Cornell University
As we were packing away the tent (which had partially collapsed and caused Joe’s sleeping bag to get soaked) a police car cruised by. It stopped and backed up to us. Why us? What makes every cop we see check us out? “Who’s the limey?” an English voice said. It turned out that the cop was from Southport [UK] and he just wanted a friendly chat. He had been in Ontario six months and was glad he had emigrated. He was on $16,000 - twice what he was earning in Kirkby, etc etc. He lamented the lack of decent beer in Canada, and their strange drinking habits. Unlike the English, the North Americans drink more at home than in bars, despite the fact that they are open till 2am. Thus he missed the social life back home.
We left the site, and just as we turned out of the gate he gave us a whoop from his siren and then zoomed off in the other direction. We went south once more to the city of Niagara Falls to see the falls from the Canadian side. We could see both Niagara Falls and Horseshoe Falls to our right. Both cascaded into the river hundreds of feet below, sending billions of gallons a minute off to Lake Ontario from Lake Erie.
The falls were magnificent even to the naked eye, but through the dime telescope they were mind-boggling. Tons and tons of water was spewing over the edge and pounding the rocks below. How could it go on, second after second, day after day? We went round to Horseshoe Falls, and minutes’ drive away, and there again we were stunned by the scale of the thing. The bottom of the falls was obscured by a permanent cloud of spray but we could get right to the edge of the river just where the river bed stopped and the water dived over the edge. To your right - a river flowing on as any other. To your left - a canyon filled with spray, whose walls were flowing foam. Niagara Falls has to be high on my list of favourite sites in North America.
We proceeded from there to customs where they spent a long time checking our passports and car ownership. They even searched the car and rummaged through my bag in the boot. Why us?
We drove to a place called Ithaca where Joe had a Malaysian friend studying at Cornell University. Found the road surprisingly easily and we were invited inside by Mary. She showed us into Yves’ room after asking permission to bring guests in from her landlady. Yves was the other Cornell student living in the house and we used his room because hers was too untidy.
She asked if we were hungry and of course we all said we wouldn’t mind a bite to eat so she gave us all some ratatouille (?) which she had been cooking. It was full of pickles (gherkins) and other nasty things but it tasted quite nice. She virtually emptied her larder, trying to be polite, and of course we impolitely scoffed everything that was put in front of us. Tried a new kind of potato chip (crisp) which comes packed in a re-sealable cardboard tube. Each one is the same shape, made from reconstituted mashed potato, and thus lots of them can be stacked together. Suppose they will turn up in Britain in about five years’ time.
We sat and talked, and Yves returned from one of his physics experiments and we discussed working as a postgrad in USA. Would be nice to go to a place like Cornell for a year or two and get paid for it. One by one we tripped off for a shower and eventually we rolled out the sleeping bags on the floor of the landlady’s daughter’s bedroom and went to sleep.
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