves with three days to prepare for another critical division tilt against the Jets which also features Rex Ryan's first trip to the Meadowlands since being fired after coaching there for the past six seasons. The league, in its constant effort to create and market new product lines, has assigned official Christmas colours to each team for Thursday's game. The Bills will be dressed entirely in red and the Jets entirely in green. At 4-4, a Bills win would bring them even with the Jets who are now 5-3. The Patriots will win the division of course and could easily run the table like they did in 2007. The race for the two AFC wildcard spots looks to still be wide open at the mid-point of the season.
Otherwise big changes are happening. There's a new Prime Minister and cabinet in place and I have a new place to go on weekdays now. I take the Sheppard subway as far east as it runs and then get on a bus and go further east to the Consumer's Road Area (CRA) where I get off the bus and enter a non-descript CRA office building. It isn't a signature location for the city in terms of the quality of the local architecture or the lunch options or much else really but, ever so slowly, for reasons I can't explain, it is growing on me. I'll be sure to include a full description of my experience in the CRA in the long-form census comments section.
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