total trivia

This page is called total trivia,

and that's all it will be, if you end users don't get off your end and get out there for offline hard reality.

When I type out there, I mean being out there when being out there is being somewhere special for you.

And the only way it can be special for you, is if it's special already and lets you get there to watch.

If birds want to fly up at you, and sit by you, and sing, and you sing back, that can happen sometimes.

But those are little songbirds brought over from Europe that so many people here use as pets,

so I can see and identify them easily, and make some of their sounds to begin with, especially little finches.

I've never seen a parakeet or budgie. They're over-bred pretty birds, unable to survive outside.

These seasonal and migrational, and being Canadian, American and international confrontational,

are what make my long distance bike-hikes around the peninsula always exciting for me.

     And please, let's think along the same lines, because I'm typing them. Don't think that I'm typing about pets that escaped or were tossed out by owners. When the British wanted more British people to move here to make the country more British, so Britain could say we have to protect British business and use their tax dollars to build a fort, the British tried every trick to attract potential pioneer settlers. And that included getting groups of women's groups, knitters, needlers, embroidery and petit-pointers, quilters and water colour painter, and all the Christian women's organizations they could find.

     They were asked to have fund raisers so the government could ship the birds and animals of England over to Canada, and make it like England, That happened the most in the Niagara Peninsula, what Canadian natives called "The Bread Basket of Canada". That could be shipping hundreds or thousands of birds and animals. The only reason the only opossum that live in Canada are here, is because they came along with the Erie Canal when it was being built. I mention opossum because they are the only other mammal out there in the peninsula, that have hands with an opposable thumb like humans, more than a raccoon.

For an armadillo like mammal, they are fun to watch.

     This is going to be a bike-hike around the peninsula, typing about the most interesting places to be,

depending on the weather, the seasons, the migrations, and the kind of natural presence you want to have.

When I type that if I see you there I'll ask you what you see, that's because the most special part of being out there, is the privacy of being there all alone. It's not you or me that makes it a special place.

It's a special place that lets you in to stay and lets you see, as long as you are there in harmony.

I can hardly wait to get out there again. This is what I long for, my favorite reality.

     If that Inuit Elder hadn't picked me up, eventually, taking me far out on arctic ice, to show me the pure nature of his land, where I heard the Great Spirit, I wouldn't have a sense of pure nature and couldn't find it here, even if I was in the middle of it. We all look around and relate to the peninsula as having seen it as artificial sights and sites, and passing by in cars, where you are being confrontational to your environment more than walking or riding a bicycle, with alerting everything in hearing range that a human is coming.

     I'll limit my picks to places you can arrive at in cars and still enjoy them. I've moved on from those times, and if anyone else can find them and see, it might change your natural destiny. I find life-altering upgrades.

You will too.

And the only way you can guarantee that for yourself, and not sit there wondering why and feeling nothing,

is to make sure you arrive in comfort. Any new extension of yourself as a first time event should be felt,

and that feeling can only deepen or extend if you are relaxed enough to let your brain bend.

     That might not seem like an introduction for my bicycle, but it is. If I didn't have this bicycle I would never have got out there to begin wtih. And I have to describe it, just so you know, and you don't think of me as you would when you think of any bicycle to go. Mine is made to measure.

     Doctor David Salanki in Port Colborne, a chiropractor, saved my overall health for the rest of my life.

My worker and I were installing his illuminated highway sign at the new mall in Port Colborne, and he came out to ask me about how I was walking and diagnosed me, and when he said what I should be feeling,

everything he said was right. That was about a five hundred bale of cardboard being pushed down on me when I was working. That gave me partially crushed vertebra in my neck. Doctor Salanki also saved my life in a more meaningful way before that, when being drug-overdosed saw me wake up in a lower rec room,

and when I moved I dislocated between the fourth and fifth vertebra. I have one more spinal injury,

but I got over that and haven't even taken an Aspirin in over two years. It's my bicycle.

     I call it "Trial by Tire", and it always is. I used left-over lettering from a pizza menu board,

and stuck on "Escarpmental". I could riff off trial all day, but I won't. I will say I won all of mine.

     Doctor David Salanki had an exercise machine, and I was riffing off about staring at the wall,

wondering why he didn't have some scenery to ride through, yeah, getting into the scenery,

and he said no, even though I said I didn't have a bike, I shouldn't ever ride one again.

I said how about if I build one like the exercise machine, only put it on wheels I can ride.

He helped me design a chiropractic exercise bicycle. He knew the angles and reach for your body.

I just had to figure out what size bicycle parts would measure up. I knew my position on his machine.

     When I talked about this with R'n'B Welding, where I went to get sign stuff welded up,

it was about seeing these signs in Effingham where a racer was making custom bikes. The R'n'B guys,

all on a break from working on the same industrial framing, were saying why don't I let them do it?

This surprised me, thinking a bicycle, but when I drew out my idea over a drawing of a bicycle,

they all had their own ideas, nice, so it made mine better, understanding what the welding will do.

     That's the best way to describe it, not all the forward and backward bending of the spine,

as far as you can go, going farther the more you loosen up, getting measurable with it,

being able to have your arms up high or low, with a middle you can pad by jamming a coat in there,

and a custom seat that works the same way. Please don't see me as someone who is sitting on a bicycle,

and is just pedaling away. No, it doesn't work that way. It looks proportional to standard manufacture,

but it's not.

     After making five seats as I converted two bicycles, this one works the most. I can sit over the frame post as many and traditional bike seats were mounted. I can use it like an ordinary banana seat. I can sit up further than that, using my rear or be bent for the bottom of my back. When I move back further than that I'm behind the axle as much as my balance wants to go. It doesn't look like a unicycle, but it works that way. When I lean back it feels like it wants to squirt out ahead of me. When I'm drifting along a road with a little downward momentum, which could be just some wind behind my back, it feels like a unicycle,

with a guide wheels, that helps to keep the front end down.

     The only negative of this design is that the front wheel isn't heavy on the ground, or digs in when you're cornering. If I sit back as far as I can and lean back, the front wheel comes off the ground. If the front tire is flat I can lean back and the rim doesn't hit the ground. Sometimes I'm not sure if both wheels are on the ground, but sometimes I am, because I know I'm off-road and lake bound. I like expensive lake-side wattery.

The way I built the carrier/part frame with unbreakable Lexan, okay, wanting it to look good too, yeah.

But please don't think I'm seating with my seat on any kind of seat you might have been sitting on your-self.

It's got a three-way design, and a middle section to be sat on where it's empty and you don't feel it.

If I'm even thinking once about sitting on the seat, I move, I change my position, back and forth stereo.

     One of the best parts of this balance is walking with the bicycle on a flat surface with one hand.

The back of the seat has the banana seat handle at the back. I just hold that, the bike needs to be balanced, and it feels like it wants to move forward by itself, a little. I have to be careful where I lean it,

because it can start to roll away. It takes a little more effort, feeling like I'm pushing it more,

to bike-hike along the shore. But I want to do that, being barefoot, and pushing my toes into the sand.

     This point of balance for the bicycle is so focused I can't walk with it with my right hand.

I can, but when I forget about it, like I can with my left hand, and look around, I lose it.

     There must be a lot of room for storage on my bike, an almost airtight storage, that, as a flotation device, kept my bike from sinking until I could grab it, or once, drag a home-made grappling hook and haul it back in. Yeah, there must be a lot of room for storage, if I'm carrying so many things back. And that's carrying a better back than what I started out with. Thank you Doctor Salanki and R'n'B Welding.

     The strength of the construction, the delicacy of the welding, the Lexan parts, and make this bicycle into an excellent ladder and way to get over fences. I just hang it up and climb over it. One of my bike-hike protocols is to never turn back. People who see the difference will come on to me, after midnight behind the Lakeside in Port Dalhousie, around Niagara Falls, young or old, and it's always a nice conversation.

     I don't go out of my way to get my bike in the picture, but I'll put some up when I'm here next.

So I hope you see that my bike and me, have not only inter-related exchanges of left-right disquietude,

it's not trying to wear me out, tire me out, and that's both tires, or give me the gears. Sometimes I'm getting all around the peninsula without changing it. I haven't had brakes for over three years, even though there's a lot of new parts over here. yeah, I am flat-landing it and soft sand-padding it, our Lake Erie shore.

     And just for you, and I mean it.

And just for you, as I surmise your presupposed view, as if you were out there with me,

I'll just say the scene, so you know what I mean, as if we were watching intently.

iii

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

i

D

Niagara Falls, Niagara Falls, slowly we turn, step by step....

yeah, when I was young a lot of people would start to say that line, from an old Three Stooges show.

They were imitating the Egyptian mummies in the museum as if Niagara Falls was calling them home.

How well do you know the Falls? Did you know some Egyptian Pharaohs were sleeping there for a long time,

until they got recalled? How deep is the water when you look down from Table Rock? How's the riverbed? Look at that all that rushing water, so loud, everything, including Marilyn Monroe, gets washed up.

      I was looking at the Toronto Star readers' online input for tourist attractions, seeing a new different, most exciting tourist attraction every time I looked. When I described this as Niagara Falls river-walking,

I was number one for over two weeks until they typed out a retraction and sent an email to me,

saying that Parks got a hold of them and reminded them that this was illegal.

       The water below Table Rock, with the man-made stone wall curving out from the riverbank,

is the deepest build-up of the side water, and our side of the river is where the strength of the river,

sweeps around the edge. That water can be twelve to fourteen inches deep, and is the fastest water,

even if you can't really tell. The sound gets you right away. It sounds like a world by itself on the water.

Especially if the mist surrounds you like a grey day. I know, I know, the spirits of my ancestors that are even talking out loud to tourists, from the mists and fogs of the Highlands, close to Brigadoon,

could be trying to get a hold of me out here beside Lake Erie, but these Mohawk Elders are very insistent.

And despite what any uninvited intrusion by Sent A Mental Signs as a phased in component says,

and Americans first called that a "piggy-back signal", because they could attach themselves to your signal, and everything they used was money in their bank. That's when end users got to be piggy about offshore.

Their piggy-back cars and their piggy-back trucks coming over the border on piggy-back extension trains.

     When I walk down the embankment to the riverside, I pick up a pop cup, always a Coke cup,

never a Super Big Gulp, and walk out into the water. The bottom is like very rough wood sandpaper,

the water eroding around particles of compressed glacial rock, not ancient fossil rock, even if the ancient rock is part of the compressed glacial remains, crushed beyond recognition. The small holes are like half a golf ball, and the lumps feel the same. You can put your heel in them or grip them with your toes,

but it doesn't matter the water isn't going to wash you away, You could sit down and stand up.

     The only thing I haven't done above the Falls, is go and sit down at the edge and look around. That's when I'd hafta worry about that unknown underwater debris that could hit me. And even though I'm getting older, it's getting easier and there's a big more to visit. I only ever got up on the island once,

and that's because there were three of us. The island is worn as much at the front, as it is along the sides and back, having a deeper and only smooth trough worn down all around it. Now, with the new diversion,

oh yeah, that's a big diversion for me, the water is lower and the island is accessible. Nice! I can hide!

     When I scoop the pop cup slowly, once, in one of those glowing silver fingers that point to the Falls, yeah, it's hard to get lost out there, I always get a minimum of $25 in American quarters, with $30 tops.

You can say it must be getting rough out there in the European Union, if, for the first time in human history,

Euros are being found more than all the other foreign coins together. They used to be worth the most.

     And in all my life, the two times Parks guards saw me, they yelled that if I got out of the water,

they wouldn't phone the police. Both times, they were interested in my bike and all the wet coins.

     One day, when I'm thinking I won't be doing that any more, I'll do it in broad daylight. I'll have a sign,

holding it up for everyone to see. It will be made of plastic sheeting, so I can waft it with the wind over

the Falls, and it might sail away over the mist, how I built it, and angel up to casino level, if self-powered, and cause a pre-odds determined frenzy online with World Wide Sports Player, online gambling for signed items and annual cash, developed by a man from Welland, or descend into the lower river, where it will wash with the current, a race against time for a fallen angel, being visible enough for pre-paid helicopter camera coverage, following it down through the raging waters, around the Whirlpool Rapids and down to Queenston Heights, where I lived for two years.

     And when everyone sees that it's over, and I'm going back to the island, I'll start shouting look my way.

Look my way. Don't forget you saw me pass by and float away. When I get behind my hiding place,

I'll push out a very light inflatable filled with zeppelin gas, looking like a golden and glowing refractive ship,

with a look-alike figure waving a raised arm, and lowering it before the Falls, mostly for remote control.

That's when this will float off the edge of the falls, and might rise, but then it can only be a tragic end,

what so many people in Welland have been praying for. I'll wait for a few hours to come ashore.

    That's okay, but the first time photos and first time digital photos, the only photos, ever taken,

of Table Rock and the rest of Niagara Falls along the Parkway and everything on the American side,

inside my camera. Niagara Falls. Which side should I walk out on, if I don't want it taken away from me?

Dufferin Islands are older than hydro build. They were the first area used for water wheels, being a natural formation, a small ponding diversion, above the Falls. This was converted for the Adam Beck power station,

but wasn't used or maintained after it closed. It might look like a natural formation, being so over-grown.

The part with the concrete wall and bottom for swimmers, that goes around little islands and bridges,

is a new addition for tourists. You should try snorkeling in the upper ponds. Never any hassle.

     The upper pond sides are filling up to the surface, and can be shallow. You can't snorkel around the edge when a tree has fallen in, something is growing up from the surface, or those big, white crayfish are snapping their claws at you, chasing you away. The center can be ten feet deep, with tall, waving and golden grasses with tunnels you can swim down and go through. It's the water that is seeping over the old retaining wall that makes this like a totally clear aquarium. This is the only place in Ontario I've ever seen like this. The fish must be fish that aren't going over the Falls, just resting and eating before they swim back up-river, because the big ones are different all the time. I got a little scared, when a grouping of seven or eight fish, almost two feet long, started flipping and flashing back and forth in front of me, with big pointy scales sticking up.

     And just when it gets too meditative, just when the reflective light of the healing power of the sun,

now being filtered by natural river water, starts to reflect and reflect and reflect you away,

with the accumulations of mostly positive ions that were left alone by currently release negative partners,

you might not want to leave. When you start to realize some of this bottom swept shine is the shine of American debris. The first free-release CD I ever found, yeah, the new Black Sabbath, not in a case,

and my first computer guitar, were brought up here. The garbage can is beside an old ticket taker booth, a nice place to get out of the wind and rain, and you are at Dufferin Islands.

     yeah! Here's a tip about life along the river, that border, those Parks, police, new security and guards.

In Niagara Falls, to help them combat cross-border crime, have a special law. If you complain about a crime you are a suspect with all the suspect protocols, including keeping you in jail right away. They don't know if you'll just drive over the river. The United States has no extradition treaties with any country, for financial crimes. You can commit any financial crime in any country, and if you make it back to the States they can't get you. Most Americans who cross are now card-accessible and don't even have to be securitized.

     yeah, yeah, and just when those golden and shining reflecting rays start to ray-day your day away,

you're thinking I better get outta here, I've got to get back on the bike and make it to Fort Erie, Lake Erie,

and everything, everything, is better along Lake Erie. That's when I'll go over to the next pond, where you can swim around the edge and come around to the retaining gate, where your side is there, but the other side isn't. You can wait to catch your breath, and push yourself out into this current, that grabs you right away and sweeps you along for over fifty or sixty feet. I only do that a few times before I get too tired.

     That's like an underwater massage for your already snorkeled and water relaxed body, it loosens you up.

You can emerge, wattered up wet, and be daylight confident, as long as you're wearing a bathing suit.

Let me stress that. You don't want a herd of limos blocking your way. A few dollars worth of wishes from Niagara Falls might have sounded nice, but the rippers and the strippers who are clipping more than grass along the Parkway in the parking lots at night, can lose some free-release bills when the sun-roof is open

and the wind is blowing more than it ever was before, and it's not Jimi's "The Wind Cries Mary".

     I'm not hauling all this stuff around, but what Americans can't take back with them, or what would trigger an inspection, is left all around Niagara Falls. People leave hotel tablecloths with everything they had for a picnics. The area behind Marineland, with lots of scattered picnic benches, is where people sleep at night. Cross-border buses stop above the Falls, so tourist can throw any undesirable up. I've had to help pick up a few and dust them off, prevent some gang rapes too, always two Americans. But that's inland.

     Even though Niagara Falls is as much of my life as anywhere else, I never though about riding a bike around the Falls. I never saw one, and thought it was a tourist by-law. But when I saw my first rental bike stand I asked a Parks guard. He said no, it's just another city street, and as long as I didn't disrupt tourist traffic, I could walk or ride it anywhere. That got to include the lower gorge above and below the whirlpool.

Sometimes the water level is so low, only one side of the river has water, and the other is flat smooth rock.

     No matter what you do, no matter who is yelling at you to come over, if you are on the Canadian side, looking at the bronze plaque at the middle of the now unused bridge, or riding a bike on exposed bedrock,

the second you cross the border someone or something black will be pointing big machine guns at you.

I had a one-man helicopter, only black, with a big machine gun on both sides of the pod,

and the pilot didn't look happy. You will be detained, even if they leave you to see you on their computer.

They won't talk with you or question you, just look on their computer and let you go.

     The last time that happened, I was questioned and belittled for over a half hour by Canadians guards.

They cold have been right, but no, I'm left. And everything was left the was it was. What a ride.

Mohawk Point: This might be the one viewpoint I'd like to keep to myself, finding it in the late sixties,

because it's red clay and slippery, sloping down into a cliff that goes down into the Whirlpool.

But a deck-wood viewing stand showed up last summer, so it's a reliable view in the dark. Nice!

     When you are at the top of the steps that lead down into the Whirlpool, you can visit Mohawk Point

 where you can look down into the gorge and see where you're going. That might change your mind.

People have to be rescued all the time, unable to walk back up. I got a nice pic of my bike propped up on top of the emergency helicopter pad down there.

     When you walk on the paved path to the right, before it starts going down and turning right,

there's a small stone pathway up into the woods that takes less than five minutes to reach Mohawk Point.

That's the only place on the Canadian side where you can see up the river, the whirlpool, and down-river.

You are also higher up, looking down across the land across the river.

     The viewing stand has fencing to keep you from using the original path around the edge,

but that's a better way to walk back to the top of the steps, instead of going back on the paved path.

Natives didn't sit close to the Falls to watch it. There was over five times more water, incredibly loud.

The negative ion release was so strong and gravity grounded, natives thought they were getting sleepy,

because a spirit was trying to take them away. They knew what was happening, just not in English.

     And while Niagara Falls is famous for its rainbows, always a rainbow or rainbows somewhere,

in the Holy Bible, after the flood, everyone calls it a rainbow. It's not. It's only called a bow.

If you want to live like a rainbow, feel free. But if you want to think of it as part of a weapon, go ahead.

That's what someone who can build his own bow does with it, He shoots a rainbow arrow into your heart.

Lake Erie is a lot nicer. It wants to wash your grey away, while a beach becomes a half-mile loofah.

Round Stones: If you want to see very unusual exposures of dramatic glacial action, what Jimi Hendrix sang about, calling them echoes of glaciers from long ago, after hearing Haida oral history in B.C.,

the Kame Delta that is Fonthill, yes, font-hill, getting kinda Biblical again, is a big big example.

If you go to the lower parking lot below Rockway Falls, which is the park parking lot, not the community center up on top, even if people park there because it used to be the first parking lot. That's a huge gorge.

yeah, even the provincial government couldn't take that way, and see the partial fencing, they tried

When you start walking over and up a stream, stay left for the main big one. You will see perfectly round rocks all the same size, getting bigger as you get closer to the gorge, almost a big as big bowling balls.

For sure, way bigger than bocce, and they're not round. Scottish people like it round. It's a round world.

     Another Mohawk Point, north of Port Colborne, has a public parking lot at the end of the road,

even if the home-owner has gardened it up and installed a security light at the end. If you start walking north the beach becomes like tennis balls, and they keep getting bigger and bigger until they start becoming smaller and smaller. Getting bigger and bigger and smaller and smaller might seem like just a fun thing,

but it's not. The beach is ten to fifteen feet wide, and the sun above you, no shade. The reflection from the water feel like a waving heat. The reflection from the white and pale stones feel like heat beaming up at you. Round stones are the best for saving heat in solar system. The red clay bounces that light back on you. It can be like an over, and you can only turn around to walk back, unless you climb the cliff.

 I climbed a high cliff with my bike, just once. There were die-offs. I knew that. This beach is very remote, and when you are down the beach with the cliff beside you, you hear nothing from land, very quiet.

There were so many bodies of big birds and fish, skeletons jumbled up between my legs as I was trying to push my way around them. the

     I was using ingrown pieces of sod that fell and started rooting on the side as steps, and swung my bike up and around so the ape-handers hung on up top.The first thing I saw when I stuck my head up above the surface was a small purse with no ID and $18 in change.

That paid for a couple of ice cream cones and more pop along the way. It's nice when it happens like that.

    If you've never been to Port Burwell, north of Long Point on Lake Erie, it's another Kame delta attraction.

Only this one is different from Fonthill. They don't have a sign or advertise it. It's Provincial property and it's behind the campers near the road of a private business. You can always park to see it. Try climbing it.

Imagine an upside down bowl, big like Fonthill. only deeper and steeper, sides almost vertical,

form the glacier that scooped out Lake Erie for you, it's final resting spot. Now imagine that only a slice of one side is all that is there.

     When you climb what is getting more vertical, and it's higher than Niagara Falls, all of a sudden,

you're looking over the top, and a couple of sandy feet away, you can look straight down.

The beach below is about five feet of round stones, and when you look out you only see lake.

I never tried to stand up on top. That's something partiers from London and Delphi do, before they fall.

You might be driving past that little campground and be thinking it reminds you of Guenther's Grove,

but when you are far away you can see it rising over all the trees.

I figure that it's so straight because the bottom rocks are the heaviest to get eroded,

but when they do, what's on top of them falls right away, just kame delta sand.