People often ask me, "John, what is Auburn like?"

What they actually say is, "Ah, cold up there! You want another drink?", turn heel and ... zip.

When TWIL and I visited Auburn on my way to Rochester recently - more about that tomorrow - we quickly ran out of things to do. That happens in Auburn. In fact, everyone else was busy. Ellen and her kids were working and playing at the Reva Rollerdrome, which she owns with her husband Mike Ferro. Margot, my oldest niece is a competitive roller figure skater and anchor staff at the concession stand. (The joke in my house is that it's like being a great accordianist. We're so proud; don't encourage her.) Mom was cooking for the father's day cook out. Mom cooks every year about this time.

Thank goodness there's mini-golf. Notice there's no astroturf under TWIL's feet? It was that kind of game. And TWIL bested me by a mile.

Fortunately, there's a home-grown ice cream place, Reese's Dairy Stop (think DQ with seemingly infinite menu options) at the golf "course." Which is like shooting schools of fish in a small barrel with a depth charge. It was 11:00 a.m. when we finished our round of golf and I was already disappointed about waiting so long. Incredibly, they weren't serving soft ice cream. Which is what you pull off the road in the heat for if you grew up near Auburn and didn't have air conditioning in your car (that was a lot of us back then). You could have hard ice cream at home and the driver - always Dad - knew it.

It was already incredibly humid on a very changeable Father's Day. As the weather shifted, we tagged it with varying degrees of comfort. "This is an okay day for a wedding." "Feels like it's going to rain. Oh, boy." "Now this would be a little uncomfortable." "I'm going to die in that dress if it's like this." That's TWIL speaking last.

We're calculating how long it takes to get from the Wedding spot to Abbott's, the Rochester place for frozen yogurt. Bookish Girl says so. Me, I don't get into fine distinctions when it comes to ice cream products. More cream is better. But easy access and quantity trump any other criteria. Even two-dimensional ice cream will do in a pinch.