Cooperstown, NY

Three gay guys go to Cooperstown and go into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum to use the restroom and check out the gift shop. Sounds like the set up for a joke, but it was true today. I hang my head halfway in shame that I am in this Mecca of Baseball and had no true interest in spending 2 hours in the museum, though I am sure the history and memorabilia would have been half fascinating. And half wasted on me. Okay, I feel so undeserving and wished my friend Scott or my brother-in-law Rick could have been here instead.

Yet...though the mainstreet which contains the massive museum is lined with baseball-themed shops, bars and restaurants, there is loads more to Cooperstown than baseball. And I LOVED the damn place! I am a big ass Cooperstown fan in one fleeting moment of part of a daytrip. John and Aris have their place in nearby Cherry Valley and took me to this county seat to show me this incredible town. It is stunning, people. I can't speak for the other three seasons, but here I am in Autumn looking at blistering reds and yellows and vibrant greens popping against a deep blue Otsego Lake. The 100 year old give or take elegant homes are so well maintained. It is just a slice of glorious Americana that even a liberal who gets accused of hating freedom can love and appreciate.

James Fenimore Cooper, the famous local boy author and giver of my first C+ in college in a paper I did on him, has an art museum named after him. There is the GRAND Otesaga Hotel that confirms this town as a place with bygone era elegance as it sits massively and proudly lakeside and has those turn of the century rocking chairs where one can sit and bliss out on the hotel's giant porch overlooking the lake. And the buffet. I gotta stop. I walked through that hotel like a hodad who didn't know how to act around proper folk. I wanted to take it all in. We even got the doorman to mind our car after I said we wanted to check out his hotel for future lodging. Not original, but he obliged and indulged.

This weekend has been so amazingly tonic-like and restorative for me. John and Aris are just wonderful and though we live across the hall in town we got to really know each other a lot better over our weekend here. I cannot thank them enough for their kindness and hospitality. They really showed me the area.

And as night fell and we knew we had to leave this Technicolor leafy wonderland, we all agreed it would be best to go back to Manhattan in the early morning. And like a kid whose parents decide to stay in Disneyland for one more day, I say "YAAAAAYYY!!!!!!!"