Over the River XCII
June 14, 2025
Highlights and lowlights from my 92nd two-wheeled trek to the Great State of New York:
1. While I was waiting for the regional bus at Fairview Mall, a tall, scruffy, bearded dude boarded a #305 bus and proceeded to give the driver a song and dance about how he had to be somewhere at 7:30 and forgot his wallet. So the driver let him ride like a Winnipegger. But I found it interesting that he didn’t forget the cigarette that was hanging out of his mouth.
2. For the first time ever, I had two open lanes from which to choose at U.S. Customs at the Rainbow Bridge. But those traveling in the afternoon had a much longer wait, and CBP officers were out in the middle of the lines questioning incoming motorists.
3. Apparently NFTA has added free WiFi on their buses, but from my experience, it’s worth exactly what you pay for it. Nothing. Same goes for the spotty service at the Metropolitan Transportation Center.
4. After I took a seat at Overwinter Coffee in Buffalo’s Elmwood Village, the girl behind the counter began talking to her boss, first lamenting that she never knows what to get her father for Father’s Day. “He, like, has everything,” she said. Then she went on and on about her own troubles. “I’m, like, so tired,” she said after working all day Monday and six hours on Wednesday. “I’ve been on, like, five hours of sleep for the last four days. I, like, can’t get to sleep. My eyes, like, hurt so bad. I’ve been taking allergy pills and eye drops and nothing works. They’re crying and they hurt so bad.” So much so that she told her boss she doesn’t want to work tomorrow. The boss offered her the chance to come in later if she wanted, but she said, “It’s, like, stressing me out.”
This exchange was temporarily interrupted by a, gasp, customer. An Asian girl who wasn’t sure what she wanted. “If you’re looking for, like, added flavors,” the boss said. “We have vanilla latte.” That seemed to appeal to her. After serving the Asian girl, the boss began talking about his beard as another male colleague joined the fray. “I, like, shaved yesterday,” the boss said. “I, like, put in, like, the lower guard setting. Now it’s, like, what I got going on. I, like, don’t want to shave my character.”
“He’s shown me pictures of himself without a beard,” said the girl to her other male colleague. “He doesn’t even look like the same human.”
The boss then lamented how the beard is causing him problems at his other job. “I’m being bullied by my boss,” he said. “It’s, like, discrimination against my physical appearance.”
The girl sympathized as she spoke about her own appearance. “Like, I wear enough makeup so it’s not, like, too much,” she said. But it was way too much, as I noticed upon approaching the counter. The bleached white hair and nose rings didn’t help either.
5. As all of this was going on, a DWAM™ was walking by across the street. Outside. Thankfully, the DWAM™ is slowly, but surely becoming an extinct species, but there are still those determined to hold out to the bitter end.
6. One of the customers who interrupted the exchange was a guy wearing a Bills T-shirt with the caption “Angry Runs.” For those in a foul disposition when they have diarrhea?
7. While unlocking my bike just before leaving, a woman walking by asked me if I was ticketing cars. Puzzled, I asked what made her think I was a police officer. She said it was because of my high-visibility vest.
Loyal readers may recall that it wasn’t the first time I’ve been mistaken for a police officer while in the Great State of New York. Many years earlier, while in Oppenheim Park in Wheatfield, which was closed at the time, a photographer approached me and asked if I was a cop.
8. A display of gayness painted on the sidewalk on Elmwood Avenue . . .
9. Bye, bye, Milo . . .
10. I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream . . .
11. More gayness on display in Allentown . . .
12. During the war, I wonder how “inclusive” they were to those who eschewed the gene-altering poison injections.
13. While in the library, a scruffy, heavy-set white dude was showing the vending machines to a couple of his black buddies and pointing out that coffee costs only 50 cents. One of the black guys wondered if he could use the cash app on his phone since he didn’t have any money on him. The white guy thought he could, but in any event, they moved on.
14. As I was making my way to the Metropolitan Transportation Center, I stumbled upon this little press conference which was taking place prior to the raising of the flag in honor of the Juneteenth holiday. The only others in attendance seemed to be NFTA employees.
As the speaker was talking about the specially wrapped Juneteenth-themed bus, a woman walking by on the sidewalk yelled, “HA!”
15. Boarding the outbound #40 bus ahead of me was a woman wearing rainbow-colored sneakers with “PRIDE” plastered on them and another woman toting a purse in the shape of a chicken, complete with a red comb near the zipper.
16. Just after the bus had pulled out of the MTC, a black guy wearing a gray sweatshirt with the message “LIVE TO FISH” written on it flagged down the driver, who stopped to let him on, even though he wasn’t at an official bus stop. Grateful, the guy exclaimed, “I should take your picture, man. Some of those drivers are SO mean.” I wasn’t really surprised by the comment, as I’ve seen NFTA drivers blow off passengers at official stops often enough, let alone a circumstance like this when he didn’t really have to pick the guy up.
17. After waiting for a dump truck that was backing out of a construction scene on Stanley Avenue in Niagara Falls (Canada), the GO bus driver genuflected.
18. As was the case when I disembarked from the #110 Niagara Transit bus at Main & Ferry, I practically had to push my way through the crowd to get off the GO bus at Fairview Mall because of all the rude passengers hovering around the door.
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