This is why I love traveling: “Sir, we don’t have any overhead room for your luggage. We’ll have to gate check it. It’ll be waiting for you in Buffalo.” Except, it wasn’t waiting for me. I was waiting for it. And waited. And waited. And it never arrived. So head over to the luggage counter, where the door is locked and nobody is around. So I called the national line, where some guy in Bombay is answering the phone and we can’t understand each other, mostly because I don’t speak Bombayean. In the middle of that painful conversation, the luggage chick comes back from her “smoking break” but first has to deal with a lady from Warsaw, Poland whose luggage got stuck in Chicago. You can imagine how that conversation went. “How long have you been out of the country?” “Twenty years.” “NO, how long have you been gone on this trip?” “Oh, six days.” I think they were speaking Bombayean. Keep in mind, this is at midnight. Get through that drudgery and head over to the rental car counter, where they tell me my wheels are in stall C20. So I go down to the garage and it only goes up to C16. No C20. Anywhere. Well, maybe in LaGuardia, but that seems a little far to go to find my car. So I head back upstairs but it’s now past midnight and I am the last customer so they have already bolted. Like Usain. So I head back down to the garage and start hitting the automatic unlock device on my keychain hoping to hear the “boop boop beep.” I don’t hear it, but fortunately the headlights go on and off. The car was in F20. Check into the hotel. I have not eaten since taking off from Sea-Tac at 1. “Oh, no sir, our room service closed at 11. You should have called ahead and we could have had food waiting for you in your room when you arrived.” Hmm, soggy hamburgers at 1 in the morning. Sounds good. So I head across the street to a place called Jacks Bar and Grill, and the only thing they are serving is — this is beautiful, given the locale — Buffalo Wings. Hot, Hotter and Hottest. Of course. So my nether regions are a little on fire this morning. I think I have to head up to Niagara Falls to cool them off. I hope the concierge speaks more than Bombayean so I can get proper directions.

Before that, though, I wanted to point out a few things. The story in the Buffalo News this morning says Bills left tackle Jason Peters definitely will not be playing against the Seahawks tomorrow, which means Lawrence Jackson gets Langston Walker and Patrick Kerney gets Kirk Chambers (who I think I called Kirk Cameron earlier in the week). Next in line after that is rookie Demetrius Bell, a seventh-round draft pick.

Also, I posted a story the other day about linebacker Angelo Crowell having surgery on his knee, forcing him to miss this game. Well, I guess the Bills didn’t know he was getting the surgery, and they are so pissed at him that they cleared out his locker and gave it to a guy they just signed. Here is a link to the story.

Also, the Seahawks had a very uneventful trip here. Took them all of four hours to make the cross-country trek and they arrived in a timely fashion last night — before room service closed. They’ll have a walk-through that is closed to the media at Ralph Wilson Stadium today. The weather here is rather Seattle-like, gray, cloudy and occasional rain, about 65 degrees. They should feel right at home. I know I do — except for the no-clothes part.