Niagara Falls, part 2

When we last left our intrepid heroes, we were heading inside and then to get some lunch after a successful morning stalking the elusive huge waterfall. We emerged from Outback Steakhouse after lunch to find that the sun had come out and it was warmer than the predicted 30°. We headed back down to the falls area to explore some more.

With the sun out, we found the very elusive waterfall rainbows playing in the spray. The American Falls rainbow was easily spotted right out in the open.

 

The rainbow on Horseshoe Falls was a bit more shy, however, but we would locate it (and a surprise) before the afternoon was over.

The river itself was an interesting green color in the sunlight.

Before long, however, we were able to find the Canadian rainbow--and a friend! (That's the aforementioned surprise.)

We moved upstream to investigate some things we'd seen from the hotel, but we kept an eye on the frolicking rainbows, too.

The rainbows liked us. They even followed us above the falls. You can see in the shot below that the brighter rainbow is definitely standing in the river above the falls.

The plants were coated with ice, even upstream from the falls.

Below, I tried to take a really artsy shot through the ice plant. It didn't turn out quite as I had hoped, but it's not bad.

 

 One more rainbow shot, then we'll move to the next part of our tour.

When we were taking a break before getting lunch, we discovered that an attraction called "Behind the Falls" was open. We hadn't really thought it would be. Remember that viewing platform at the base of the falls that I mentioned in part 1? We got to go down there.

Our friend the rainbow came down there with us. It sure looks like it's having fun frolicking in the spray.

The view downstream from down there was pretty spectacular, too.

For some reason, they made us stay in the covered upper viewing area. We couldn't even go down and read the signs in the lower area.

While we were taking pictures, I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye and heard a strange sound down on the lower platform. Looking over the rail, I found that someone was probably on the cliff above squinting in the sun.

Now, this attraction was called "Behind the Falls" for a reason. There are tunnels leading to two viewports out of the rock behind the falls. Here's the view from the first one.

I guess the ice on the rocks behind the falls kind of filled it in. Ever optimistic, we headed off to the second viewport.

Oh, well. I guess it wasn't really surprising that these were completely blocked. I'll have to get back there some day when it isn't all frozen up. We were told by some locals that September is a great time to go because tourist season is over, but things haven't started freezing yet. Something to keep in mind.

At least we got to find out where we would have been looking out.

It was getting to be dinner time and the sun was setting, so we headed back up to the top of the cliff and said one last goodbye to the falls.

The trip home started out waaayyy too early (the train left at 7:20). We also got stuck at Penn Station for an extra hour and a half, as there were track problems in Virginia that delayed our train back home. Luckily, we were able to swap our tickets for another train and we managed to get home by 8:30 or so that night.

Niagara Falls, Part 1

A number of people have asked about our trip to Niagara Falls last weekend. For those who don't know, I have been a big fan of waterfalls since I was a kid. One of my favorite places to visit is Dry Falls, WA. (Granted, there's no actual falls there now, but imagining what it was like boggles the mind.) I had never seen Niagara before, though, so this was almost a sort of pilgrimage for me.

Rachel and I each took well over a hundred pictures of the falls and the surrounding area, so I'm not going to share all of them here. I will be uploading a photo album to facebook eventually which will contain photos taken by each of us. All of the pictures in this post were taken by me using my phone. Click on any image to see it at full resolution.

We started out pretty early on Saturday morning by taking a taxi to the train station and then an Amtrak train down to Penn Station in New York. That part was about 2 hours and we've done it before, so it was a little humdrum. After leaving the train and getting on a packed escalator, I suddenly realized that I didn't have my wallet, which meant that I had left it on the train which was going to depart in a few minutes.

As soon as I got to the top of the escalator, I found an escalator down to the platform, told the employee who was checking tickets before sending people down what was happening, and she let me go down. I searched near the area where I thought we had been sitting and found nothing. I returned to the up escalator just in time for it to turn into a down escalator. I found another way back upstairs.

We made a quick search to make sure I hadn't shoved it in my backpack somewhere. I hadn't. There was now someone manning the escalator we had originally come up, so I told her I needed to go check for my wallet again. She gave me more of a hassle than the other had, but eventually let me go down so I could check the route we followed off the car. No dice.

When I got off the train again, I spotted a couple of conductors and told them I'd lost my wallet on that train and asked if there was any way to find out if someone had found it before the train departed. One of the conductors returned to the car with me one more time, and while I crawled on the floor and looked, he announced to the passengers that I had lost my wallet. Someone found it at that point, because the next thing I knew, the conductor was tossing it to me.  That was a huge relief; I might not have enjoyed any part of the trip if I hadn't been able to find my wallet.

But the fun wasn't quite over. As the conductor and I went to exit the train, we found that the doors were already closed, meaning that the train was going to start moving at any moment. He grabbed his radio and told the train not to leave while he got the door open and we stepped out. I was nearly on my way south a bit further than I wanted to be. Thank goodness it hadn't taken any longer to find my wallet.

The rest of the trip to Niagara Falls was pretty uneventful. It included a 9 1/2 hour train ride, so it was also pretty boring. We arrived in Niagara Falls, NY at about 10:30, or 15 minutes early. Luckily, I had been able to call the cab that was supposed to pick us up and he was waiting for us as we got off the train. We stayed on the Canadian side of the river, so he had to take us across the border. We were amazed at how long the lines to cross the border were at 11:00 on a Saturday night in mid-March (and freezing temperatures). While we were on the bridge, Rachel spotted a colorful glow off the the left. We guessed (correctly) that it was the spray of the Canadian falls reflecting the colored lights that they shine on the falls until midnight. That was sort of our first view of the falls.

Our real first view of the falls was from our hotel room. Well, "room" is a bit of a misnomer; the hotel was pretty empty, so they upgraded us to the "Junior Presidential Suite". I didn't take any pictures of the suite and now I wish I had. I assumed that the hotel's web site would have some good pictures of it, so I could just link to that. Unfortunately, the picture they have labeled "Junior Presidential Suite" is very clearly not of the suite we stayed in. The suite we stayed in had a kitchenette, a dining area, a separate living room, a bedroom, and a large bathroom with both a shower and a two-person hot tub. The view was incredible; it was night when we arrived, so the all three falls (yes, there are three that make up Niagara Falls, not just the two) were lit up with multicolored lights. Personally, I'd rather they just used white lights, but that's me. No pictures at that point because our camera doesn't do well with that kind of shot, but here's an image of what it looked like in the morning:

The steaming cauldron in the foreground is, of course, Horseshoe Falls, which is the part of Niagara Falls on the Canadian side of the river. On the left is American Falls. For those of you wondering about the third falls, it is in this picture right next to American Falls. If you look really closely, you can see that the very right-hand edge of that part of the falls is separated from the rest by a bit of rock. The bit on the very right-hand edge is Bridal Veil Falls, and is the third part of Niagara. This image is looking roughly southeast with Niagara Falls, NY in the background. For some reason, neither Rachel nor I realized that the river was flowing north at this point, so we both had pictured the falls going the other direction for our entire lives.

The package deal we got included being able to ride buses all day, but we were close enough to the falls that we decided to walk down. To get there, we first had to walk north a bit so that we were straight across from American and Bridal Veil Falls. Coming down the hill and seeing the falls through the trees, I was amazed at how close it was; it seemed much further away to me from the hotel. The picture below was taken just as we finished going down the hill. You can clearly see Bridal Veil Falls on the right.

Looking downstream, you see a lot of ice blocked up under Rainbow Bridge. The "ice bridge" used to be much larger (and extend all the way to the base of the falls). People would go out on the bridge to take in the view of the falls. On at least one occasion, the ice bridge suddenly broke up and people lost their lives. These days, they block the larger chunks of ice from entering the Niagara from Lake Erie.

At this point, we turned south along the river. It wasn't long before we got to see Horseshoe Falls.

I was enthralled with the falls itself. Pictures do not do justice to the flow of water and amount of power those falls represent. And we were there in March, which meant that the flow we saw could be as low as half of what is flowing over the falls during tourist season! While I was staring at the falls, Rachel spotted odd lily pad-like bits of ice in the water. I guess they get rounded by their trip over the falls.

As we walked closer to the falls, we spotted a viewing platform very close to the falls themselves. We figured it was closed for the season, but as it turned out, we got to go down there ourselves before the day was over.

Being there in subfreezing temperatures (the predicted high for the day was 30° F) gave us an opportunity to see things that most visitors to the falls never do. The rock below is entirely encased in ice from the spray to a depth of up to an inch in places.

Of course, there were also interesting ice formations near the falls.

And man-made structures are frequently completely coated in ice, too. The railing that Rachel is leaning on here got coated with more ice as you moved closer to the falls. Right above the brink of the falls, one of the railings was so icy that the blank spaces between the bars were completely filled in with ice!

No, I don't know who the guy is in the next picture, but he wouldn't move and I wanted to get the shot while the sun was still back lighting the ice.

The plants were even completely encased in the ice. The shot below is from almost at the lip of the falls. All that separates these plants from the water is the wall you can see.

After taking that shot, it wasn't long before we got to where the walkway practically overhangs the lip of the falls.

 

After being amazed by this view for a while, we realized that it was after noon and we were both very hungry. The second part of this post contains pictures taken during that very sunny afternoon, including some from the viewing platform shown in the sixth image above.

How Can Hockey be Changed for the Better?

Putting aside any argument about whether hockey can be improved or not, I've been thinking about rule changes that could be put in place that at least some people would think improved the game. Some of the proposals below I think would be good for the game and some I don't, but I'm going to lay them out here without imposing my opinion as best as I can and I'd like to know what other people think. Please note: these are not my proposed rule changes, I'm just collecting several here that I've seen elsewhere.

Introduce a Goal Verification Line
This is one that was play-tested in the AHL a few years back. I think it was just as the NHL was getting back on the ice after the lost season, but I don't remember for sure. Basically, a goal verification line is a line drawn exactly one puck-width behind the goal line between the goal posts. The picture below is from the original article I read about this many years ago. I saved the picture because I thought it was interesting, but I have no idea who to credit. I think it was NHL.com.

The idea here is that if the puck is even touching the goal verification line then it is a valid goal. This is supposed to help on those goals that are too close to call even on replays because the goal line itself is blocked from view by equipment, etc.

Cease Allowing a Penalized Player to Return to the Ice After a Goal
The NHL has explicitly stated that many of the rule changes instituted since 2005 are intended to increase scoring (e.g., smaller goalie pads, the introduction of the trapezoid behind the net, and the moving of the blue lines closer to center ice). One thing that would greatly increase scoring would be eliminating the rule that allows a player serving a minor penalty to return to the ice after their team is scored on.

Believe it or not, the rule allowing a penalized player to return to the ice at that point was only instituted in 1956 (http://www.rauzulusstreet.com/hockey/nhlhistory/nhlrules.html). Prior to that time, a minor penalty lasted a full two minutes and the penalized team was a man short for that entire time (http://www.nhl.com/history/060656.html). The rule was modified to allow the penalized team to return to full strength because the Montreal Canadiens had gotten so good on the power play that they would regularly score several times in the two minutes (http://media.nesn.com/2011/03/top-10-most-important-rule-changes-in-nhl-history/5/).

Don't Allow a Shorthanded Team to Ice the Puck
As far as I know, a team  that is shorthanded has always been allowed to ice, or "rag" the puck. In fact, until 1925, play was not stopped regardless of whether the icing team was shorthanded or not (http://www.rauzulusstreet.com/hockey/nhlhistory/nhlrules.html). The idea behind taking that privilege away is once again to increase scoring. I've also heard that there are kids' leagues that don't allow a shorthanded team to ice the puck (this to encourage skill development), so it's not an unheard-of concept.

Institute No-Touch or Hybrid Icing
This one is a hugely hot topic. Many levels of play use a "no-touch" icing rule, meaning that icing is called as soon as the puck crosses the goal line, regardless of whether there is a player on the attacking team there to play the puck first or not. A lot of people have been supporting this idea because of the number of injuries sustained by players when they get knocked down during a fast race for the puck. The resulting crash is often quite awkward and results in the player slamming into the boards at 25 mph or so. Don Cherry has advocated no-touch icing for many years. (If you don't know who Don Cherry is, don't sweat it, but most hockey fans have at least heard of "Grapes".)

The argument against no-touch icing refers to maintaining the purity of the game and the excitement of the race for the puck (which is rare, yes, but exciting nonetheless). Those that argue this side are not ignoring the safety issue. The argument is that the key to preventing the often catastrophic, career-ending injuries is better enforcement of the rules about interference, checking from behind, and boarding. The idea is that if a player knows that he'll be called for a penalty if he so much as touches his opponent in that vulnerable situation then he'll lay off.

In an effort to keep the race for the puck but eliminate the injuries incurred by crashing into the end boards, the concept of "hybrid" icing was developed. Many leagues have adopted this approach, including the NCAA, and it was play-tested in the AHL a few years ago. The exact rules for hybrid icing vary from implementation to implementation, but the basic idea is that there is an invisible line across the ice somewhere far from the end boards (frequently between the face off dots). Icing is called if the usual requirements are met and the first player to cross that invisible line is a defender. It is not called if the first player across that line is an attacker.

Institute Stiffer Penalties for Fighting/Ban Fighting
If no-touch icing is a hot topic then fighting is scorching. On the one hand, you have the people who want to ban fighting, who are pointing out head injuries that occur as a result of fights and that most 'enforcers' are really not skilled players and don't belong in an elite league. On the other hand, you have those who say that fighting is part of the game and that those who want it removed aren't real hockey fans (this is frequently stated using crude insults, which kind of undermines the argument  if you ask me).

Among arguments for keeping the fighting rules just as they are in the NHL, tops is probably "it's part of the game; leave it alone." The next argument usually points out that if pests such as Sean Avery or Matt Cooke don't know that they're going to have to fight the opponents' enforcer then they'll continue to make dirty hits and attempt to injure other players. (Different topic, but Matt Cooke has actually changed his ways. It would be nice if people noticed that.) Finally, the argument is frequently made that hockey is a rough sport and by removing fighting, you remove some of the 'manliness' from it. (Frequently, a reference is made to figure skating at this point.)

Arguments for banning fighting altogether include the injury argument mentioned above as well as opening up the spots currently taken by team enforcers for more skilled players. Fighting is not a part of the game, this side argues, because if it was then the game wouldn't stop whenever a fight broke out and there wouldn't be any penalties. Besides, look at international hockey (such as the Olympics and World Championships); fighting is banned in international hockey and you see some of the best hockey you ever will at that level. This side also points out that dirty plays exist now, so there's no basis for arguing that fighting deters dirty plays. In fact, many fights are started after a good, clean, solid check is made, so the argument can be made that fighting actually discourages good, solid checks, which are undeniably part of the game.

Eliminate the Shootout
The shootout is apparently very popular amongst fans, but there are those who don't like it because they feel that it's not really hockey. Hockey is a team sport, the argument goes, so something so individual as a shootout should not decide a game. Either allow for endless overtimes or accept ties. 

Replace the +/- with the Adjusted +/-
Okay, so I'm probably the only one who has ever put this forward as a 'rule' change, and it's not even technically a rule, just stats. Still, I think it would be cool to see it adopted.

There are many more proposed rule changes out there, some serious, some not-so-serious, but this is probably plenty to get any conversation rolling. Please feel free to share other ideas or to discuss those mentioned above in the comments section. Please note, however, that I do not tolerate name-calling in the comments. Any comments that include ad hominem attacks will be deleted.