donbgeek: Fitbit Challenge Walk Pictures 1 (Back East)

As luck would have it, the arrival of our fitbit devices at work came just a couple days before I was to travel East for a visit back to Niagara Falls and Buffalo, NY. The main purpose of the trip was to visit family and friends who I hadn't seen in a few years, so I was worried about fitting in the time for daily exercise walks. I needn't have worried...

The trip started excitingly enough at Seatac airport. Since I have a policy of demanding to opt out instead of walking through airport RAPISCANCER machines, the TSA (Transportation Stazi Administration) conducted their usual "4th amendment free zone" patdown and then freaked when it turned out there was gunpowder residue on my backpack (from having used it as a range bag previously). In the end, the TSA cretin and his supervisor reached the brilliant conclusion that I was not the bleeding edge of a hitherto unknown terrorist organization of 50-something computer programmers. If this is happening thousands of times across America daily, it's obvious that sequester budget cuts have NOT gone deep enough!

Enough ranting...during the flight back to New York state I had a 3 hour stopover in Chicago's O'Hare Airport and managed to do some of my daily walking by walking laps around this moving walkway.

Apatosaurus? Bah! You'll always be brontosaurus to me.

Most of my visit home was spent visiting family in Niagara Falls. An especially cool bit was that my mom is also a walker and so we did walks around Goat Island together every day that I was home. Goat Island is about 1.4 miles around, so a couple laps of it got me through a good sized chunk of the days step goal.

It's funny the way that we forget how amazing things in our past were. When I was growing up in Niagara Falls, I didn't think anything about what spectacular luck it was that I could just walk here anytime I wanted. Certainly some of the best memories of my youth are of times spent here by these stunningly powerful waters rushing to plummet over the cataract...time spent bicycling or walking or in the company of a lovely woman. But being back for a visit brought it all back...

One of the other nice things about being back in Niagara Falls is that the Canadian border is also right there. My mom and I also took the opportunity to drive across and see Niagara-on-the-Lake, an especially British-flavored town just across the Niagara Gorge from New York where runs into Lake Ontario.

Battles in the War of 1812 between the US and Canada were fought in this area, two centuries earlier. Niagara-on-the-Lake was burned to the ground (and Buffalo was razed also, in retaliation)...

On the way back from Niagara-on-the-Lake, we stopped to look at Brock's Monument, in Queenston Heights. This second monument to Major-General Sir Isaac Brock (whose leadership repulsed an invading US militia...an early lesson in why Americans visiting Canada should BE POLITE) was damaged by lightning strikes in 1929.

During my visit to NY, I also spent some time in Buffalo, visiting with a good friend and exploring. These two photos were taken in the arty Allentown district.

Like the Niagara Falls Reservation, Delaware Park is the result of a brilliant parks system design by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, When I lived in Buffalo, this was another area that I was drawn to and which provided priceless opportunities for recreation in the heart of a busy city. Nestled in one corner of Delaware Park is the Buffalo History Museum, which inhabits the one remaining building from the 1901 Pan American Exposition.The exhibits include illustrations of items invented or manufactured in Buffalo, along with historical artifacts from the city's long and vibrant history.