Pilgrimage

I gotta write this down for posterity somewhere because I can't trust my memory for jack all.

We went on a mini-road trip on Thursday, down to Niagara (ugh, I know) and then to Buffalo. Sometimes dudes just need to do a thing . There were seven of us sardining in Imtiaz's van and we got to the Falls no problems. We hit up the Fallsview Casino (there are billboards lining the Gardiner as you head west out of Toronto advertising the casino for all those people who hop onto the highway without any clear plan in mind) but I don't know, I don't know I wasn't feeling lucky - real men know when to fold them - so I left the gents to their roulette while a couple of us went to get tipsy on expensive beer and empty stomachs.

I guess they lost enough money for one half hour because we found them in the lobby sober as judges (ED- I thought I just invented my own little aphorism but apparently 'sober as a judge' is already a thing! Holy geez, you know?) which we couldn't say for ourselves. I hope our laughter was enough to cheer them up! They gambled their money on a spinning wheel, we gambled ours on booze, and I think we would have won every time.

Anyway it is definitely getting on in the day so we have lunch at Wendy's or something, we are fellows with class, what can I say and then we have to meet up with Ray's friends. These are the dudes who know the way to the States so we play follow the Sentra and hey can't complain they get us to the border np.

Oh boy! The border! What an opportunity to put half cocked American stereotypes to test. You gotta picture this right, it's a van full of seven guys and at least four of them could be terrorists, who knows. We put a white dude in the front seat, which is a stupid commentary on, I don't know, us and our prejudices or Americans and their prejudices or somebody's prejudices at least. Two brown guys is asking for trouble, and two white guys makes us look like we're smuggling people south of the border so we mix and match to play it safe.

Our border guy is every small town American farm kid hopped up on methamphetamines looking to play hero I've ever imagined rolled into one, or maybe I was just projecting. We told him we were going down to Buffalo and he asked us why any one would want do that, in that disbelieving, discaring voice that border guards must practice hard for.

Imtiaz made a bad joke, "We want to see if you guys really don't have ketchup chips," and the border man said, "We really don't," like he hadn't heard that fifty times already. Anyway, we had a bag of those crazy contraband chips somewhere in the back, all ready to blow some frikken overweight American minds, but I think we ended up eating them in the car or something. We were waved through though, the border guard convinced I guess that we were no threat to anyone or anything. The we were following that Sentra again. We had Google Map directions to an outlet mall a shout and holler away from the Rainbow Bridge, but the Sentra had different ideas, and being strangers in a strange land, what could we do? They got us on the interstate, the I-190, maybe? Well we drove and drove paid a toll (American money! Dollar bills! Those Romans are crazy) and then drove and drove some more and that Sentra did the best impression of a car that did not know that barrels of oil were selling for $130.

We got to the Walden Galleria, eventually being the best to describe it, and well, what to say? Picture the Eaton Centre, I suppose, then remove 90% of the shoppers, and leave the prices the same, and you'd probably have an ok idea of what it was like. Feeling a little cheated and a little bored with these United States we ditched the Sentra and tried to make our way to that suddenly rarefied outlet mall. You don't want to hear how we spent fifteen minutes trying to figure just how we were supposed to get back, but we did figure it eventually. We took the scenic route, the route that took us through Buffalo proper, albeit at 60mph (100km/h but uh you knew that) and that was plenty fast enough because the border guard was right, Buffalo is a depressing place.

So now we're driving through the city of Niagara, American style, which, compared to the wannabe Reno gauche of the Canadian side, was a regular charmer of little town, except where it wasn't, which was in quite a few places, and that was where Imtiaz stopped to get directions, so I'm talking to an old black man who is super helpful and probably a very decent human being but then he asks me for some change and all I have are Loonies and weird shit like that and every bad race related thing that has ever happened in the US is racing through my head so we speed off and roll up the windows.

You can find rough areas in Toronto ("What? Carlton and Sherbourne?" my mom says, "You should be careful around there) but I don't know, our ghettos are pretty minor league. You be driving down Main St. Americatown and things are quaint and nice and then you go through an intersection and suddenly windows are boarded up and all the people look like they could probably give you a good price for whatever you need.

Anyway, we reach this outlet mall eventually as it is getting dark out, so we are time limited but we browse and window shop and I drop some dolla's on some fly kicks'n shit. Hey some one's gotta prop up that economy, you know? Oh yeah, and we basically found the root of American obesity while we were there too. Who needs a litre of Coke in one sitting? Anyway.

So we scoot back across the Rainbow Bridge (you know you gotta pay a toll to get back in the country??) and we get a border guard who is probably cousins or something with our last one, though this guy is minus any creepy xenophobia subtext. We tell him we were in Buffalo and he basically says the same thing (Buffalo????). Maybe Buffalo's tourism people might want to sit down with the border guards?

We total up our receipts and come up with the shocking total of $200, which just gives our border guard another chance to be disbelieving. "You guys came all the way down from Toronto to spend $200?" which is pretty ridiculous I guess, but someone explains that we were also at the casinos, so that is a bunch of money gone right there, which is enough for him and we are safe in Canada once again, safe from flagging economies, disappointing choices of potato chips, and cheap consumer goods.

We hit the other casino up, the Casino Niagara, which is the casino for people who like their dealers under dressed. Actually I like it better too, at least these guys aren't pretending to have some sort of class. Be yourself guy. The guys lose some more money. Braden and Shadat are out pretty quickly (Braden is the day's biggest loser) but Imtiaz sticks it out, makes things entertaining. We force him out eventually, despite his protests. I think every gambler has to know when his luck has left him, Imtiaz thinks that you either leave a casino rich or broke, no in between.

Oh yeah recurring motif on the day: getting friggin lost. Niagara is a city that does not want you to leave. We spend half and hour looking for the QEW which is hidden in plain sight and after that it is a simple trip home. Dudes in the back watching 300 on Braden's cellphone.

Final thoughts? Niagara is still an awful city. Gambling on an empty wallet makes me feel queasy. Western New York is a depressing place. Americans are exactly like Canadians except for when they aren't. Rumours of their lower prices have been greatly exaggerated. Border guards are uniform assholes, but I guess the have to be. Can I imagine doing a real road trip with seven dudes? I don't now. It's a little unwieldy, plus greater odds somebody will end up killing some one else, you know?