| 1.2-2 Seattle to Boston |
While waiting for the manager I decided to take a chance and to mention to Katie
that I would be returning the car early in the morning to the downtown Buffalo office
because I needed to be in Niagara Falls, Ontario by 6:30 a.m. to catch the only train
to Toronto for the day. Downtown Buffalo is a half-hour closer by bus to Niagara
Falls than the Buffalo airport.
Suddenly, her normally mundane face brightens up and she says, “Oh well, you
won't be able to do that because our downtown office is a garage… and they close
at six at night and they don’t re-open until eight in the morning. There’s no place for
you to return the car to until they open in the morning. Sorry, but you will have to
return the car here sir.”
Having no further weapons to throw, I shrugged my shoulders, let out a sigh and
gave up. Katie had won the battle. I did not rent the car. It was not meant to be.
So instead, I hopped back on a bus to downtown Buffalo and I revised my plans.
By now it was early Monday morning and I planned to only stay a day in Syracuse. I
needed to be back by early Tuesday morning to catch the train to meet Ron for my
personal tour of Toronto as planned. I had already confirmed the plan with Ron and
I didn’t wish to change the date on him nor did I want to miss out on the chance to
have a tour of Toronto with someone I really wanted to be with.
Since it was after eight in the morning I decide that there might be a car rental office
open in Niagara Falls, so I headed back to Niagara Falls. In Niagara Falls I indeed
was able to find a car rental office. The people at this car rental place were very
nice. Nice enough even to come pick me up at the Niagara Falls bus depot after the
bus driver forgot to inform me where my bus stop for the rental office was.
Upon arriving at the rental office the agent who picked me up began to fill out the
long rental form. I was about to sign the agreement when I heard the radio in the
background announce a list of inclement weather travel advisories for many areas.
I gave the agent a whimsical cocked look and asked him if any of the areas
announced were on my way to Syracuse. His answer was, “Yep”.
I looked at him with a big funny smile and said, “I don’t think this little excursion was
meant to be today. I am awfully sorry but I don’t think I will rent the car.”
He checked with his supervisor and that was no problem with him. He understood
fully. I offered to pay them for their time to pick me up and all but they refused.
They were nice enough to even take me to the shopping mall down the street where
I could catch a bus back to downtown Niagara Falls.
I caught the bus back downtown and to play it safe I checked into a hotel one block
from the train station on the Canadian side of the falls. I didn’t wish to take any
chances with my plans this time. I didn’t want to miss the early morning train to
Toronto. One good thing about this current affair was that I got to view the falls. If
my other plans had worked out I wouldn’t have had time to see it. Even in the dead
of Winter it was beautiful, half frozen over, half falling water.
Once again I made a long distance call to my ex-boss Rich to let him know I wouldn’t
be coming to Syracuse yet but that I would come over by bus once I made it to
Boston.
I did learn a few travel lessons from this fiasco. First was, “It may well be worth the
cost of a taxi to get you where you need to be.” Second was, “Don’t use Budget
when renting a car”. And last was, “Don’t make many pre-arranged dates or
promises to meet someone - it only complicates your plans.”
The next morning I caught the train to Toronto, met Ron at the train station, and he
gave me a tour of his city. He was great. I wish I could have brought him with me on
the rest of the trip.
He help me to find a cheap place to stay the night in Toronto. It was a rundown
boarding house but it served the purpose. I caught an early train out the next
morning and headed toward my next stop - the Bay of Fundi in Nova Scotia. I
planned to stay in the town of Truro just north of the bay.
The train had about a four-hour layover in Montreal allowing me time to tour the city
on my own. It was cold but sunny and refreshing and I walked around the city for
several hours. I re-boarded the train heading for Nova Scotia. Late in the night we
made a short stop in Quebec City. The train runs along the south side of the St.
Lawrence River and the city lies on the north side of the river. It looked so beautiful
that night with the lights of the city and the fortress shimmering in the cold air across
the river of flowing ice.
So, feeling this was a good photo event I decided to run to the top of a nearby hill,
video camera in hand, to video tape the beautiful sight. Not wishing to leave any
easily accessible valuable items behind in the train but at the same time not wishing
to be ridiculous about it and take all my possessions, I grabbed my wallet and my
personal electronic organizer and stuffed them in my coat pocket. I ran up the steps
of a stairway leading up a cliff and began to film the night bathed city and fortress.
I finished my video taping just as the train blew the warning whistle and in a rush to
get back to the train before it departed I ran back down the steps toward the train.
In my rush the personal electronic organizer fell from my pocket hitting the ground
squarely on its head. I picked it up and made my way back to the train.
About an hour later I decided I had better check to see if the organizer still
functioned properly. I turned it on but the display showed nothing. One of my worst
nightmares was coming true. I may have just lost all of the data I typed into the
damned thing just before I left Seattle. I hoped for the best though, believing that
maybe I just broke the power switch and all of the data was still in the memory. I
wouldn’t know though until I reached Boston because I couldn’t take it anywhere for
repair until then.
Luckily, as a software engineer, I knew better than to depend totally on these
electronic gadgets. I kept a written journal of my travels, writing the phone numbers
and addresses of persons I met on the trip in both the journal and the organizer.
What I didn’t have now was all of the contact info I needed of the people in Norway
and Nepal I was to stay with. The next day I phoned my parents and ask them to
mail me my phone book at my friend's house in Boston.
The train continued on through the night arriving in Nova Scotia the next day. On
the train I met a man who talked me into continuing on to Halifax instead of stopping
in Truro to see the Bay of Fundi as I had planned. He said I wouldn’t see much of
the bay from Truro and Halifax would be a better place to visit this time of year. So,
I took his advice and headed on to Halifax.
Once I arrived in Halifax I immediately had two problems. The first problem was that
I had checked my luggage. Thus, I was here in beautiful Halifax but my luggage was
a 45-minute train ride away in Truro. I wished to take the train back to Truro to
meet up with my luggage but unfortunately the train doesn’t head back to Truro until
the next morning.
My second problem was that I needed to make a new plan to get to Boston because
my old plan wouldn’t work out. My old plan was to take a bus from Halifax or Truro
along the bay to Yarmouth where I could catch a ferry to Portland, Maine. From
Portland I would take the bus into Boston. Unfortunately, as I found out in Montreal,
the ferry to Portland only runs in the summer. So, I decided to take the ferry to Bar
Harbor, Maine and then a bus to Boston. That wouldn’t work out either. The ferry
to Bar Harbor runs only twice a week in the winter, Wednesday and Sunday
mornings. Today was Wednesday, so I would now have to wait until Sunday if I
wanted to take the ferry.
Tired about thinking of making plans I looked in the phone book for a cheap inn to
stay the night. I called a Bed and Breakfast and delightfully they were inexpensive.
I asked for directions from the train depot and to my surprise I had phoned an inn
just a block away.
Also to my surprise it was raining in Halifax. I had counted on snow. There was
plenty of snow and ice still on the ground though and this made the walk to the inn
very dangerous even with my hiking boots. There is nothing worse than wet ice.
The sidewalk might have been safer were it greased up. A couple of times I fell
hard on my ass on my walk to the inn but fortunately my sleeping bag and backpack
padded my falls. I made it to the inn without harm.
I ate my dinner right next door and went back to my room to make plans for the next
day to get out of Halifax and meet back up with my luggage. I didn’t want to waste
money on a hotel in Halifax waiting until Sunday for the ferry. Besides, my heart was
most set on getting to Jamaica as soon as possible to flee the snow and ice and
cold and rain. Since I needed to retrieve my luggage in Truro anyway, I decided I’d
try to reach Syracuse once more. I’d have to take a bus to Truro early tomorrow
morning, have a few hours to go see the Bay of Fundi, and then take the free
overnight train ride (since I had the 30 day pass and I could avoid a hotel charge)
back to Cornwall, Quebec, a small town just an hour west of Montreal. The train
was scheduled to arrive in Cornwall by early afternoon. I would then take a cab
across the boarder and catch a bus to Syracuse. This time though I intentionally
planned several hours between connections so that I wouldn’t have to rush. I really
wished for this plan to work out well. I made yet another expensive long distance
pay phone call to Rich in Syracuse to let him know I’d be there on Saturday evening.
The next morning I caught the train back to Truro. Upon my arrival in Truro a bus
station attendant informed me that I wouldn't see much of the Bay of Fundi's tidal
bore during the winter. So I decided I’d have to come back some time in the
summer to complete that wish. I spent a few hours roaming the one block town of
Truro, retrieved my luggage, and then I boarded the overnight train to Montreal.
As before, on the train, I met several passengers with stories to tell and to whom I
could share my adventures. I recall filming from the train as we passed at night
through a small New Brunswick town covered with a few crisp inches of newly fallen
snow. The lights from the turn of the century houses reflected off of the snow to
light up the night sky.
Later that night I fell asleep in the reclining chair. Upon awakening the next morning
the train was stopped in the middle of a sea of snow. I awoke just in time to watch
the sun rise above the white smooth horizon. It was a perfect way to start a new
day.
But with each new day comes new problems to work out, as I was about to discover.
It seems the train was stopped for a reason. A switch ahead of us was frozen.
Furthermore, we were apparently delayed in the night for two hours by a derailed
freight train. We waited more than two hours for the switch to be thawed and we
were on our way again. Everybody but me, that is. I now needed to make new
plans. We would arrive in Montreal too late for me to catch the train to Cornwall that
would connect me to the last bus of the day in upper state New York that would
finally take me to Syracuse. Once again I made another long distance call to Rich
to let him know I wasn’t going to make it to Syracuse tonight. I’m sure he started to
wonder if I wasn’t playing with him, that I wasn’t planning to visit him and his family at
all.
I began searching through the train schedule and calling the bus agents to work out
a new travel plan. I was about to give up trying to go to Syracuse and just take the
expensive Amtrak train from Montreal to Boston but suddenly I discovered I could
catch a train to Toronto, which would connect me to a cheap bus to Syracuse. I
loved it. It worked out so well. There was only one small hitch though. I only had
ten minutes in Toronto to get from the train station to the bus depot. I took the
chance anyway.
I arrived in Toronto on time. I ran to a taxi, which dropped me at the bus depot with
just five minutes to spare. The bus arrived in Buffalo at about 11 p.m. where I had
to connect to another bus which would take me to Syracuse. I decided to wait for an
early morning bus so I would arrive in Syracuse at a decent hour. So, once again I
stayed the night in the downtown Buffalo bus station. It was not quite one of the
most luxurious places in town to stay the night, but it was by now a familiar one.
I arrived in Syracuse on Sunday morning to be greeted by Rich and his family. After
three previous false arrivals I had finally made it to Syracuse.
Monday morning I continued on to Boston, where I spent the day videotaping
scenes I found interesting in the downtown area. In the evening, I caught an uptown
subway train to Cambridge. I was heading to the house of Greg, the husband of
Teryl, my ex-boss from my data processing days at the University of California, San
Diego. Just fifteen days after I left Seattle, I was happy to finally be in Boston.
World Turned Upside Down
Niagra Falls, NY, USA
View from CN Tower, Toronto, ON, Canada 12 Feb 1991