By MATT CHANDLER
Buffalo Law Journal

When the grind of the billable hour becomes too much yet the backlog of client meetings doesn't permit for a weeklong escape, what do local attorney do to unwind?

Sure, some jet off to the land of sun and surf for a long weekend and some find reasons to visit their firm's office in Palm Beach more frequently. But there are plenty who not only survive the Buffalo winter, they embrace it and find creative ways to unwind in the snow locally.

We prodded a few of them to share their secrets to shaking off the winter doldrums and making it through until April.

 

Sharon Prise Azurin
Phillips Lytle LLP

• Age: 40
• Residence: Orchard Park
• Ideal getaway: A hotel with a pool, a manicure and a fake Wegmans.

With a family that includes three girls ages 7, 5 and 3, Azurin knows the inherent dangers of long car rides and airplane trips. That's why the corporate attorney devised a way to keep everyone in the family happy, and to ensure that she doesn't need a getaway to recover from her getaway.

"In the winter with the kids, everybody gets a little stir crazy, and it's nice to do something different," she said. "With young children, it's nice that you don't have to go too far to feel like you are getting away."

Away for the family involves a relatively short trip out to the suburbs of Rochester for a weekend of relaxation.

"We go to stay at the Woodcliff Hotel and Spa in the Fairport/Victor area," she said. "The indoor swimming pool is a big draw with the kids in the middle of winter, and it's got a nice location near the Eastview Mall for some shopping. It's close to the Village of Pittsford, and at the hotel itself they have a spa where you can get a massage or a manicure, which is nice."

A weekend of shopping, swimming and exploring new restaurants is capped off with a day trip to the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, where her children explore an indoor butterfly garden, two floors of interactive exhibits and the highlight of the day, a chance to shop at a kid-friendly model of a Wegmans supermarket. After a long day at Strong, not having to pile back in the car and drive home is a good thing.

"They get so excited to stay in a hotel," she said. "It's such an event for them, you don't need to get on an airplane to do that."

While the escape is relaxing, Azurin says the family enjoys winter in Buffalo just fine.

"We do a lot of the winter activities locally, including going down to Kissing Bridge and sledding at Chestnut Ridge, but you're still just home," she said. "It's nice to leave that behind once in a while, even if you are only an hour away."

 

John Condren
Rupp Baase Pfalzgraf Cunningham & Coppola LLC

• Age: 44
• Residence: East Amherst
• Ideal getaway: Any place with two nets, a puck and some available ice time.

Don't count John Condren among those who bemoan a good bone-chilling Buffalo winter. In fact, this attorney embraces it. While his colleagues escape the pressure of the office by heading to some tropical destination or the comfortable confines of their homes, Condren is happiest lacing up a pair of skates and hitting the ice.

"I've been playing since high school at City Honors (School), and since then I've stayed involved in a variety of adult recreational leagues for the last 25 years," he said. "I play regularly in a league at the Pepsi Center in Amherst with some Amherst Police officers, and then I play in various tournaments throughout the year."

When the long hours at the office and stress are building, Condren says, it helps to know his next hockey game is never far away.

"It's something I look forward to at the end of the day. Usually we play late nights, because that is when the ice is available," he explained. "You kind of lose your professional identity. Whether you are a lawyer, a police officer or a laborer, on the ice, everybody is a hockey player."

His love of the game has taken Condren on the road to East Aurora and over the border in Hamilton, Fort Erie and Niagara Falls, Ontario.

"There are so many opportunities in Western New York for hockey players to find some ice and a game," he said. It's also a chance to get out and get some great exercise."

Though he can often be found skating at the Pepsi Center, Condren enjoys taking his game outdoors and confronting the elements head-on.

"These pond-hockey tournaments are the big thing now," he said. "I played in one in East Aurora on New Year's Eve, and I played last year and I'll play again this year in the big one downtown with the Buffalo Department of Public Works team."

The centerman says as long as he can skate, he plans to keep doing what he loves - and getting to do it in the frigid confines of Western New York only adds to the appeal.

"It's a matter of the camaraderie and team spirit that I enjoy."

 

Alice Joseffer
Hodgson Russ LLP

• Age: 60
• Residence: Williamsville
• Ideal getaway: Her home away from home, where she can ski out her front door.

Lots of people load the skis on top of the car and head out Friday night for a weekend of skiing. Alice Joseffer does it with style.

The avid skier is a member of Holimont, a private ski resort in Ellicottville. While for some it is all about the skiing, for Joseffer, the entire experience is the attraction.

"We joined in 1994, and we go there virtually every weekend in the winter," she said. "It's a very friendly, family-orientated place to stay."

About half of the club's 1,400 members come from across the Canadian border, and Joseffer sees that as part of the draw.

"It makes it a really unique opportunity to meet people and become friends with people from a wide geographic area," she said. "We have so many good close friends who are Canadian, because of being a member at Holimont. Of course it is about skiing, but it is also about this sense of community."

Joseffer and her family are deeply entrenched in the Holimont community. She serves on the board of directors there, and they own a home that sits on the side of a mountain.

"It is a ski-in-and-ski-ski-out place. It's sort of like going back to being a kid in the sense of going outside to play," she said. "Friends will ski up and say, ‘Are you ready?' and we just come out, put on our skis and go. Skiing at a special place where you know so many people and there is that type of interaction is what's so great."

Though her family also owns a home in Florida, you get the distinct impression that Joseffer will take snow over sun any day.

"I love to be outside in the snow, and Sunday evening comes and I just can't wait until we come back," she said. "We go to Florida in November or in April, but in the middle of winter, this is where I want to be."

 

Charles Swanekamp
Jaeckle Fleischmann & Mugel LLP

• Age: 55
• Residence: Getzville
• Ideal getaway: A plateau with 400 inches of snow and some nearby barbecue

Swanekamp has a dream winter getaway. Just don't tell his wife how much it cost him to get started.

"Probably 11 or 12 years ago, I was the poster child for seasonal affective disorder," he explains. "I despised winter, I absolutely hated snow and I literally I put my life on hold from November until the middle of March. I got into a world-class funk."

All of that changed thanks to an article Swanekamp read in a running magazine.

"It said that the hot thing out in Aspen was snowshoe racing and how they had developed these high-tech snow shoes you could run in," he said. "They were ridiculously expensive, so I had to lie to my wife about how much they cost." (If you're reading this, Mrs. Swanekamp, they were $250).

"I bought them and took them out to the track and started doing laps and I was giggling like a little kid," recalls Swanekamp. "I thought, man, I'm really onto something here."

Soon, Swanekamp was running across tracks and through nature preserves all over Western New York.

"I used to get a lot of people who would laugh when they would see me running because the snowshoes throw up this rooster tail of snow behind me," he recalled.

About eight years ago, on a lark, Swanekamp tried out for the Empire State Games and, to his surprise, made the team, representing Western New York in Lake Placid. While there racing in the 100-, 200- and 400-meter snowshoe races, he had the chance to try out another winter diversion, cross-country skate skiing.

"I bought these skate skis that were the same ones used by the Olympic team" - this time, he wouldn't say how much he paid for them - "and the next thing I know I am a fanatical cross-country skier," he said.

While he still occasionally finds time to strap on the snowshoes, Swanekamp has crafted what he considers the ideal winter getaway.

"I like to go to a place called the Tug Hill Plateau. It's about 45 minutes north of Syracuse," he said. "The air that goes across Lake Ontario fills up with all this moisture and rises over this little plateau and dumps between 300 and 400 inches of snow a year there."

Swanekamp says Tug Hill is home to some world-class cross-country skiing; his day trips two to three times a month out to what he jokingly referred to as "the Scandinavia of New York" have long cured his winter blahs.

"I'll leave early in the morning, ski for several hours, burning 3,000 calories. Then I go to the Dinosaur (Bar B Que) in Rochester for a meal of the finest barbecue the state can offer before driving home fat and happy," he said. "And that is my quintessential winter getaway."

 

Alan Wishnoff
Phillips Lytle LLP

• Age: 55
• Residence: Amherst
• Ideal getaway: Howling with (pretend) wolves.

When most people think of warm temperatures and frolicking in the water in December, they'll call the travel agent a book a trip to Florida, maybe California, even the islands for a getaway.

Alan Wishnoff isn't most people. The litigator passes on the sunshine state and opts for a short drive over the border for a few days at the Great Wolf Lodge.

"It is a hotel with a big indoor water park in Niagara Falls, Ontario," Wishnoff explains. "They are open all year long and, in fact, I've actually been there in the summer."

But it is the winter months that make the lodge a particularly appealing way to escape the snow and wind and forget about winter, if only for a few days.

"It's a very fun place for the kids, he said. "In addition to the water park, they have all of these animatronic animals around. They actually have these wolves high above the fireplace, and if you howl at them, they howl back at you."

Wishnoff says it is the perfect getaway to take his six-year-old son. The two made the trek last month during the holiday break.

"You never have to leave the building. It has places to eat, a game room for the kids, and they keep the temperature at about 85 degrees in the water-park area, so you do feel like you are in a beach environment in the summer."

Wishnoff first heard about the Great Wolf Lodge through friends, and says he plans to make it a regular winter escape.

"I'm not one of these people who goes down to Florida every year, even for a week. I'm OK with the snow," Wishnoff says. "What's funny is that I'm a transplant from the New York City area, and I don't even mind (cold weather) as much as the people who are from here."