Over the River LXXVIII
May 31, 2024
Highlights and lowlights from my 78th two-wheeled trek to the Great State of New York:
1. Waiting with me at the Fairview Mall bus stop this morning was a group of unhappy commuters waiting for a Burlington-bound GO bus that didn’t show up. Having the same thing happen to me with a regional bus last week, I felt their pain.
2. When the regional bus pulled up to the Niagara College stop, there was the usual automated announcement, “Niagara College, Niagara-on-the-Lake Campus.” This prompted someone seated nearby to get up and ask the driver if we were in Niagara Falls.
3. After clearing U.S. Customs at the Rainbow Bridge, I passed by a couple of CBP officers going through someone’s luggage with a fine tooth comb. That could not have been a pleasant experience for the travelers.
4. My intention on this day was to catch the Discover Niagara Shuttle to Fort Niagara. I was there in plenty of time, yet the bus didn’t show up. I realize you can’t complain too loudly about a service you’re getting for free, but still, if the whole idea is to attract tourists, it needs to be reliable or don’t bother running it. Upon my return to St. Catharines, I heard from someone who said his wife waited for an hour and a half for the shuttle. “I won’t do that again,” she said. And on the heels of being burned twice by that service myself, neither will I.
5. And here I thought Plymouth Rock was in Massachusetts . . .
6. More scenes that just scream “Niagara Falls, New York” . . .
7. Some of the things plumbers have to do are indeed gross . . .
8. There’s undoubtedly a juicy story behind this . . .
9. Guilty as charged . . .
10. I don’t need any of them . . .
11. Obviously our former mayor did not register his trademark of the word “compassion”™ in the U.S., as these lawyers would have been forced to acknowledge it if he had . . .
12. Passing me on Niagara Falls Boulevard was a truck from Walgreens. “At the corner of happy & healthy,” read the slogan. I don’t think there are too many happy and healthy people who took the poison that pharmacies like Walgreens pushed and are still pushing so hard.
13. A guard dog for the chairs . . .
14. Support for America’s elected president . . .
15. In Griffon Park, a black guy got out of his car and hobbled past me toward the washroom. “Thank God for bathrooms,” he said. “I couldn’t have made it home.”
16. Along Buffalo Avenue was a guy pushing a stroller with his baby wrapped in a rainbow-colored blanket. For some, the indoctrination can’t begin early enough in life.
17. Take three paces and dig at the spot marked “X” . . .
18. Inside Amy & Co., I listened as the heavily tattooed clerk was talking to her chubby friend about books. One book had a, like, ghost vibe. In another, a character is, like, trying to find her sister who is, like, stuck up. There’s a series she wants to read, but she’s, like, curious to see how the first book goes. They have, like, cute quotes in there, she said.
19. While there, they had run out of scones, so the clerk put a sign in the window, “Closed. Sold out.” Yet someone came in anyway. “I’m closed,” she said. Not “the cafe is closed.”
20. No matter what . . .
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