But seriously - I can't live here. Driving through Buffalo earlier today and already in a bad humour (I've had a run-in with another security guard) I came across a woman in tears on the edge of the street, with a baby, and with all her possessions scattered around her. And it was in the driving, streaming rain too. Apparently the bailiffs had just been.
But Buffalo is a city that is already in my bad books, and has been for quite some time. In 1860-something a steamer launched in 1846 - one of the earliest lakers - sank in Lake Erie in a storm. A few years ago a couple of divers located it and it was raised from the sea bed and taken to Buffalo for restoration. However the mayor declared it an "eyesore" and called in the scrapmen, who promptly cut up this rare, if not unique historical artefact.
In 1813 the British burnt Buffalo to the ground during one of the American wars, and believe me, I was sorely tempted to make my own re-enaction of that historic event. There can't be any greater eyesore in any city anywhere in the whole world than the sight of a crying woman and her child out in the street in the middle of a rainstorm with nowhere to go and no-one offering any help. 10% of the American working population is out of work, there are thousands of jobs going every day, and there's no state aid for anyone.
And talking of that, just a short while later, I stopped to take a photo of an absolutely ancient Dodge Power Ranger plant mover used as a haulage truck in a boatyard. Fishing from the quay was an old guy. I got talking to him about things.
"Well", he said "I worked for 29 years as a shopping centre manager and I was laid off in the spring. I don't suppose I'll ever work again and I don't know what I'll do now. And in my spare time I was a bailiff for the sheriff's office but I had to give that up too. It was just so distressing turfing all of these people out into the street. It's the rich who are causing all of these problems in the USA - it's high time a few of them were turned out into the street and made to suffer".
I once heard someone say that the USA is a great place in which to succeed. Indeed it is, but it's a dreadful place to fail. If the USA has the highest standard of living in the world, then there must be some awfully rich people somewhere well-hidden, because all I ever seem to encounter are the poor. And there are plenty of them!
After that, there isn't an awful lot to say about my journey. I wasn't really in the mood for much. Yesterday I had a leisurely drive along the south coast of Lake Erie (not Lake Eric) as far as the town of Erie in Pennsylvania.
Today has been much-more hectic and apart from Buffalo I blagged my way in to see one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous houses currently under restoration after 65 years of neglect, I've been to Niagara Falls, I went to Fort Niagara - the site of a battle between the British and the French in 1759 where I saw the Toronto skyline across Lake Ontario - over 30 miles away, and I'm now in a small town called Ontario, in Upper New York State. Tomorrow I'm going to stay on the south side of the St Lawrence as far as I can until the last bridge across (round about Quebec I reckon) and then head north to Labrador.
And before I go, I would like to acknowledge something today that I found rather remarkable. If you have been following my adventures from previous voyages you will be well-aware that I have been extracting the urine from the United States over its self proclaimed status as "Land of the Free" as everywhere I have ever been to that has any kind of importance, it has been "Please Prepare Your Admission Money".
Furthermore, wandering over onto the Canadian side of the river to take a photo (the view is much more impressive from Canada by the way) I was allowed back into the USA for free, without paying the usual entrance fee.
Having given the USA a considerable amount of grief in the past over this, I am happy to record the event.
