Burlington, Vermont

My daughter and I spent five days in Burlington, Vermont, during our July 2018 vacation.  We’d been to Vermont before a couple of years ago, but this was our first time in Burlington. It’s a great place to visit and I’d consider moving there except for the Vermont winters.

Burlington is unique because although it’s the largest city in Vermont, it has a population of only 43,000 people. This makes it the smallest, largest city in any state. As a result, the city’s culture is condensed and concentrated. The downtown area is centered around Church Street, with several blocks closed to vehicular traffic, creating a pedestrian thoroughfare. Church Street is full of restaurants, bars, clubs, and shops, with many of the service establishments offering outdoor seating. Lights are strung across the street and provide a inviting atmosphere in the evening. Here’s a photo I took.

You can walk down the street and hear music from bands and DJ’s. One spot I liked is called Red Square. Everyone was dancing to the DJ’s mix and drinking up a storm. Walk down a few doors and there’s a band playing. On Friday nights there might be a stage set up in the pedestrian thoroughfare with a band playing, as there was the Friday night I was there. You don’t have to get in a car and drive anywhere; everything is concentrated into this one, vibrant area, and it’s a lot of fun. It reminded me a little bit of Bourbon Street and Magazine Street in New Orleans, except neat and tidy. There’s also a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream shop that shows outdoor movies for the kids. The eating establishments are varied and the food was pretty good wherever we ate. In particular, there’s a very good ramen operation. My daughter is a ramen fan and she rated the ramen there as the best she’s had.

Another cool thing about Burlington is that it sits on Lake Champlain and there is a very beautiful beach, called North Beach, right there in town. North Beach is staffed with lifeguards, has bath/changing rooms, a snack bar, and a concession that rents out stuff like canoes and stand-up paddle boards. During the summertime the water temperature is doable for swimming; about 72 degrees. So, not warm, but doable. Definitely warmer than summertime in Lake Tahoe, if you know what that’s like. Here’s a photo looking across Lake Champlain from North Beach.

As you can see, there’s a boat there on the right, which probably docks at the marina a mile or so down the coast, a few blocks below Church Street. I was surprised that many of the people I heard talking at North Beach were speaking French, which added a somewhat exotic, European flavor to the experience. The Canadian province of Quebec shares a border with Vermont, and the people there speak French, so that explains it.

The people I met in Burlington were, for the most part, service/wait staff, and were very friendly. I asked if they were Vermont natives and found that many were not. It seems that some of them stumbled across Burlington during travel and decided to stay. One guy in particular said he was working with a traveling carnival and when the carnival hit Burlington he quit and has been living there ever since. So, Burlington has sort of an “island of misfit toys” feel to it, as regards the residents.

There is also a unique museum close by in the town of Shelburne, Vermont, which also sits on Lake Champlain. The Shelburne Museum is about a fifteen minute drive from Burlington and is a must-do activity if you’re visiting the area. It’s unique because it houses a wide variety of Americana art and artifacts in several buildings that were mostly relocated from other parts of Vermont. For example, one building houses a collection of circus artifacts, including a miniature circus. Here’s a photo I took.

Another building houses what must be the world’s largest collection of decoy ducks. OK, so maybe decoy ducks aren’t your thing. You might like this steamboat, which is parked there on the museum property.

Another building houses my favorite collection: an authentic general store from the period just after the American Civil War. Every item in the store is genuine and period-specific, so when you walk in it’s like being transported back in time. Here’s a photo.

There are collections of glassware, fabric, fine art (including a beautiful painting by Andrew Wyeth), and even cigar-store Indians. Almost everyone will find something that will be of interest. You might be wondering where they got this odd collection of so much different stuff. Well, it turns out that most of the stuff was collected by a lady named Electra Havemeyer Webb. This lady was a wealthy New York socialite and world-class pack-rat, er, collector. There was always the question of what would become of all her stuff when she passed away. The answer is the Shelburne Museum.

Another recommendation is to visit the Inn at Shelburne Farm for dinner. It’s a working farm so all the food served at the restaurant is raised or grown right there. Truly “farm to table.” The Inn and restaurant are housed in a mansion that served as a summer home for the Vanderbilt family. It’s situated in a beautiful location on the shore of the lake. Here’s a photo from the lawn at sunset.

I highly recommend a visit to Burlington and the surrounding area. Hopefully this post will pique the interest of people who never would have considered it as a destination. The next time I go will be during the fall so I can see the trees in autumn.

 

Holy Human

Holy Human is a band from Daytona Beach, Florida. About a month ago they were far away from home, in Burlington, Vermont, having driven there to start a mini-tour celebrating their new album, titled “Epiphany.”

Our paths crossed briefly because I was in Burlington on vacation (great town; more on that in a separate post). A friend of mine who grew up near Burlington told me to check out this bar called Radio Bean. When I got there, Holy Human was just about to start their set. Seeing them was a complete fluke; pure serendipity.

Have you ever gone to a show and there’s an opening band you’ve never heard of, and you’re unfamiliar with their material? The experience of seeing Holy Human was kind of like that, because they write and perform their own songs (except, in this instance, for one cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Under my Thumb.”) The cool thing was that they were quite entertaining, even though I was hearing all of their stuff for the first time. I stayed for the whole set. Radio Bean is an intimate setting and I was thus able to interact with the band members afterward. I even bought their CD.

So now I’ve been listening to the CD for a couple of weeks. It sounds better in my car than in the house, especially if I’m in the car with someone else and we’re talking, with the CD playing in the background. I’ve thought a bit about how to describe Holy Human’s style of music, and I came up with psychedelic surf rock, although the songs on the CD are somewhat eclectic. One thing I appreciate about this band and that sets them apart is that four of the five members sing, and they have worked out cool harmonies for most of the songs. The harmonies are somewhat evocative of The Byrds, or the Beach Boys, or the Mama’s and Papa’s; even, at times, The Monkees, though less pop-oriented and more psychedelic. I guess that’s part of why they sound like surf rock, to me.

The first song is “Scary Girl,” which is a heavy tune about a stalker-like acquaintance. Holy Human started their set with that song, and I have a good memory of it. It’s good live material. Other songs that stand out for me are “Tower Hour,” “God Damaged,” and, especially, “The Sunshine Conspiracy.” But I enjoy all the songs, actually. I’ve taken to leaving the CD in the car and playing it as an alternative to the crappy Bay Area rock radio stations.

I don’t know if Holy Human will get out to the west coast, but I’d go see them again if they did. I don’t have any plans to visit Florida in the near future, either, but I would seek them out if I was anywhere near Daytona Beach.

Here’s a photo of the band in front of Radio Bean. From left to right: Matthew Wall, Woody Moore, Mark Murray, Matthew Aubertin, and Anthony Santisi.

This photo was taken on August 21, 2017 in Madras, Oregon. That’s me, watching as the moon moved in front of the sun to create a total solar eclipse.

It’s taken me awhile to write about my experience because I had to process it for awhile to try be able to convey it adequately. By that I mean my experience viewing a total eclipse was so weird that I’ve had difficulty coming up with proper descriptive language.

But let me start by sharing my appreciation for central Oregon, and in particular, the town of Bend, Oregon, where I stayed in the days leading up to the big event. For those who have never visited Bend, I highly recommend it as a tourist destination. It is a bit out of the way, in the sense that it is not accessible via a major highway like Interstate 5, or Highway 101. For those traveling north-south, you get there via Highway 97, which for the most part is one lane in each direction. If you’re coming from the south, you’ll go by Crater Lake, which is also worth a visit. I recommend visitors to Bend add a day onto their travel plans to visit Crater Lake.

Bend is located on the Deschutes River and was previously a mill town for lumber harvested from Oregon’s forests. The mill has since been converted into a riverside tourist attraction that houses shops, restaurants, and breweries. There are also vendors that rent a variety of watercraft such as canoes, tubes, and paddle boards to those who want to get out on the river and float down into the center of town, where the river backs up into what is known as the Mirror Pond. It is a beautiful, bucolic setting just steps from the main commercial area. You can stroll through the downtown area and around the Mirror Pond. It’s very charming.

For those who like beer, there are more than a dozen breweries in this small town, perhaps most notably the Deschutes Brewery, although locals I spoke with like the one called Boneyard Beer. I tried their IPA and it is fantastic. You can go on a tour of the breweries if that’s your thing. Other activities include river rafting, golf, fishing, and snow skiing in the winter. Mount Bachelor is right next to Bend and you can see it from town. I really can’t say enough about Bend. It is one of my favorite places to visit, which is why I stayed there for my eclipse visit. But Bend was not in the “path of totality.” In other words, you couldn’t see the total eclipse of the sun from Bend, which necessitated a short drive north to the town of Madras.

In the days leading up to the eclipse I was following news reports and intel from friends in Oregon regarding the expected traffic around Madras. Some of the reports were quite breathless and predicted a traffic nightmare on the big day. The guy at the registration desk at my hotel said there was a group from Arizona that planned to leave Bend for Madras at 1:00 a.m. to ensure they were in the proper location at 10:00 a.m., when the total eclipse would occur. I decided to leave Bend at 6:00 a.m., assuming that four hours should be sufficient to travel the roughly 50 miles between Bend and Madras.

As it turned out the traffic situation had been over-hyped. That’s because most of the people viewing the eclipse in Madras had arrived there a couple days early and were camping in areas set up by enterprising locals. One such area had tents and RV’s stretching out to the horizon. Another over-hyped story was that the police and the Oregon National Guard would not allow people who were traveling in their cars when the total eclipse occurred to simply pull over to the side of the road to view it. You were supposed to have a pre-determined location for viewing that was other than the road shoulder. I had worked this part out in advance with my Oregon friends and our pre-determined viewing location was on someone’s property just off Highway 97. We arrived at our viewing spot at around 7:00 a.m. and then just waited there for the eclipse. Oh well. Better safe than sorry.

As for the total eclipse experience? It was the most amazing natural phenomenon I’ve ever witnessed. You have to wear the glasses as the moon is passing in front of the sun and all you can see is the moon, which shows up as black, slowly moving over the sun, which shows up as a red crescent. The crescent slowly diminishes to a sliver of a crescent as the moon moves in front of the sun. Then, the sliver disappears and all you can see through the glasses is black.

In the news reports leading up to the eclipse there was a lot of conflicting information about the appropriate eye wear to use so as to avoid permanent damage to the retina. Some reports said “never look directly at the sun without the glasses.” Others said it was OK to look at the eclipse once it had reached totality. I’m not an optometrist, but I can say from my personal experience that you can definitely look at the eclipse once it reaches totality, though I should say that was my personal experience. I looked right at it and suffered no discernible damage to my eyes.

So, I was in a field with about 100 other people from all over the world. There was a couple from Scotland; some people from Australia; a party from Mexico, etc. There were also quite a few locals and cars with California and Washington plates. We were all looking at the event through our glasses until all we could see was black, which meant the event had reached totality. Then, we all took our glasses off at the same time.

Everyone had a verbal reaction to the totality. There was a lot of “oh my God,” along with several “that’s incredible.” Also, “that’s awesome!” There were also quite a few people who uttered a wordless, guttural sound like “gah!” Then, there was what I’ve come to call the “paleo” response. Namely, there were about five people who looked at the totality and screamed. And folks, it wasn’t a scream of excitement, like you might get when a rollercoaster drops from it’s apex. It was a scream of fear: a high pitched shriek of shock and disbelief. I’ve thought quite a bit about this fear response. I can’t believe the people who reacted that way didn’t know, on a scientific level, what was occurring. It’s just that the experience is so…weird, that it bypasses your intellect and hits you on a primal level; something deep and elemental that goes back to caveman days. It made me think about what the reaction was back in the days when people didn’t know, on a scientific level, what was occurring.

When I took off the glasses and looked at the totality I saw a black hole in the sky, with globular light pulsating around the edge. It was a frightening visage, indeed. Also, the ambient light was eerie; not quite like nighttime and not quite like dusk. The effect was similar to what you might see on a cloudless night with a full moon, but it wasn’t quite like that either. As you can see, I’m still struggling with proper descriptive language. I’ve concluded that the problem is that the experience is beyond written description. Photos don’t cover it either. For example, a photo would’t convey the fact that the temperature dropped about 25 degrees (F). It was about 78 degrees just prior to the eclipse, but as the moon moved in front of the sun the temperature dropped quickly, which is why in the photo I’m wearing my Pendleton shirt.

I was so impressed with the total eclipse that I am seriously considering taking a trip to Argentina for the next one, which occurs on July 2, 2019. If you don’t want to travel that far, the next one in the United States is on April 28, 2024. The path of totality goes from Mazatlan Mexico through Maine. The trick will be finding a location where there is the least likelihood of cloud cover, which would ruin the experience. I’m thinking southwest Texas, near the Mexican border, might be a good spot for that one.

 

New York City, Part 3: Hello, Dolly!

On the second night of our trip to New York City we saw “Hello, Dolly!” at the Shubert Theater on West 44th Street. This was the first time I’d seen a play in the Broadway theater district. It struck me that most of the theaters are not actually on Broadway, but instead are located on the cross streets near Times Square.

Around six o’clock in the evening the area is teeming with people trying to get to the theater on time. The show we attended had a sign saying late arrivals will not be seated until intermission, so there is a sense of anxious urgency, especially when you’ve paid a lot of money for your tickets. Some people don’t like cities because they don’t like crowds. If that’s you, avoid Times Square. Myself being someone who likes cities and crowds, getting to the theater was chaotic and invigorating, being among all those thousands of people sharing a similar experience. To me, the place had a warm, joyous energy.

There were two long lines of people waiting to get into the theater and, being new, we didn’t know if which line we were in made any difference. We asked people standing next to us and they said they were wondering the same thing. It turned out there was no difference and once the lines started moving, they moved quickly.

Once inside there is a bit of a jumble in the lobby, which felt cramped. This was ameliorated to a large degree by the excellent staff at the theater, who were very helpful and pleasant. Real pros. I went to coat check and they charge a dollar to hold your stuff. I forgot to bring cash with me and the staff person said I could pay him at the end of the performance. When I went back I still didn’t have any cash and he gave me my stuff anyway, and was nice and understanding. I felt bad because I tip most everyone; I think that’s an important part of the economy.

So now we get to the part of this post where I “review” the play. Reader beware: I consider myself a novice observer of live dramatic arts. I’ve seen about twenty live dramatic performances, including six musicals, so understand this is my subjective opinion as someone who witnessed this particular performance on Saturday, April 1, 2017. I don’t present myself as someone you should take seriously as an expert on Broadway musicals. But maybe you have about the same level of experience. With that in mind…

I’d never seen “Hello, Dolly!” before, except for the film adaptation starring Barbara Streisand, which I own on Blu-Ray. Those who’ve never seen the film or dramatic version of “Hello, Dolly!” might have a meta-level introduction to it, if they’ve seen the Pixar film, “WALL-E,” which cameos scenes from “Hello, Dolly!” via an old video tape that the robot in “WALL-E” plays over and over. In the weeks between when I bought the tickets and when I saw the show, I was wondering how the play would compare to the film I know so well. For the uninitiated, “Hello, Dolly” is a romantic comedy set in early 20th century New York City. The main character, Dolly Levi, is a widowed matchmaker who wants to marry a semi-wealthy bachelor, Horace Vendergelder, owner of a grain and feed store. The comedy revolves around Dolly’s efforts to fix up Horace’s store clerk’s, Cornelius and Barnaby, with two women that work in a hat shop, including one to whom Horace intends to propose marriage.

There was an added level of charm conveyed by the setting of the musical. What could be better than seeing a musical in New York City when the setting is…New York City!

One question in my mind about this performance involves the casting of Bette Midler in the lead role of Dolly Levi. She did a great job, in my opinion. She may not be the best singer, or the best actress, but she is a great entertainer, with loads of star power. Indeed, it was the star power that had me questioning whether the quality of the overall performance relied too much on Midler’s cult of personality. For example, some of the best songs in “Hello, Dolly!” are performed by secondary cast members. I noted that those songs didn’t get the same level of reaction from the audience. In particular, the great love song “It Only Takes A Moment” received what I thought was tepid applause, as did the song “Elegance.” On the other hand, Midler got a standing ovation when she first appeared on the stage, before she sang a note. It would be interesting to see the musical again with the role of Dolly Levi played by the understudy, a woman named Donna Murphy, who will take over the lead role in a limited capacity starting in June.

Aside from Midler, my favorite performance was by David Hyde Pierce in the lead male role of Horace Vandergelder. He managed to wring out every ounce of humor from his lines, with incredible comic timing and physicality. His performance was subtle and I was impressed by his artistry. In fact, the whole cast was great. I also enjoyed the comic interplay of the two bachelors, Cornelius and Barnaby, played by Gavin Creel and Taylor Trensch. The Barnaby character did this funny thing where he would imply slyly that he has a man-crush on Cornelius. Like, what are those guys doing down there in the basement of the grain and feed store? And why is Cornelius 30 years old and vows to not go back to Yonkers from New York City “until we kiss a girl?”

Another stand out was Beanie Feldstein in the role of Minnie Faye, the secondary character from the hat shop. Beanie has, shall we say, an atypical “look” for an actress. Short, a bit on the heavy side, etc. Nonetheless, her acting, dancing, and singing were delicate and polished. She stole every seen she was in.

For me, the two highlights were the songs “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” and “Before the Parade Passes By.” The title song, “Hello, Dolly!” was great, as well, but Midler really cut lose on “Parade.” The tone of her vocals on that number exuded a melancholy world weariness at the beginning, then, as though her character was not going to give in to life that easily, built to a rousing finish.

But for me, the best of all was “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” Starting with that famous line sung by Cornelius:

Out there, there’s a world outside of Yonkers
Way out there beyond this hick town, Barnaby
There’s a slick town, Barnaby!

A had a huge grin plastered on my face through that whole number. The only thing is that I love the show stopping dance sequence from the film. The stage at the Shubert was a bit too small to attempt to replicate that.

Then, of course, the theme song, preceded by the centerpiece dance routine performed by the waiters at the fictional restaurant, Harmonia Gardens. It was over the top, and by the end the dancers were breathing heavily from their exertions.

I recommend seeing “Hello, Dolly!” if you’re in New York. It’s the first Broadway revival of this particular musical since the original run, according to Broadway.com. The tickets are expensive if you’re not able to avoid after-market ticketing services, but it’s a throughly entertaining, extremely charming Broadway experience.

 

 

 

New York City, Part II, 9/11 Memorial

My daughter was born a couple of weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She’s 15 now, and this was her first trip to New York City. In the back of my mind I was thinking it would be good to hold off visiting the city with her until the site at ground zero had been repaired and the new tower completed.

On the first full day of our trip we took the subway to lower Manhattan and walked to ground zero. One thing that seemed odd to me is that even though the new tower is the tallest structure in Manhattan, you can’t see it as you approach. I was looking for it as a visual clue on how to get there, but the view of it is blocked by other tall buildings, so I had to use the map application on my phone for navigation.

Finally, you round a corner and there it is. Another odd thing is that it doesn’t look that tall when you’re right up near it. I think there must be an optical illusion at play related to the tower’s wide footprint and narrowing shape as it rises skyward. When you see the tower from a distance (e.g., from the Brooklyn Bridge), it is very impressive and there is a direct correlation between how far away you are and how tall the tower appears in relation to the rest of the skyline.

I remember visiting New York as a child and seeing the twin towers. By comparison, the new tower struck me as kind of an only child; somewhat lonely. The choice to build one tower instead of two probably had to do with the building site. The tower competes for space with the footprints of the twin towers, which incorporate the memorial and the museum, so my guess is building two towers was never a possibility. That said, they did a nice job of the fitting the new tower into the site without creating a shoe-horned feel; it looks like it belongs there.

If you plan to visit the 9/11 memorial, I recommend that you visit the museum first, before contemplating the fountain memorials inscribed with the names of those lost. The effect of the fountains will be much more profound that way.

Kudos to the people involved in creating the memorial and museum. I can’t imagine the difficulty of conveying the experience New Yorkers went through that day, while respecting the sanctity of the site itself, which is, in effect, the final resting place of those whose remains were vaporized in the collapse of the towers and could never be recovered. So, here is my subjective perspective on the memorial and museum.

To me, the most important aspect is that the footprints of the twin towers are incorporated into the museum experience. By that I mean there is an above ground structure that you enter, and after passing through security you go through an introductory exhibit that leads down into the ground to an overlook. When you get to the overlook you instantly realize that you are looking at the actual excavated area below where the towers stood; you recognize it from the innumerable television broadcasts that showed the workers digging out the debris. When I walked to the edge and looked down, my breath caught in my throat and my eyes moistened.

Care has been taken to retain features of the footprints; there are still pieces of metal supports sticking out the sides of the walls. The space hasn’t been prettied up at all, except for removal of the debris. A sloped walkway leads you down, down, into the ground, past a sign that says here is the epicenter of where the truck bomb exploded in the first terrorist attack on the towers back in the 90’s. You continue going down the sloped walkway until you are at the bottom, which is decorated sparsely with a few items: a crushed fire truck; a huge steel beam bent back on itself like a pretzel; a display case of personal items recovered from the debris field. There is also the so called “last column,” a rectangular monolith of steel and concrete that is covered with the names of various fire companies and other memories of the first responders. It’s devastating. There is nothing they could have created in that space more impactful than the simple space that was left when the debris was removed; it is unique, haunting, a bit claustrophobic, and evocative of the experience of those who died there, and of those who toiled there in the aftermath.

But nothing can prepare one for the museum within the museum; a structure that you enter through glass doors, and which contains a comprehensive multi-media recitation of everything that happened on 9/11. Through the use of video, news reports, photographs, sound recordings, recovered personal items, and projections, the museum re-creates the events of that day. I can’t imagine that someone can walk through it without reacting emotionally. For me, there were moments when I felt like I was going to lose it completely and I had a strong urge a couple of times to run and get outside. I imagine different people will react to certain things more strongly than others. For example, they have sound recordings of goodbye messages from the doomed left on voicemail and answering machines – the final calls to loved ones from the airplanes and the buildings. They also have children’s pajamas, toys, and blankets from the airplanes that somehow escaped destruction.

All of the people I met on the trip who live in New York, when I told them I had visited the memorial, said that they couldn’t go. They lived through it once already. I think the point of the place is for people who were not there on that day. While people who were not there have their own memories, visiting the memorial connects them more closely to the terrible events; something approaching but never matching the experience of those who were there.

Visiting the memorial is not a “fun” experience, but, I think, essential for anyone who wants more than a superficial understanding of what happened. People will react to it in their own way. For some, it will be cathartic; for others, painful; for others, life affirming; and, I think, for most everyone, a reminder of the best and worst of humankind.

 

 

New York City Part One: LaGuardia

We flew into LaGuardia because the airline I use doesn’t fly into JFK, which is a bummer. You know how a certain candidate for president kept saying during the campaign that some of our airports are like what you’d find in a third world country? He surely must have been thinking of LaGuardia. The place is, to put it mildly, an anachronistic dump. I took a trip to Costa Rica a couple of years ago and the flight was not direct; it had a stop in El Salvador. The airport there is much nicer than LaGuardia.

I live in northern California and most of the time I fly out of the airport in Oakland, which is an OK facility. I mean, we’re not talking Inchon in Seoul, by any means, but it’s fine. It’s shocking to report that the airport in Oakland is like Inchon as compared to LaGuardia.

We got off the plane at the B gates, which has like 28 some odd separate gates for departures and arrivals. 28 gates, and one restroom, with a sad sign posted letting you know that it is the only restroom for the B gates. Go inside the men’s restroom and there are three stalls and four urinals. The handicapped stall was “temporarily unavailable” so the one restroom was not even ADA compliant. Another stall had overflowed and there was some poor sap with a mop and bucket trying to clean it up. You have to go outside the security cordon to get to another restroom, so if you’re waiting for your flight to depart out of the B gates, or you just arrived at the B gates, you’ll be waiting in line should nature call.

You know how most gates have a “this side” and a “that side?” At LaGuardia B gates, there is no this side and that side. Instead, the concourse is so narrow, there is only “here we all are in the middle,” with no bump outs for the modest concessions. For arrivals, there is a sign directing you to the baggage claim, and when you get there you’ll see the lone carousel, so you don’t have to guess which one. When it starts up there is a high, thin, screeching sound like the guy playing the one string Chinese orchestra instrument at the farmers’ market in Old Oakland.

After we collected our luggage (my daughter’s bag was somehow ripped badly in transit), we went outside to a scene of absolute chaos. We tried to get a Lyft cab. Our driver was calling us and texting with apologies that the airport security forced him to drive right by us so as not to block traffic. The security people were out in the middle of the road screaming at the top of their lungs. I don’t really blame them, because the traffic was so bad and it was raining. To top it off, the cover over the waiting area leaked, so we were getting soaked while waiting for the cab to cycle around again.

There is no direct subway connection to LaGuardia; you have to take a bus from the airport to the nearest subway station.

The good news is that my trip to New York City was great, despite the awful, horrible experience at LaGuardia. If you can possibly avoid this airport you’re doing yourself a real favor, at least until they complete the $4 billion renovation.

Road Trip, Part 3

This is a cliff in southern Alberta, Canada that is called the Head Smashed-in Buffalo Jump. It is a bit off the main highway and I never would have thought of going there but for the nice lady at the visitors center in Cardston, Alberta. We had stopped there to ask about roadside attractions and a fellow traveler and her husband recommended it. By the way, Cardston has it’s own attraction near the visitors center called the Remington Carriage Museum that houses a fine collection of meticulously restored horse drawn conveyances of every size and description. It’s worth a stop if you’re driving through. But the buffalo jump is on a whole other level, seeing as how it is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The native people (or what the Canadians refer to as aboriginals) who inhabited the area before the arrival of Europeans used the cliff to harvest buffalo as an alternative to hunting them. There is a great museum built into the side of the cliff and your visit starts with a short film that explains how they did it. It turns out that buffalo have poor eyesight, which, combined with their tendency to protect the youngest of the herd and to stampede when faced with a perceived threat, allowed the aboriginals to trick the herd into running over the cliff.

The methods used by the aboriginals were precise and involved a fair amount of danger to the participants due to the necessary proximity to the stampeding herd. The preparation started with the construction of lanes made of rocks and plants to form a visual barrier that would guide the herd toward the cliff when the stampede began. The tribe would stand outside of the lanes to reinforce the barrier by making noise. Two braves would dress in animal skins; one disguised as a calf and one as a wolf. The “calf” would stray from the herd in the direction of the cliff while the “wolf” would approach from the other direction. The herd would move toward the calf as a protective measure and stampede when frightened by the wolf approaching from behind. This worked because buffalo have poor eyesight, but also because the braves disguised their scent.

Once the stampede began the brave dressed as a calf would jump outside the lane to safety, but as you can imagine the timing wasn’t always perfect and a brave would get trampled to death on occasion. But that’s not how the place got its name. The name comes from a story of a particular brave who waited at the base of the cliff during one of the harvests, thinking that he could view the event in safety behind the waterfall of buffalo. But as the animals piled up at the bottom he was crushed and later found with his head smashed in.

The museum is dedicated to the pre-European culture of the aboriginals who inhabited the region, which existed for thousands of years. It is the one museum I’ve attended with my child that held her attention longer than it held mine. Learning occurred. For me, the most profound insight is that the aboriginal culture was based entirely on the buffalo. Almost everything used by the people was made out of buffalo, including clothing, housing, weapons, ornaments, you name it. Of course, the buffalo also provided the primary source of food. Once the herds of buffalo disappeared after the arrival of the Europeans, the culture of the aboriginals was destroyed. The saddest part of the story is that most of the buffalo killed by Europeans were killed for sport and hides. Most of the buffalo was wasted, in direct contradiction to the aboriginal way.

I recommend visiting Head Smashed-In if you happen to be in Alberta. It’s well worth leaving the main highway.

Speaking of stampedes, our next stop is the greatest rodeo on earth, the Calgary Stampede.