Today we picnicked at Binghamton’s lovely Otsiningo Park, bringing  Boar’s Head bologna and liverwurst, since it is one of my short-term missions in life to consume as much of these products as possible given price and availability.  Since the “good bagel place,” according to my father, closed, he suggested we buy bagels early in the day at Giant.  Where else, since Giant seems to have the market wrapped up in this area.  Sitting on an old shower curtain that my dad has expressly for the purpose of going to the park, we ate our lunch and did the crossword puzzle in the Press & Sun-Bulletin.  The bagels were not bad, but the liverwurst didn’t hurt.  Dinner, oh, dinner!  We went back to New York Pizzeria in Binghamton and had Buffalo wings, pizza and a chicken parmesan hero.  Good Buffalo wings are in plentiful supply in these parts, and NYP cranks out some contenders.  They are made to order from real chicken wing sections, so you are eating something with flavor and texture, not a sodden mess that came premade from a supplier to your plate via microwave.  The chicken parmesan hero was what I had been craving.  A big, juicy chicken breast cutlet — breaded and fried — on Italian bread with decent sauce and massive amounts of mozzarella on top, all toasted up together in the pizza oven.  When I come to New York this is one of the things I try to get my hands on early and often.  Sure, I have an allergy to tomatoes, particularly when they are concentrated, but these heroes are so damned good I don’t care.

We checked into the super bad Super 8 in Binghamton this afternoon.  Why?  Well, although the Motel 6 was fab, it did not have free (or even pay) high-speed wireless internet.  When you have a website, dial-up becomes old quickly.  So we thought we’d “upgrade” for a couple weeks and were looking forward it.  Upon arrival at check-in, we came upon a woman railing about the lack of extra pillows, the bad AC and the dampness.  She said that this was “the worst place she ever paid to stay.”  We’d have to agree.  Our room was, overall, tacky, dirty, dank, sticky and broken down.  There was something akin to a gunshot hole in the back of the bathroom door, and the horrors that existed behind the toilet in the bathroom rivaled the worst gas station rest room ever.  Can you say “water damage” or “dry rot?”  The walls in the place were stained and had a yellow hue that had nothing to do with paint color, and the furniture was well past its prime.  The management may want to — and I know this is a crazy idea — put some of their profits back into the business.  But, if you can handle serious cooties, they do have a fast wireless internet connection. 

After we hung out a bit we drove over to Wegman’s, a tony supermarket chain, to get some snacks for dinner.  Wegman’s is like Whole Foods, so we were able to get decent take-out sushi, cheese and whatnot for a hotel room picnic.  There were piles of vacuum-packed ready-to-cook spiedie meat in refrigerated display cases and, joy of joys!, pieces of whole smoked whitefish from the Acme Fish Corporation in Brooklyn, New York.  Silky, sensuous smoked whitefish flesh….salty, savory, oily, luscious smoked whitefish flesh.    UPDATE:  Months later, we received a full refund based on the complaint we filed.  That was nice.