A day in the Buf

I hope you all enjoyed my AZ travelogue, 6 days in Scottsdale. I am on the road again next week but wanted to do a quick local travel blog. Last Friday I gave my visiting nephew, Jonathan, the most extensive one-day Buffalo tour in my memory. If you find it enticing please visit sometime. I live less than 30 minutes from Niagara Falls which is one of the world’s natural wonders.

Jonathan got his bachelors and masters degrees in Business at Boston University and is interested in investing in real estate in global warming-resistant cities. With no coastal exposure, limitless fresh water from two great lakes, and no extreme weather risks from tornadoes, hurricanes, or earthquakes it is likely to be a refuge for climate refugees in the coming decades. I’m too old to see it happen but in 20 years when the east and west and gulf coasts of the US are being pummeled by rising tides and super storms, owning rental properties in Buffalo seems like a sure shot.

Speaking of global warming… After Jonathan arrived here on Thursday and headed off to explore the city and meet with a real estate agent just to get some ideas about the market… I went to pick up my new Toyota Rav4Prime Plug-in Hybrid. After putting in orders twice for fully electric vehicles that were delayed for months I saw an article in Consumer Reports praising the Rav4Prime as the best Plug-in Hybrid. It gets 40 miles range on just electric before needing its super efficient Prius-type hybrid engine. As > 90% of my local driving is less than 40 miles per day, I’ll be able to just charge at home off my solar panels. For longer trips, I’ll almost always be using my van anyway. Saving the planet for Alex and Jonathan’s generation.

I told Jonathan I’d be happy to drive him anywhere he wanted to go as long as we got down to Wanakah Beach in Hamburg by 5 pm as I had organized a first open water swim of the year for the triathlon club. I did have to get in a long slow run in the morning. My first race of the year is only an AquaBike (1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike) on June 1st and then the following week a short Swim-Run race (swim-run-swim-run-swim) in Canada but I am always eager to get into the lake and the water was up to 58 degrees and the air temperature was supposed to get up to near 80!

After my run, my Garmin watch bumped up my estimated V02 max to 50! Top 5% for my age 🙂

Here is a rough map of our journey. I first gave a tour of the SUNY Buffalo (UB) campus that is just 5 miles east of my home and then showed Jonathan where a lot of private off-campus student luxury rental housing has gone up in the last decade. Then we toured Tonawanda and North Tonawanda, headed north to Niagara Falls where I first showed him the very depressed residential areas and then we visited the State Park. I wish I had set my watch to record my walks at NF and then downtown by Canalside because it had to be a few miles each. We drove across Grand Island and then had lunch in Buffalo’s lower west side. Then we walked around Canalside and the Cobblestone district before driving through South Buffalo and Lackawanna (past all the abandoned steel factories). We had a little extra time before swimming so we drove west along Old Lake Shore road in Hamburg as far as Greystone (the Frank Lloyd Wright historical house). We just used the highways to head home after swimming as Jonathan planned to visit the Olmstead Park/Museum District by himself on Saturday.

It was a perfect sunny spring day, spring comes late to Buffalo compared to NYC but the birds, bees, and flowers were looking good in my backyard.

I got this just last week from a local realtor, great drone photo. My house is at the far right and only partly visible. I like how you can see the Buffalo skyline in the distance (10 miles away as the crow flies but a 14-mile drive). “HE HAS BUYERS!” but there are so few sellers. In the past, we would usually have 5 or 6 homes for sale in our area every spring but only one this year and it sold in a week. With mortgage rates over 7% compared to just 3% 2 years ago, no one wants to leave their paid-off homes, driving up prices and making the market insane for both sales and rentals.

I got my photo with Nikolai Tesla, his A/C electricity was much better than Edison’s DC but Edison was a better salesman and propagandist.

The Canadian side of the falls has a better panoramic view of both the American and Horseshoe Falls but it is much cooler to be right AT the falls and feel their power in the NY State park that winds through the rapids. The Canadian side though has a much more extensive and thriving retail area with multiple hotels, casinos, family activities, etc.

Jonathan had wondered if we were going on the “boats” but I explained that a Maid of the Mist ride would have to wait for a dedicated day at Niagara Falls, we had too many more places to visit.

We drove south across Grand Island and stopped for lunch at the Big Big Table. It is a “pay as you can” restaurant where they provide free lunches to those who can’t pay. I learned about it last month as it was selected as the charity our Buffalo Triathlon Club is supporting this year. We had all brought the requested food donations to our annual meeting.

https://www.bigbigtable.org/about-us

The food was very good (and seemed healthy), I’ll definitely be going back whenever I am downtown during the day (they do lunch only).

Gorgeous Maple tree outside the restaurant, I was concerned it might be in an awful area but it was just 3 blocks south of the busy Elmwood Avenue strip.

We then drove south to the waterfront and parked for a walking tour of Canalside.

We stopped by the Long Shed building where the volunteers were finishing up the replica of an Erie Canal boat (built using traditional materials and techniques). I didn’t realize how CLOSE to completion it was as it was only a few days later that I read about it being launched. It will now be on display at the Canalside Dock. Next year is the 200th anniversary of the completion of the Erie Canal so there will be a lot of celebrations.

I was not the only great thing born in 1964! I didn’t realize that the Tim Horton’s down there was a mini shrine to Tim Horton (who played in the NHL for 25 years including on some great Buffalo teams, a multi-talented person who also founded the restaurant chain).

This is the first time I’ve seen the BUF sign. Nobody really says “BUF” but I guess it would have cost more for all the letters. Behind Jonathan is the arena where the Sabres play hockey and above the sign is the SKYWAY, an awful elevated highway section that blocks access to the waterfront for a lot of downtown. Behind the hockey arena is the Cobblestone District which has cobbled streets and a lot of old industrial buildings that have been converted to bars, restaurants, and apartments as well as the Seneca Indian casino.

After our walking tour, we drove through South Buffalo (traditionally the Irish area) and past the Botanical Gardens and Basilica (for some reason it is not considered a cathedral).

https://www.olvbasilica.org/3d-experience

Only 3 other people wanted to brave the cold water. It was also a lot windier than I had expected and there was moderately rough surf and some swirling currents. Although it had gotten to close to 80 inland, Niagara Falls, Canalside, and Wanakah Beach were all barely 60 due to the cold water of the lake and the wind. Jonathan bravely walked into the water briefly in a bathing suit. I lasted the longest but decided 25 minutes was enough. I wasn’t cold at all in my wetsuit but the waves and currents were exhausting after a winter in the pool.

Fifa was happy to see us when we got home.

Quick media update. I just finished Kara Swisher’s great audiobook, she reads it well, about her history as a tech journalist from the birth of Silicon Valley to the present.

She was born only a few miles from me and just 2 years earlier so I felt a lot of deep empathy with her experiences. But her use of the terms “Grok” and “Assimilated by the Borg” will be lost on readers of other generations.

I am currently listening to:

I was never especially a Rush fan but certainly enjoyed their many hits on the radio growing up. I picked this audiobook as I had read that it was a great “rock and roll” memoir and I have enjoyed hearing Keith Richards, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, etc. read their memoirs. I did NOT realize that Geddy was Jewish and the child of Polish Jews who survived concentration camps and then made it to Toronto. He has a wonderful voice and describes his family’s history in awful detail before moving on to the formation of Rush and his 30-year career with them.

I am reading on my Kindle:

An amazing true story of Keenan’s journeys after the Civil War to Russia on an expedition trying to make a telegraph line to Europe and then 20 years later on a mission to find the truth of the Siberian penal colonies.

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