I'm goofing off on my sabbatical right now, so blogging will be light for the next month or so.
I saw Niagara Falls for the first time yesterday. Boy, that area is FLAT--what a surprise those explorers must have had when they discovered the Falls. Of course, the Falls didn't exactly look like they do today. The horseshoe on the Canadian side wasn't nearly as pronounced then as it is now. Check out this picture showing the erosion of the Falls for the last couple hundred years. Today, the water flow is controlled so that only a foot per year is lost to erosion.
The other thing that struck me about the Falls is that context is everything. Seen by itself, the American Falls would be jaw-dropping. I mean, put this thing at Lake Shasta and I'm going to work even harder to get a house built up there one day. But in easy view of the (Canadian) Horseshoe Falls, the American Falls seem almost boring.
By the way, you can click all these pics to see larger views.
And here is another excellent Niagara discovery!
Had a hard time leaving Niagara. More accurately, we had a hard time flying out of Buffalo. Our flight into LaGuardia was canceled because of weather (don't get me started on how terribly US Airways managed the situation), which we found out after hearing announcement after announcement telling us how the plane would be here in just another 30 minutes. After nearly 5 hours at the airport, we spent the night in a Buffalo motel for a couple of hours--all while our excellent, paid-for hotel room went unused in NYC!! But, we did get a series of miracles this morning, including a special security line that we were hurried through before we went running O.J. Simpson-style down the airport terminal to catch the flight. (Uh, that's a reference to the pre-murder O.J. Simpson and his appearance in Avis commercials.)
Anyway, we're happy to be in New York now, although this one last picture will tell you what happened at the Mets game tonight. Oh well.
iPhone comes out tomorrow--an exuberant thought that even a canceled game can't dampen!!!