Recent PostsOver the River CIX
June 4, 2026
Highlights and lowlights from my 109th two-wheeled trek to the Great State of New York:
1. While waiting in the only open lane at U.S. Customs, a young female CBP officer with a surly disposition came out from the building to collect a stack of passports from the guy working the booth.
2. New in the state park is this display, complete with more Indigenous symbolism. Even by leaving Canada, I can’t get away from all this groveling.
3. More new items in the state park, including this interactive map of the grounds and the pleated, dual-effect mural:
4. The perfect place for those who obsess about details . . .
5. Outside the Tim Hortons on Niagara Falls Boulevard was a disheveled old guy puffing on a cigarette and involved in an animated conversation with no one in particular.
6. Inside, I was treated to another conversation between Lee and Fred, the same two guys who were there during my last visit. Lee began by talking about how they banned clotheslining for wrestlers. “He picked that 200-pound guy up over his head,” he went on to say about of one of the wrestlers he saw in Buffalo recently.
Next, he talked how he loves his 10-year-old granddaughter to death and that his grandson has been working out at the gym and wants to go to Florida. After this, he told Fred, “Bob’s been good to me. I owe him some money for putting my camper there.” “Whenever you get the money, you pay me,” Bob told him.
He then spoke about his conversation with Jimmy at the school. “He was talking to a girl who already dumped him,” said Lee. “That’s not a relationship, my friend. She’s just playing a game. I give a girl one chance. You don’t give her a second chance.” He said he went through hell with his wife, who he was married to for 35 years.
He proceeded to bemoan how his sister Laura only gets $400 every month from Social Security. “But she didn’t work much,” he said.
The highlight of this exchange, however, came when he spoke about a time when he was in high school. A bully by the name of John Scott was on him all year, calling him “Sunshine” and slapping him repeatedly. This just after Lee had his appendix taken out. “He slapped the wrong guy,” he said. So Lee proceeded to beat him up, banging John’s head against the pavement and against the bleachers. “He got a couple of good punches in too,” said Lee. The teachers tried to intervene, he said, but all the students gathered around to stop them from breaking it up. After John was sent to the hospital for stitches, Lee got called into the office. “He hit me and I hit him back,” said Lee, who wasn’t disciplined. And when he told his father about it, he took Lee out for ice cream. “I’d have kicked your ass if you lost that fight,” his father said.
“I’m not a fighter, OK,” added Lee. “No one wants to put their hands on me now because I’m 69 years old.”
7. Guess they didn’t fight . . .
8. In the state park, I walked past a tour director giving instructions to her group as to where their bus will be because they would soon be leaving for Canada. “Why would you want to go to Canada?” I wanted to ask. But instead, I held my tongue.
9. The only good rainbow on display . . .
10. Stress-testing the benches at Terrapin Point . . .
11. Erroneous Joe . . .
12. In Canada, we call this Tim Hortons . . .
13. As I handed my pile of nickels and dimes to Jackie at the toll booth, who was having trouble at the till as she kept trying to charge me the car rate, I spotted an American quarter on the ground. With the horrible exchange rate, it was like getting a 50% discount.
14. Returning to Ostdeutschland Canada, I had one of the longest waits I’ve had at customs in a long time, as the lanes were mostly filled with Americans. One Canadian, however, rolled down his window to chat with me. He said he’d have liked to have been on a bike, but he had knee surgery recently.
15. When I got to the Niagara Falls (Canada) Bus Terminal, a bunch of tourists had just arrived and there was a line almost out the door waiting to buy WEGO sucker bus passes. They only take cash for those passes, yet so many didn’t have any cash on them, so they were asking around to borrow some.
16. Later, a scruffy dude came in and started going through the garbage bins. At one, he fished out an empty water bottle, then filled it with the last few drops of an A & W root beer and a half cup of coffee someone threw out and was carrying it around. I thought he was going to drink the mixture, but he thought better of it and dumped it. Even he has standards, I thought. He proceeded to leave his backpack on a ledge and went to the washroom. Moments later, when he returned, it was still there, having not been touched by anyone in the crowded terminal. Once again, this is not Winnipeg.
17. A chunky woman traveling with a group opened up a thick ham sandwich and offered a bite to each member of her group before inhaling it herself.
18. A 20-something piece of trailer trash with tattoos up and down her arm and blue hair and wearing pink shoes swore up a blue streak after discovering that the water fountain was broken. After turning away, she said, “Every guy I meet, he books me a hotel, then he leaves me,” to someone she was talking to on the phone while she was leaving the terminal, nearly in tears.
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