Day 20: Rest Day, Buffalo, NY
Welcome
Yesterday we had a rest day in Buffalo, NY.
My day began at 6am when we reached the Thousand Islands border crossing, set among a beautiful archipelago of over 1,800 islands and the only place in the world that mines and sells the famous salad dressing of the same name. Jon had already been up for a while getting the carnet sorted out, bless his soul. I was woken when we arrived at the U.S. side of the border, and everyone had to disembark and head into the passport control office while the border patrol officers looked over the bus. We sat in the waiting room for about fifteen minutes and for most of this time I tried to comprehend the striking interior design of the place, specifically the upper part of the wall - perhaps you could call it a frieze - that was constructed from tightly compacted layers of presumably recycled clothing arranged by colour so that there are mostly jeans at the bottom and white shirts at the top.
There was no contraband discovered aboard our vehicle, so we slipped back into our bunks and tried to grab a few more hours of sleep as Placid Thunder rolled south on Interstate 81. We were awakened just after eleven as we came to a stop outside the Holiday Inn Express and Suites Buffalo Downtown. Crawling out of our bunks once more, sleepy and disorientated, we emerged into a dazzlingly bright morning, a morning that was made brighter still when we disembarked and saw the shiny form of Blue Paradise parked behind us, sparkling clean and good as new.
Mr Bus had been busy while we were in Canada, flying to Knoxville, TN, to pick up our repaired vehicle and driving close to 700 miles to meet us back here. Slowly we moved everything across to our old home, relishing the extra cupboards and drawers and allocating plenty of shoe storage.
Gabe transfers Liz's shoes onto Blue Paradise.
The author auditioning pillows as we settle into our beds.
We had an Airbnb for the next couple of nights so while we waited for the check-in time to arrive, Tristan and I headed out for a run. It was hot but there was a fair breeze rolling in from Lake Eerie which felt pleasant on the skin. We passed through the downtown, a collection of high-rise buildings which are descended from a wealthy era, a time in which this city was the terminus of the Eerie Canal, the link between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. Soon we arrived at Buffalo’s waterfront, now mostly deindustrialised but still holding onto the threads of this once great port. It was Sunday afternoon, and the Buffalo River was alive with small and medium-sized watercraft and the air was loud with music and the sounds of festivity. It was the Buffalo Bills’ 3rd Annual Boat Parade, a charitable event celebrating the start of the football season and there were flags hanging off every mast and stay, while the vessels bobbed past on their way out to the lake.
Tristan and I briefly joined the flotilla while we were aboard a fine piece of Buffalo public transport infrastructure, the Queen City Bike Ferry. For one dollar each we rode the 662ft across the river to the Times Beach Nature Reserve where we disembarked and enjoyed a very scenic jog around some wetlands before catching it back so we could return to the bus.
We taxied to our accommodation late in the afternoon and settled into a house that seemed to be very much constructed as an Airbnb property. The weatherboards were hollow plastic, and the interior spiral staircase felt like it would collapse if there were more than one person aboard at a time. The cooking facilities were adequate, though, and I constructed my first meal of the day at a shockingly late hour, something I will blame on my interrupted sleep. I toasted an ‘all dressed’ bagel that I had purchased the day before in Montreal, and served it with cream cheese, and cucumber seasoned with salt, pepper, and chili flakes.
For the early part of the evening I sat out on the porch, and I blogged. I was thoroughly entertained by the passing traffic, most of which was two-wheeled vehicles travelling at impressive speeds, and seemed to be relateed to the Pinchos joint a few doors down which was blasting music throughout the neighbourhood and attracting a healthy number of visitors.
For the middle part of the evening, I headed out with Gabe and Tristan to fulfil the dream of our sound engineer, a dream related to the pastime of eating wings. We walked to the aptly named Gabriel’s Gate, a very well-regarded spot, where we enjoyed a meal of this North American delicacy and while some of us ate slowly and sensibly some of us walked out of the restaurant groaning and in pain.
The final part of the evening found us sitting on the rock-hard sub-Ikea level couch of our Airbnb enjoying the Formula 1 race which was screened on the most jankily-installed TV that you could imagine. The cars went fast and the race was won and we all went to sleep, happy and rested.
