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Buffalo, 10/1-10/2
My original plan was to spend three days travelling from Boston to Chicago, via Ohio, where I had a friend to visit. But when the Ohio plan fell through, I figured out I could stay an extra night in Boston (to see, you may recall, The Animators) and drive a more direct route to Chicago in two days.
The halfway point was somewhere in upstate New York or Pennsylvania, but none of the cities around there particularly captured my attention, so I picked Buffalo more or less at random. (I did think about routing the trip through Toronto, a city I loved last time I visited, but one of the goals of this trip was "see America," and crossing the border seemed like a dilution.)
When I got to Buffalo, I realized two things: that one of its selling points was its proximity to Niagara Falls, and that, despite this, it was probably a more interesting place than I'd suspected. There were lots of interesting-sounding restaurants and buildings and things, but what I wanted to do was hit an open mike, and to my surprise there were at least five listed for that night in the local arts weekly. So I chose the one that sounded like a coffeehouse and looked close to my motel and headed out.
What that turned out to be was... a different conception of the open mike than I had previously encountered. The first thing that struck me was that, although there was something musical happening, the cafe was completely full of people talking loudly to their friends. The second thing was that I was older than their friends by at least ten years.
While I was ordering a cup of tea, the guy who seemed to be in charge--I think he brought the amp--yelled to one of his friends, "Hey, you should play something," and that set up his friend as the featured performer for as long as it took me to finish my tea and leave. The performance consisted of him sitting at a table playing sullen riffs on an electric guitar, while another guy sitting next to him sporadically started to sing something and then subsided.
You win some, you lose some.
The next morning I went to Niagara Falls. I'd never particularly intended to go there, but I was right next door, and I figured, if not now, then when?
What I learned is this: Niagara Falls is not a good tourist attraction for a person with even a mild fear of heights. It had been raining all night, so the sidewalk was slippery. It was still raining a little, so I was carrying an open umbrella. It was windy, so the umbrella tugged gently in various directions. And the sidewalk? It slopes down towards the falls.
But I went out there anyway, because I hate feeling constrained by fears. I wasn't actually able to look at the falls for more than a split-second at a time, but I did manage to look at the camera's viewfinder long enough to produce this utterly unexceptional photograph of America's oldest state park:
The halfway point was somewhere in upstate New York or Pennsylvania, but none of the cities around there particularly captured my attention, so I picked Buffalo more or less at random. (I did think about routing the trip through Toronto, a city I loved last time I visited, but one of the goals of this trip was "see America," and crossing the border seemed like a dilution.)
When I got to Buffalo, I realized two things: that one of its selling points was its proximity to Niagara Falls, and that, despite this, it was probably a more interesting place than I'd suspected. There were lots of interesting-sounding restaurants and buildings and things, but what I wanted to do was hit an open mike, and to my surprise there were at least five listed for that night in the local arts weekly. So I chose the one that sounded like a coffeehouse and looked close to my motel and headed out.
What that turned out to be was... a different conception of the open mike than I had previously encountered. The first thing that struck me was that, although there was something musical happening, the cafe was completely full of people talking loudly to their friends. The second thing was that I was older than their friends by at least ten years.
While I was ordering a cup of tea, the guy who seemed to be in charge--I think he brought the amp--yelled to one of his friends, "Hey, you should play something," and that set up his friend as the featured performer for as long as it took me to finish my tea and leave. The performance consisted of him sitting at a table playing sullen riffs on an electric guitar, while another guy sitting next to him sporadically started to sing something and then subsided.
You win some, you lose some.
The next morning I went to Niagara Falls. I'd never particularly intended to go there, but I was right next door, and I figured, if not now, then when?
What I learned is this: Niagara Falls is not a good tourist attraction for a person with even a mild fear of heights. It had been raining all night, so the sidewalk was slippery. It was still raining a little, so I was carrying an open umbrella. It was windy, so the umbrella tugged gently in various directions. And the sidewalk? It slopes down towards the falls.
But I went out there anyway, because I hate feeling constrained by fears. I wasn't actually able to look at the falls for more than a split-second at a time, but I did manage to look at the camera's viewfinder long enough to produce this utterly unexceptional photograph of America's oldest state park:
Niagra Falls... Slowly I turned....
Re: Niagra Falls... Slowly I turned....
Re: Niagra Falls... Slowly I turned....
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