The roster of events to tick off my list was added to this week when I ventured into the dark and frigid abyss of Orchard Park to take in Monday Night Football -- namely the Buffalo Bills-Cleveland Browns game.

At these type of events, the game itself is almost incidental, similar to an annual trek to the U.S. Thanksgiving Day game in Detroit. Myself and a herd of good friends set aside a couple of days for an annual get-together, have a few pops and tell some stories that aren't true.

Monday night was my second NFL game in Buffalo. The previous outing was a highly miserable, rain-soaked, boring affair between the Jim Kelly Bills and the Aikman-Irvin-Smith Cowboys. A 13-3 final score sums up that experience.

Now Monday was pretty cool, but we were prepared. I had good boots, extra socks, a tuque and a big parka with a hat built in, and good gloves.

Locked and loaded.....for a normal outing.

This was not "normal", though.

We started our tailgate while the sun was still up. We were officially cold an hour after the sun went down, but we still had three hours to game time.

Despite our preparation, if there was any wind at all I would have bailed on the game and sought out some heat, somewhere, anywhere, in the grandstand.

But the cold was only part of the story. Aside from somewhat typical beer-induced antics, the basic differences between Americans and Canadians became more and more apparent as the evening wore on.

Canadians are generally a polite, conservative lot. At sporting events, it is more important to look good than to have a good time, for many.

Of course, there are idiots in any mix who can't handle their beer. I am simply drawing on 30 years of event-going.

The two at the top of list for me in terms of the most "interesting" are a Grateful Dead concert at Chrysler Arena at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1988, and last night.

The deadhead crowd is number one by faaaaaar.

Between the gypsies selling pasta made with who-knows-what right from a hot plate in the parking lot, to the posse that was smoking up using a pipe made from a four-foot long elk horn in the arena -- and that's just a couple of things I can publish -- that "show" had it all.

Monday night, we had the drunk guys streaking through the tailgate party. Other guys who thought it would be cool to throw their plastic cooler on their bonfire, which, by the way, was just about 30-feet from the big white sign with red letters which read, "NO BONFIRES".

As game time approached, our group of six packed up our travellers and headed over to the stadium. That scene was what lead to the Ann Arbor flashback. Beer and lots of illegal things were flying everywhere. Police were directing traffic, and that's it.

Monday, we never saw a police officer at any time, except directing traffic on the way out.

I did not see my first concert until I was 17, in 1981, but I can't imagine a time, in Canada, when the free-spirited antics of sporting events and concerts in the U.S. would have been acceptable north of the border. And, believe me, some of what goes on is not acceptable by anyone's standards. I'm simply talking about the basic party standard of walking around the tailgate with beer-in-hand.

Different strokes...., for sure.