Niagra Falls

I left Candy and Eric around midday after lunch at an old-style diner in the small town of Dolgeville. Thank you Candy, honey, for your gifts - the hospitality, the kisses from your puppies, the hugs, the tank full of gas, and for lunch. Here we are, you and me, at the entrance to the I90 freeway, and aren't you just gorgeous???

Thanks also to Eric, who is lovely, and who I'm sure you're gonna have some great fun riding with. After leaving I headed west on Toll route (ouch!) 90 and made it all the way through to Niagra Falls, after riding at high speeds through thunder and forked lightning, rain so hard I couldn't see through it, with the bike sputtering and backfiring and threatening to die all the way to the next set of services. That was seriously unpleasant, but still preferable to the rigmarole of exiting the freeway to try and find shelter, which involved having to haul the bike out of the way till I found money with wet hands to pay the dollar-grabbing toll booth people, while impatient cage-dwellers in their dry warm cages tooted and ranted at me from behind, only to go through the whole miserable process again coming back on again. After doing that a couple of times and deciding it was a bit of a mug's game, as was trying to smile my way through the look of disgust each toll booth operator gave me when I handed them a soggy, dripping dollar note, I decided to tough it out, grit my teeth and ride through the crap until the weather cleared and came nice again, which it did. It was heading east, that storm, and while I was relieved at the sun coming over, I did wonder about whether Candy and Eric had made it home without getting wet. (I later found out that they'd had as bad a time as I did, and ended up looking like a couple of drowned rats by the time they got home).

The Niagra Falls are spectacular, everything I dreamed of, and the ride in there across the bridge that spans the neck of Lake Erie was stunning. I hit the truck route into Niagra - unmaintained, potholed all to hell, cracked and pretty scary, as were the abandoned, gutted buildings and scruffy motels, but there wasn't much traffic so it was a quick route in , and I took it back out again, even though it felt wierdly like I imagine it would feel riding through downtown Beiruit. I did take photos which I will load as soon as I get the opportunity, so keep an eye on this post in the next day or two. The overcommercialisation at Niagra was overwhelming, and it included a ten dollar charge just to park my little bike!!! I refused to pay that. Instead, I hauled her onto the sidewalk next to a hotdog stand and told the guy I'd be happy to pay him ten dollars to watch her for half an hour which was what the car park vultures wanted to charge me for NOT watching her at ALL, and he smiled and said yes, and that lovely man refused to take my money. After seeing the Falls, I felt a very real need to put that place and the huge, industrial, impossibly busy sprawl of Buffalo behind me, even tho it was already 7.45pm, so I ducked into the Hard Rock Cafe, as I am wont to do (having been on an International Hard Rock Cafe pub crawl for over a decade now),

and left with a space-saver souvenir - a limited edition HRC Niagara bike badge with revolving wheels (much more cool, more appropriate and far less hazardous than the usual ten-inch tall Hurricane Cocktail Glass!). I then headed south, back across that incredible bridge, where I got to see the most amazing view of Lake Erie, whose opposite shoreline wasn't even discernible, and I somehow missed my Route 219 turnoff south. I put it down to tiredness from ten hours on the road. So, I hauled off the freeway at Batavia, paid the bloody toll, again, like a good girl always does, found an over-priced motel (as it turned out, the most expensive I paid for on the whole trip at $140US), took a much-needed shower, made a couple of reassurance phone calls, and went to bed. My lovely girl brought me 450kms yesterday without a whimper after The Gas Incident, and she's waiting for me now. She was parked up alongside a couple of big cruisers all night so she was in good company. I wonder what bikes talk about when they're left in a group to their own devices? "Hi, I'm Cherry Bomb, from New Zealand". "Hi Cherry, you're cute. I'm Vulcan Violet, and this is Tangerine, and we're from Massachusetts. I suspect you have a very nice engine, Cherry. Show me yours,and I'll show you mine. Tange is a bit shy, he'll need some lubrication before he'll feel confident enough to show you his".

Anyway, all mad musings aside, its time for breakfast with lots of coffee, goodbye to the free internet, and off I go.