Over the River LXV
August 2, 2023
Highlights and lowlights from my 65th two-wheeled trek to the Great State of New York:
0. The occasion for the visit was the ninth anniversary of my defection from the SPRM. Happy anniversary to me.
1. When boarding the inbound #40 bus on Third Street, I had to step around a heavy-set dude who was standing next to the driver and telling him there’s a bus from Pennsylvania to Alaska. “You can sleep on there,” the guy said before disembarking later in Niagara Falls.
2. I noticed a distinct eau de vinegar on the bus. It reminded me of my late grandfather, who absolutely hated the smell of vinegar.
3. One of the services Swift River Associates in (Town of) Tonawanda offers is contract crushing. Sports teams who overpay players and commit to bad long-term deals must be among their biggest clients.
4. This is the scene of an accident which caused a major backlog of traffic along southbound I-190. From the looks of it, the driver of the gray van ran into the back end of someone. Given how badly the front end was crushed, it was not surprising to see that the airbag had been deployed. There was also fluid under the van. Can you say “write-off?”
5. Sadly, there were not more than five or six people on the bus on the inbound trip and only a few more on the outbound trip. In the prewar era, it was common for there to be only five or six seats available.
6. A woman with a walker boarded not far from Niagara Square and had to hang on to the railing as the driver didn’t wait for her to put the money in the fare box before taking off. When the driver finally pulled over to let her tend to the fare and sit down, he asked her for proof that she qualified for reduced fare, so she dug the card out of her bra and showed it to him.
7. I wondered when it became standard procedure to put statues of politicians outside ballparks . . .
8. Various scenes around Canalside and the waterfront . . .
9. I wonder if this DWAM realized how dumb he looked with that face diaper on. Outside.
9a. Your guess as to the number of shots this DWAM has taken is as good as mine.
10. Set sail on the gay seas . . .
11. Flower bike . . .
12. Another sign brought to you by Captain Obvious . . .
13. A buffalo. In Buffalo.
14. Keep dreaming . . .
15. These days, “shot” has a much more sinister and negative connotation than anything involving an alcoholic beverage . . .
16. No doubt, this was posted by someone who has taken one or more of those shots . . .
17. It disgusted me to see so many parking lots around downtown only accepting payments by phone. Not only is it maddening to see cash or even credit cards not accepted, but places like this fail to consider that Buffalo is a border town which sees many visiting Canadians whose phone either doesn’t work in the U.S. or is subject to high roaming charges.
Hardly a prime tourist destination, Buffalo is not a place that can afford to be so picky with customers, and it’s an attitude one would not normally expect in the one country in the world above all others where money talks.
Welcome, indeed.
18. I can just hear the Al Bundy line, “You know what you gotta do, cowboy” . . .
19. And I’m sure Mayor Brown is watching the cameras himself . . .
20. Kudos to Spot Coffee for not playing any background music inside their restaurant. A welcome change from the place in Hamilton where I stopped recently.
21. In an increasingly familiar storyline, I had an easier time understanding the clerks in Quebec speaking in a language I’m hardly fluent in than I did with those at Spot Coffee who were speaking English.
22. Seated nearby was someone named Rick, who along with his wife, was trying very hard to impress some young girl who was with them. With his phone, Rick showed the girl some pictures of a school he and his siblings supposedly built before he and his wife were married.
23. Rick and George, someone also seated at a nearby table, each ordered toasted bread topped with a pale green spread that looked like ground-up leaves fished out of a yard waste bag left at a curb mixed with alfalfa sprouts.
24. While I was there, a scruffy bum walked by on Delaware Avenue proudly showing off both of his teeth.
25. Rhetorical question: Is there a Caucasian musicians club, by any chance?
26. My next stop was the library, where I listened to some woman bending the ear of a younger guy seated across the table from her. During this one-way conversation, I learned she was about to turn 60, her mother had recently passed away, she was applying for work since she didn’t have a job and she was having trouble finding a place to stay. I also heard all about her assorted health problems. In addition to having trouble with her knee and feet, she’s had a bunch of surgeries and is scheduled to have another one in October and has been having other problems that the many doctors she’s seen haven’t been able to pin down. After checking for giant white blood cells, one doctor thought she had an infection and wanted to refer her to the Mayo Clinic. But she insisted she didn’t have an infection. “I don’t have a fever,” she said. Another doctor noticed that her white blood cells were all clumped together, but was still baffled and wanted to do more tests. Hmm, blood cells clumping together. Doctor baffled. I couldn’t quite place it at the moment, but something sounded vaguely familiar about that. It was then that I was reminded of a line from a Clint Eastwood movie, “May I make a suggestion?” But who am I? Just a crazy conspiracy theorist.
27. View from the library looking down Ellicott Street:
28. It may have been there before and escaped my observant eye, but it’s nice to see them offer this recharging station at the Metropolitan Transportation Center:
29. You can never be too safe with those nasty viruses around . . .
30. I still find it shocking that NFTA buses still aren’t equipped with backup horns.
31. North of Niagara Square, some punk boarded and walked past the driver without paying. Then, while on the phone with one of his homies, he kept going back up front and asking the driver how long it would be before we got to Grand Island. After crossing the bridge, the driver shouted “Grand Island,” which brought the punk up front as the driver pulled up to the first stop on the island. But the punk didn’t know which stop to get out. He was asking his homie if he should get off near the Tops. Neither seemed to know. So the punk tried to hand his phone to the driver to get him to talk to his homie. The driver didn’t bite. Exasperated, the punk finally got off.
32. Farther north, a morbidly obese woman on a mobility scooter with pink hair and thighs thicker than the bus’s tires tried to board the bus. She got her scooter onto the ramp, but the motor conked out halfway up. Given all the strain it was under, it was no wonder. She finally had to get off, stand with the help of her cane and have the driver push the scooter inside while she waddled on board and took a seat on her scooter that had “Pride” stenciled on the rear. There can be no pride in being that fat. Not obese. Not overweight. Fat. And if that offends you, put down that cheesecake. Then she pestered the driver with all sorts of questions on how to get to the Niagara Falls Airport. And asking him to repeat the simple instructions several times. Don’t bother finding out before you leave the house or anything stupid like that. That’s what bus drivers are for.
33. Spotted in the Niagara USA Visitor Center was a young punk wearing a T-shirt with the message, “I spent my birthday in the can” written on the back.
34. At the Niagara Falls (Canada) Bus Terminal, I thought the taxi stand was an odd place to stand and read a book. Especially when you’re not waiting for a taxi.
35. On the GO bus I took back to St. Catharines, the 420 & Stanley stop turned out to be an epic 15-minute adventure. For starters, a guy with a thick Eastern European accent boarded with a $20 bill in his hands and tried to buy a ticket. The driver promptly informed him that Metrolinx stopped accepting cash more than three years ago and that he had to use the machine, where there was a long line. Next was a woman who tried to use her Presto card, only to have it rejected because there wasn’t enough money on it. “You should have checked the balance long before I pulled up,” the driver said.
So as the line was building at the ticket machine and passengers like me were left to wait endlessly, the driver got off to help speed up the process. The geniuses at Metrolinx who in their infinite wisdom thought no longer accepting cash on the bus was a good thing™ clearly didn’t see this coming. Eventually, everyone made it through. But then some weirdo with his hair tied in a couple of ponytails wearing a dirty jean jacket a thrift store would refuse who was casually watching this spectacle unfold decided to join the fray. He wanted to buy a ticket and kept waving a $20 bill around. The driver had to point out the sign on the ticket machine stating that it does indeed sell tickets. This painful exercise is repeated over the next several minutes. The driver practically had to hold the guy’s hand, but he eventually got his ticket. Before boarding, he asked which seat was his. “Take any seat,” she said.
Just as the driver climbed back behind the wheel and started up the bus again (it shut off automatically, probably because of the long delay), three Muslims with Bee-Clean uniforms who were sitting in the shelter the entire time got up and decided they should board the bus too. This is the only route the stop serves, but as this all was going on, it apparently didn’t occur to them that this was the bus they wanted. Fortunately, their boarding process went a lot smoother and the bus finally turned onto 420 and made its way toward St. Catharines. But that wasn’t all. At Niagara College, the next stop, some jerks parked right in front of the “NO STOPPING BUSES ONLY” sign to let people off. The bus driver wisely boxed them in and made them wait.
36. During the ride, the weirdo who thought there was reserved seating on the bus kept staring blankly in the distance while keeping two fingers pressed to the right side of his head. Occasionally, he took the fingers off his head and pointed forward, then side to side. Once, he made a twirling pattern. Just to be different. But each time, he put the same two fingers back on his head.
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