Buffalo Day #5 and Home
Aug. 20th, 2007 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bjarvisToday's adventures were relatively brief and unexciting, at least compared to our prior several days.
We slept in (relatively speaking), then quickly packed and checked out of the hotel before the noon deadline. I had already checked us in with Southwest Airlines last night so we already had our boarding passes in hand. All we needed to do was kill a few hours before our flight.
Our first stop was the carousel museum in Lockport, NY.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cuyahogarvr was especially keen on visiting it but our timing so far this weekend was worse than usual. This time, all went well: the place was open and the nearly empty thanks to it being a weekday.
I had not known that the area of North Tonawanda was a major hub of carousel and kiddie ride manufacturing 1880 through 1950 or so. Well, I actually didn't know that North Tonawanda was a center of anything at any point in its history until this moment... go figure.
There were a number of displays concerning the manufacturing of paper scroll controlled automated musical instruments, carousel rides and such. We even were able to ride a restored carousel from the early 1900s, now powered by electricity instead of steam as the original was.
We then began the quest for lunch which took and astonishing long time. Who'd have thought so many restaurants wouldn't be open for lunch on a weekday? We eventually found a family restaurant near the airport and had a surprisingly good meal for only $30.
Our attempt to park at the airport for a leisurely farewell was thwarted by the complete absence of any empty parking spots in the intermediate-term 'preference' lot. We cruised the lot for spare spaces for a while, then gave up; we stopped near the walkways into the airport, collected our luggage, said our good-byes and headed into the airport.
Ongoing attempts to return home were also thwarted by nature: immediately as we were about to pull away from the gate just after 6 PM, we got word BWI was closed because of extreme weather and we would have to wait for alerts at the top of the hour whether we'd be able to proceed.
Some folks chose to de-plane but for reasons I can't begin to fathom, one family with clearly hyper and frustrated young children chose to stay in their seats for the 50 minute wait until the announcement. The kids were bouncing off the walls, crying and screaming through the wait although all but one mercifully settled down while in flight --and that one kid kept up a shrieking tantrum for the entire flight itself. Whee.
In any case, we are now back in DC and I am catching up on LJ, e-mail and laundry, as well as considering knoshing on something before going to bed. Returning to the real world tomorrow is going to suck big-time.
We slept in (relatively speaking), then quickly packed and checked out of the hotel before the noon deadline. I had already checked us in with Southwest Airlines last night so we already had our boarding passes in hand. All we needed to do was kill a few hours before our flight.
Our first stop was the carousel museum in Lockport, NY.
cuyahogarvr was especially keen on visiting it but our timing so far this weekend was worse than usual. This time, all went well: the place was open and the nearly empty thanks to it being a weekday. |
Carousel Museum North Tonawanda, NY 2007-08-20 |
I had not known that the area of North Tonawanda was a major hub of carousel and kiddie ride manufacturing 1880 through 1950 or so. Well, I actually didn't know that North Tonawanda was a center of anything at any point in its history until this moment... go figure.
There were a number of displays concerning the manufacturing of paper scroll controlled automated musical instruments, carousel rides and such. We even were able to ride a restored carousel from the early 1900s, now powered by electricity instead of steam as the original was.
We then began the quest for lunch which took and astonishing long time. Who'd have thought so many restaurants wouldn't be open for lunch on a weekday? We eventually found a family restaurant near the airport and had a surprisingly good meal for only $30.
Our attempt to park at the airport for a leisurely farewell was thwarted by the complete absence of any empty parking spots in the intermediate-term 'preference' lot. We cruised the lot for spare spaces for a while, then gave up; we stopped near the walkways into the airport, collected our luggage, said our good-byes and headed into the airport.
Ongoing attempts to return home were also thwarted by nature: immediately as we were about to pull away from the gate just after 6 PM, we got word BWI was closed because of extreme weather and we would have to wait for alerts at the top of the hour whether we'd be able to proceed.
Some folks chose to de-plane but for reasons I can't begin to fathom, one family with clearly hyper and frustrated young children chose to stay in their seats for the 50 minute wait until the announcement. The kids were bouncing off the walls, crying and screaming through the wait although all but one mercifully settled down while in flight --and that one kid kept up a shrieking tantrum for the entire flight itself. Whee.
In any case, we are now back in DC and I am catching up on LJ, e-mail and laundry, as well as considering knoshing on something before going to bed. Returning to the real world tomorrow is going to suck big-time.
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you said so yourself...
Date: 2007-08-21 02:49 am (UTC)two words: House Fires
Re: you said so yourself...
Date: 2007-08-21 02:52 am (UTC)To the uninitiated: our running joke in Toronto & environs is that the evening news of Buffalo PBS station WNED is that it always leads with a house fire in North Tonawanda. One would think they'd either run out of houses or start building them with brick, but in any case...
Re: you said so yourself...
Date: 2007-08-21 03:06 am (UTC)it would explain (I've made this same observation myself) why there aren't any burnt out house-remains in town, because the models would burn to ash, on an otherwise undamaged vacant lot.
it's only a theory, but it fits all the facts available to moi.