Shuffle Off To Buffalo, and Beyond
The Buffalo,
Vermont, Toronto, etc. trip of May, 1999 went well enough.
This took place Thursday evening, May 6th to Thursday afternoon,
May 13th. A "normal" trip is bound to be too
action-packed to allow time for proper sleep, and the way Amwrek
runs trains east of Chicago did not help! Their eastern
single-level trains are loaded at Chicago so that each car has
people all going to one or two destinations. My car was
full, and everyone was going to either Buffalo or Rochester, so
no chance of having the seat to myself. Never was one to
snooze well sitting up, so at best I took a total of 2 hours of
short naps.
Being in effect
an independent contractor, Susan gets no paid days-off. She
had a cleaning job come up for Friday morning, so our departure
for Vermont was delayed. We would not get started east
until afternoon "rush hour", also about the time a
short but nasty line of thunderstorms blew through. We
somehow survived both, but with all the above, we had to take the
New York Thruway (aka I-90) cross-state to make any time,
yawn. Did make good time, though, getting to Albany about
9pm. I had that in mind as a dinner stop, as I knew a
decent, cheap Italian-American place just west of town.
"Knew" is the proper word, as the place was no longer
there...the strip was now, for the most part, upscale franchise
restaurant and hotels. Not even many fast-food
places! We made do with an IHOP, then on to Rutland,
Vermont for the night.
Rutland was the
choice for several reasons...I wanted to make some recordings of
"Radio Free Vermont", it was a city Susan was curious
about, and there were several area motels in a coupon book
frequent Vermont visitor Bob Masked Bandit Nelson had passed
along. I rarely get to stay at a Ramada, but with the
coupon this place was competitively priced (for Vermont, an
expensive lodging state like any which relies too much on the
tourist $$), and included breakfast...cereal, muffins, toast,
juice and more.
"Radio Free
Vermont" is a very listenable big band-standards pirate
station, on 96.5 somewhere in the Rutland area. They oughta
call it "Radio Free Rutland" as it does not go much
beyond the city except up into the hills to the east. Their
web-site claims the station is perfectly legal, as it does not
cross state lines...not true, as the FCC licenses all broadcast
radio within the United States. However, you won't see me
turning them in. I recorded 4 hours of them, any or all
available for trade.
Another
little-sleep night, as we got in so late, and had to take off
early Saturday morning to run up to Montpelier for Susan's state
weaver's guild meeting. I had a couple hours to explore the
city, but first a stop at the library to read the Montpelier and
Burlington papers from cover to cover. 15 minutes later,
including a study of the job and housing ads in each paper, I
hiked up, down and around the Montpelier streets.
I forget why I
did not tour the Vermont capitol building last year? Made
up for it this time, though being an off-season Saturday, it
would be a self-guided tour. Vermont is a good state for
marble, and it shows inside.
Baldwin St. west of the capitol is
lined with modest former homes, now all offices for the various
state agencies. The street is only 1½ blocks long,
dead-ending at a stairway leading to a fancy red arch.
Looked like a park, or perhaps an old cemetary beyond, but I
would discover a dirt trail leading up to an old mansion...which
was now the Secretary of State office building.
Back to the
capitol grounds, where I found a certain raccoon disguised as a
humanoid from a suburb several towns north of Boston. We
drove west and north up to Stowe, with a stop at a cider-pressing
factory. It was out-of-season for live demonstrations,
though they did have a film to watch while sampling free, cold,
tasty apple cider. They are located just up the road
from the Ben & Jerry factory tour, which being a "been
there/done that" from last year was passed up this
time. Besides, for some reason their parking lot was far
more crowded on Saturday that it was on a Friday.
Stowe is, alas,
a tourist-trap town with cutsey boutiques and over-priced
eateries...did get a good grilled cheese sandwich, but it BETTER
be good for $3.50?! On the other hand, they do have a nice
hiking & biking trail. For me it was near-perfect
hiking weather...about 65º and cloudy enough to minimize
sun-glare. On days like this I would normally cover 12-15
miles. Bob is normally a more sedentary creature, so we
compromised at 5 miles. Besides, time was short.
About 2 miles into the hike, we came upon a tired-looking golden
retriever loitering beside the trail, only to then follow along
with us! Not quite follow...we came upon a busy street and
halted, but the dog kept going! Fortunately, the cars
stopped for the dog, but I could not help thinking those drivers
were muttering about us idiot owners. The retriever
retrieved us on the other side of the road and continued
following along, but when the humans reached the 2.5-mile marker
and turned back for the car, the dog just kept going.
The trail was
significantly busier on the return hike, with more than a few of
those @#$% roller-bladers. One couple was especially
bothersome, as they haunted us for most of a mile. The guy
was experienced, so kept racing ahead, only to have to come back
for his novice girlfriend. She could handle flat
straightaways well enough, but add a road-crossing, a curve or
the slightest downgrade and look out! I imagine her rather
shapely behind wound up as black & blue as her jeans from
several uses as a "break", ouch!
We got back
to Montpelier in time for another batch of rain. Bob went
on straight to Rutland, to try getting a room at the same motel,
while Susan and I checked a record store and a book store, then
on to Middlebury.
Whose college of the same name is
amongst the most expensive in the US. Lots of boutiquish
stores downtown, though all already closed for the day?
Also a number of expensive restaurants...so much for this being
our dinner stop! Had a nice walk anyway, including some
small but impressive falls on Otter Creek.
We got back to
Rutland just in time for yet another rain-blast, which made
tracking down our meal-stop a bit tougher. Bob had indeed
gotten a room at the Ramada, but did not wait for us for
dinner...went to some steak place which looked interesting but
crowded. Susan and I settled on a place called "South
Station", in an old streetcar barn not far from our
south-side motel. A bit pricey, but tasteful decor, a small
but varied, tasty salad bar, and by far my largest-ever chicken
parmesan.
In the same
complex is Annie's books, which both Susan and I had heard of
before but we did not know why? Was closed for the night,
but was thus easy to find the next morning. Annie's has
both new and used books, making it extra fun to walk
through. I even bought a couple books! George Will's
Bunts, in a way a follow-up to his Men At Work, is made up mostly
of baseball articles he had written over the course of 20
years. Enjoyable, and the perfect kind of book for when I
get most of my reading done (work breaks, lunch hours and bus
rides to/from work). Am still reading Our Dumb Century, a
collection of parody newspaper covers produced by The Onion, a
weekly paper with a combination of satirical, mostly humorous
news stories, and semi-serious movie, music and club
reviews. Most folks outside Wisconsin, Chicago and Denver
would know it most from their web-site? This book was
written as if The Onion has existed since before the beginning of
this century. With all the fine print, it's taking awhile
to get through it all!
Oh yeah, to get
into and out of Annie's, you have to pass through Rutland's
representative in the Ben & Jerry's empire. No
fair! While waiting for Susan to finish her shopping, I
checked out the Onion book while trying not to drip "Coffee
Coffee BzzzBzzzBzzz" on it.
Downtown Rutland
has not quite suffered the full effects of the gentrification
and/or tourist-mania evident in many Vermont cities. Some
of the old buildings still have normal, useful businesses, though
being Sunday few were open to check out. There was a good
newspaper stand, were Susan picked up what seemed like every
Sunday paper in the state. And I went slumming by taking
advantage of the Sunday New York Post being only 50¢...and by
poking my nose into that double-rare bird, a Wal-Mart in a
downtown, and in Vermont?! Was hoping to stock up on
cassettes and batteries, but I noticed the selection of both have
dwindled, and the prices worse since when I used to shop Wal-Mart
semi-regularly on the road. On the other hand, they did
carry a good supply of my preferred work pants (Dickies last a
long time, and are still inexpensive...when you can find them?),
even in green which I hadn't seen in years, and I was curious
enough about the huge packages of orange-pineapple (flavored)
sandwich cookies to risk buying one. Even the check-out
clerk looked at them funny, but they weren't near as ghastly as
I'd guessed, and the package was so big it lasted me until deep
until June.
Next stop,
Bennington. We passed several inviting restaurants riding
in on Route 7, and settled on the Blue Benn Diner, a 40's-vintage
diner trailer with the tight booths and counter seats.
Their large menu reflects the city's combination of blue-collar
workers and Bennington college students. If the menu is not
enough, there are also many different "specials" on
pieces of paper taped to the walls. Our waitress, noting
our being overwhelmed, suggested focusing only on the papers
directly in front of us, and she made no denials when I guessed
all the odd-ball dishes were thrown together from whatever
leftovers were in the fridge from yesterday. I wound up
with eggplant parmesan stuffed with mushrooms and feta cheese,
with a side of angel-hair pasta...good lunch!
Alas, it was
back to New York State. We stopped in downtown Albany long
enough for me to snap a couple pix of the state capitol...though
it's hard to tell as it lacks the granite & dome look of the
standard capitol building. Could not tell you the style,
but it looks to me like a fairly large and fancy city main
library.
Just before
sunset, we made it to Rochester, as Susan wanted to stop by her
boyfriend's place on the way home. He has a loft in an old
warehouse in a crappy post-industrial section west of
downtown. Albert was not home, so we went to one of his two
likely hang-outs, Gitsi's restaurant in the slightly more
"hip" east side. This is a standard-issue urban
24-hour diner-restaurant. He wasn't there, but did meet us
there after his dinner at the other place...had actually read
about the west side "Nick Tahou's" in some
off-the-beaten-path type guidebook, a grittier, grungier
restaurant such as one used to run into on Maxwell St. in
Chicago. Albert described their big dish, the "garbage
plate"...globs of cole slaw, potato salad and whatever meat
dish you choose and/or they have available that night.
Monday, at
least until mid-afternoon, was take-it-easy time. I did run
out to one of the Buffalo-area Media Play stores to re-stock my
audio cassettes, but otherwise I just read through the many
papers and brochures, weeded out old maps, etc while Susan was
working.
When Susan got
back, it was whirling-dervish time again...in about 2.5 hours, we
drove downtown to drop off laundry at her landlady's other
property, and to the ball park to pick up tickets, then north of
town for dinner at Old Man River in Tonawanda, back downtown for
another laundry load, to pick up by bus tickets for the next day,
and finally to the ball park. Try all that in a major
city?!
Except for its
seafood bar being gone, Old Man River is as it was the last
visit. (Like I need any more incentive to track down my
MarkTime and APA Centauri zines from the early 1990s?) I
have yet to find a Chicago-area establishment with sweet potato
fries, or with their selection of sodas on tap.
It was an
off-night for the Buffalo Bisons, though it was the only night
when I was to be anywhere near a ball game? Being Monday
night, and a bit chilly, did not help the crowd. Is a
decent stadium for being modern-style, and would like to get back
there for a day gave sometime.
I needed to get
back to get some sleep for the next day, so of course the night
was not over yet...one more load of clothes, and we had to return
the rental car at the airport. I may have gotten as much as
5 hours' snooze before I had to run downtown for the bus to
Toronto.
There was a
stretch of time in the late 80s and early 90s when Toronto seemed
like my second home, or at least 3rd after Chicago and Buffalo,
until county-mania began taking me elsewhere. The city is
even more hustling and bustling, and expensive, than ever.
I find one-day visits to major cities a severe challenge...how to
fit in favorite haunts, but still get to the new or
previously-ignored? My new-for-me's included the
Scarborough light-rail, smallish cars but on a subway-style
right-of-way, and after all these years at last I was inside a
Canadian Tire store, mostly with the incentive of tracking down
any unusual brands of videotape for a friend who collects such
things. My biggest old-haunt visit was to the Ontario
Science Centre, where I have still not succeeded in getting to
more than one exhibit hall in a visit. This time, it did
not help that the hall I wound up in had computers. They
were smart not to have them programmed to do e-mail...best I
could do was stick a couple messages on friends' "guest
books". Lunch simply had to be roasted chicken and
fries with gravy at a St-Hubert's, a pretty good lunch deal even
in Canadian funds.
My first stop in
Toronto had been at an ATM, as the $7 I have from last visit (I
hate to find out how much value this lost in my drawer since
1993?!) only covered my all-day TTC transit pass. I must
have been tired, as I thought $40 sounded like plenty of cash for
the day. I even felt richer, as the "remaining
funds" amount on the receipt was about 40% higher than it
should have been, translated into Canadian.
After all these
years, I was due for a transit problem. I'd arrived at
Yonge & Eglinton in plenty of time to get to my friend's
place near the Univ. of Toronto. Well, a switch problem
meant that trains were not going any further south than
Eglinton. I dashed up to the stall for the Avenue Rd. bus,
just missing one and had to wait many a minute for the
next. That bus was also delayed en route, by construction,
so I wound up being late, grumble.
My friend there
was insistent upon finding us something to do that night.
The music scene on a Toronto Tuesday night looked like Monday in
Buffalo, or maybe having Alanis Morrissette at the rent-a-name
arena what replaced Maple Leaf Gardens, plus a Leafs playoff game
on the telly, kept any heard-of acts home or out of town
this night? The best entertainment bet woulda been a
"Sex & Violence Cartoon festival", but we had
already missed the first part and I would have had trouble
digging up the admission price. I dunno though, seemed OK
for being a "nothing" night, including a decent Mex-Can
meal at some corner bar, a stop at campus station CIUT to drop
off a tape and briefly visit his roommate in the on-air studio,
and late-night walks on Yonge and other streets.
A couple times,
I was about ready to crash for the night (my mind was already
asleep, eh?) only to have something come up to keep me up.
Such as one of his other housemates, who insisted I see his
belfry apartment and try whatever illicit substance he had handy
up there. Not being "into" that sorta thing, and
hey my brain was already fried enough from lack of sleep, I did
go upstairs but declined the latter. (My friend's name was
omitted to protect the guilty, ha!)
The remainder of
the trip, including the train ride home, was exceedingly
uneventful.
No travel stats to note...no new counties! Top radio was "Radio Free Vermont", the oldies on WJJL in Niagara Falls NY, and WORK in Barre VT gets an honorable mention for a creative ID.
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