Road Trip with Mom: Day 2, June 26
I get on Chuck’s ass a lot about budgeting our time so that he doesn’t create a stress-inducing and endless list of unrealizable plans for one day or one weekend, and then I do exactly what I tell him not to do. Mom and I had time to properly enjoy just one activity this morning, but I thought we'd have time to do it all. Consequently, the IMAX theater show, crowded to capacity with people recently unloaded from busses--children's summer camps and Korean tourists and such--, trumped the under-the-falls tour, which would have brought us much closer to the falls than an IMAX movie show.
But the IMAX, two features of it compelling me more than feeling the mist on my face and thunder in my gut as one-fifth of the world's fresh water supply poured past me, was closer and consequently we ended up there before I took the time to think about what that would mean for the rest of the day.
Despite the crowds of children of summer camps sitting in front of me and crowds of Korean tourists with distracting radio translators sitting behind me, I really wanted to see that movie for one reason only: on the coupon for it that I grabbed out of a caddy at the hotel, I saw a shot of a film version of LaSalle's expedition standing in front of the ice-layered falls, "discovering" it for the first time. Even though I knew I was in for a recreated and sensationalized version of this event, I wanted to watch it anyway and imagine their feelings as they finally discovered the source of those inexplicable roaring sounds they'd heard through the trees and from the sky for three days prior. I wish there were something left to discover.
The other draw to the IMAX, for me anyway, was the "Niagara Daredevil Exhibit." This is a tiny room full of homemade objects that crazy people constructed in order to stuff themselves into and then travel down the Horseshoe Falls. I think this exhibit is best described in photographs:
Schoolteachers will do anything to get out of the classroom.
This is the guy who took a case of beer down the rapids. I think Mom likes his tights.
This is my favorite bio. He and I share the same occupation: unemployed.
After this amazing display, we took a last drive past the falls and the upper river, both stunningly gorgeous in the bright sun. I lamented the lost time and the bad planning until I saw the line to get into the behind-the-falls tour, and I then I was glad we were moving again.
The Canadian landscape between Lake Ontario and the tip of Lake Huron is uneventful and vaguely Midwestern, but clean. So clean that I thought it sparkled. Every highway rest stop boasts multiple recycling bins and signs using large vocabulary, warning of the penalties for littering. I was contrasted this landscape with a typical drive down Route 40 in East Baltimore, the slow-walking cows munching on bags of chips as they jaywalk in front of your car on a green light, then toss the bags on the ground right in front of a trash can when they get to the other side. I want to take another trip to Canada and search around for these types. I am so glad that I no longer live in Baltimore.
Anyway, this entry was hard to write. It took me forever, two drafts even (I have Thought Police). I might have to scale down in the future. It's already 9:35 on June 27th, and I'm still trying to get this done. I would have stopped writing it, but I wanted to show Mom that I could persevere. She was unimpressed.
Nora Ephron died some time yesterday while we were eating and coffee-drinking our way across Canada. That's two of my favorite writers in a month.
I was just informed that "the train is leaving." Gotta go.
But the IMAX, two features of it compelling me more than feeling the mist on my face and thunder in my gut as one-fifth of the world's fresh water supply poured past me, was closer and consequently we ended up there before I took the time to think about what that would mean for the rest of the day.
Despite the crowds of children of summer camps sitting in front of me and crowds of Korean tourists with distracting radio translators sitting behind me, I really wanted to see that movie for one reason only: on the coupon for it that I grabbed out of a caddy at the hotel, I saw a shot of a film version of LaSalle's expedition standing in front of the ice-layered falls, "discovering" it for the first time. Even though I knew I was in for a recreated and sensationalized version of this event, I wanted to watch it anyway and imagine their feelings as they finally discovered the source of those inexplicable roaring sounds they'd heard through the trees and from the sky for three days prior. I wish there were something left to discover.
The other draw to the IMAX, for me anyway, was the "Niagara Daredevil Exhibit." This is a tiny room full of homemade objects that crazy people constructed in order to stuff themselves into and then travel down the Horseshoe Falls. I think this exhibit is best described in photographs:
Schoolteachers will do anything to get out of the classroom.
This is the guy who took a case of beer down the rapids. I think Mom likes his tights.
This is my favorite bio. He and I share the same occupation: unemployed.
After this amazing display, we took a last drive past the falls and the upper river, both stunningly gorgeous in the bright sun. I lamented the lost time and the bad planning until I saw the line to get into the behind-the-falls tour, and I then I was glad we were moving again.
The Canadian landscape between Lake Ontario and the tip of Lake Huron is uneventful and vaguely Midwestern, but clean. So clean that I thought it sparkled. Every highway rest stop boasts multiple recycling bins and signs using large vocabulary, warning of the penalties for littering. I was contrasted this landscape with a typical drive down Route 40 in East Baltimore, the slow-walking cows munching on bags of chips as they jaywalk in front of your car on a green light, then toss the bags on the ground right in front of a trash can when they get to the other side. I want to take another trip to Canada and search around for these types. I am so glad that I no longer live in Baltimore.
Anyway, this entry was hard to write. It took me forever, two drafts even (I have Thought Police). I might have to scale down in the future. It's already 9:35 on June 27th, and I'm still trying to get this done. I would have stopped writing it, but I wanted to show Mom that I could persevere. She was unimpressed.
Nora Ephron died some time yesterday while we were eating and coffee-drinking our way across Canada. That's two of my favorite writers in a month.
I was just informed that "the train is leaving." Gotta go.