My friend Lauri called and I repeatedly tried to impress her with my hotel-haggling abilities but to no avail; even the most atrocious of places were all taken up.  Eventually I found a terrifying little hotel way in the middle of nowhere where I settled down for the night and watched “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter is Dead,” which is less about a dead babysitter and more about Christina Applegate looking hot.  Deal.

I stopped at a McDonalds the next morning to grab some deliciousness and use their free WiFi (combining my two favorite things on Earth, you wonderful company) to conduct some b.nis and check out things to do in Buffalo.  On the front page of Buffalo Times was the Blues Fest (tribute to Muddy Waters specifically, who I awkwardly love) going on in Niagara Falls.  Plus one more good karma point to McDonalds.

I’m walking to the festival when I see this:

I'm a huge sucker for silly signs

The Blues Fest was just getting set up so I wonder over to the only thing decent looking on the American side, a big rainbow-pretty Casino.  $10 dollars, 3 hours, and a pack later I was out.  Not a bad $10 spent, and while I’m a bit sore of losing the $80 payout what would you expect at a casino?

The band was just getting started (The Filter Kings, they were great), so I hung around a bit and then it started to rain.  Instead of finding shelter, I decided while I’m on the American side I might as well check out the American Falls a couple miles away (see it again I suppose; Lauri was with me the first time I went to Niagara Falls where I have fond memories of cheesy couples videos and arguing over exchange rates).

It’s lucky for me that I’m so ridiculously manly or else the freezing cold rain weighing down my sweater might have bugged me.

Please note the sweater my mother bought me and my crippling addiction to harmful chemicals as attributes of my testosterone.

Here’s a picture of the falls.  More importantly here’s a picture of all the wusses with all their life-saving waterproofing.

Pshka

As I stood there, marveling at the incredible beauty nature has taken thousands of years to create, only one thing went through my mind, “The Canadian side looks so much fucking cooler.”

Oh Canada! Teasin' those without passports.

Now.  Even sweeter than the falls were the rapids above them.  If you’re in the area, go see them.  It’s a quarter mile walk you punk, stop complaining.

This is where you throw unwanted children

I got back to the Blues Fest and watched a few more bands before I decided to head over to the hostel on the Canadian side.

As tacky as it is, I bought a shirt there (mainly because Lindsey did unspeakable things to the shirt I was currently wearing that I would not readily describe sober).

I'd wear Muddy himself

I didn’t think there was anything to do in Niagara Falls but the guy I met at the hostel told me differently.  There’s tons and tons of sweet stuff to do.  Unfortunately, I was only there for a couple days so I only got to do a jetboat tour ( http://www.whirlpooljet.com/ ) which was FANTASTIC.  10,000 gallons of water all up in your business going down class 5 rapids.  I thought I was really clever wearing really dirty clothes and going through a “free wash cycle,” but that water isn’t clean.  Fair warning.

What’s even more unfortunate than my fleeting stay is that I cut all the pictures from my memcard to my lappy which got a filesystem corruption a few days later (couldn’t even fdisk and mount -f from a LiveCD), so I lost ALL my pictures during this time.  For shame.  What I really miss are the pics of Kristy-Lee pwning up Area 51 and our sweet winnings.

I’ll give credit where credit is due, the hostel I stayed at in Niagara Falls was AMAZING and here’s a link to their site:  http://www.hostelniagara.com/ (enjoy the PR -3 backlink guys).