Prescription Beer and A Trip to the Falls

My good friend, Doctor White, paid me a housecall last week while he was on vacation. It was convenient since all of his suggestions for things to do I could ratoinalize as prescriptions and therefore to be followed to the letter. "Drink lots of beer." Will do, doc! "Play video games for obscene amounts of time." It's a sacrifice, but I'll make it. "Hop in a car and drive north until we find something to do." Oh-kay!

The first full day of this housecall can literally be summed up as "lots of beer, lots of video games." Apparently doctors use their brains entirely too much so he needed a double-whammy attack on the ol' gray matter. I was happy to oblige. On the second day, however, we did indeed hop in my car and drive north to Niagra Falls. Here's a picture!

That's the American Wall of the falls. We weren't able to cross over to Free Health Insurance Land because we didn't have our passports, birth certificates, or "anti-evildoer patriot tattoos" with us. I always thought that you only needed a driver's license to get to and from Canada, but apparently that's not true. At least, that's not true as far as AAA is concerned, and I tend to listen to them since they're always among the first in the phonebook.

I'm not sure how it works for Canadians, but apparently it's also not too easy for them to cross over to our side of the border. You see, there were quite a few National Guardsmen in barrels floating down the middle of the Niagra River. There they sat, individually anchored along the American river border to ward off Canadian refugees in inner tubes crossing into New York. It doesn't happen often, but apparently there are some "balsero-ehs" making their way to the US. Who knew that Canadians had a strange type of social kinship with us Cubans? And it doesn't end there. Apparently, they've settled into a small town in New York, but that's a post for another time.

The running track at Niagra Falls High is challenging, to say the least.

Today is "Fight or Flight" Day, unless you're an ostrich or a penguin, in which case it's "Fight or" Day!