Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Adventures on the Road
“What are you doing for the long weekend?”
“Nothing, I’m here, I don’t have any plans.”
“Really? I’m here too. We should do something with that.”
“We should.”
“What can we do that’s fun?”
“We could go see your parents, but I’ve never met them before, so that might be weird.”
“Yeah, you’d want a little pre-exposure before committing to a full three days with them.”
“Well….the car club I’m with is doing their annual ‘cruise’ this weekend. We could do that if you’re interested. It’s all through the Niagara wine region.”
“That sounds good, I’d do that.”
“All right, well let’s play it by ear and see how it goes.”
So, I hear cruise and automatically think of lounging on deck in the sun with some sort of cool beverage (maybe some wine, since that’s where we’ll be), just slipping along watching the waves and the other boats. I should have thought this out a little more carefully. Why would a bunch of guys who like to talk about the type of race car they have in common want to take a boat cruise together? Wine isn’t grown on water. It’s grown at a higher elevation, and it likes dryer, well-drained land. “Cruise,” as it turns out, refers to them whipping around the countryside like their lives depend on it for about four hours.
I tend not to drive all that fast, not on purpose anyway (I seem to keep ending up doing one forty on the 407 though), and I am not at all aggressive. On occasion I’ve been known to apply the imaginary brakes, but I try to keep that knowledge to myself. Therefore, for the more timid of drivers, this was mildly terrifying, but after about an hour I stopped praying and bargaining with God.
We all met up at McDonalds and then got our instructions for the route. I was going to be navigator. Since I was still labouring under the assumption that there was a boat in my future I was a little confused about being given a task. I don’t like navigating, too much potential for screwing up. Fortunately, we were in an area I knew fairly well, so I wasn’t too worried, I’d lived around there for eleven years, after all. Despite my superior knowledge of the area the race started off this way.
Me: Okay, you want to turn right out of the parking lot, and then you have to take the very first left onto that highway.
Him: Are you sure?
Me: Positive.
Him: Okay.
Him: Are you sure we weren’t supposed to go right? A lot of people went right, and we’re in the lead.
Me: Yes, I’m sure. Not only did it say to go left on the directions, I know where we’re going, and it’s not right, it’s left.
Him: We’re in the lead.
Me: Oh.
Him: (moving into the right lane and unrolling the window to talk to two people in the car next to us) Were we supposed to go right? Where’s everyone else?
They reply that we’re going the right way and that they don’t know where everyone else is.
Me: I’m going to hit you so hard in about five seconds.
Him: What?
After we established that I was the directional goddess things went much more smoothly, until I sent us astray, but it wasn’t really my fault. How could it have been?
The boy’s a really good driver, and he really enjoys it, unless he’s on the highway and people are being stupid at him. My knowledge of his skills didn’t keep me from white-knuckling my way around the escarpment. I was so sure I was going to die. However, you can only maintain that level of terror for so long, so I was gradually able to relax and enjoy the scenery.
There were some highly impressive houses scattered throughout the wine region. I think a lot of them were in the Grimsby area, it’s a little hard to remember correctly as we were whipping by at quite a clip: “Heytakealookatthatplaceoverthere!WOW!” The boy probably missed the bulk of them because of having to, you know, watch the road and all. A fact for which I am very grateful.
When the day was over we were exhausted and sweaty. I looked like a rung out dishtowel. The car (a sexy sorta ride) is black, has black leather seats and his air conditioning is out for the moment. Most of the summer has been lame and damp, but on this particular Saturday it was balmy and sunny. We ate with the crew and tried to decide how to spend the evening. We were in Niagara Falls and there are tons of touristy options. The most appealing thing I could see to do was push around a bulldog puppy who was sitting in a baby’s stroller, ooh, or get my picture taken with a giant alien. We weren’t turned on by wax museums or gambling, so we decided to go to New York State.
That was nice. I don’t really know where we were exactly, but we walked down the gorge next to the river fed by the falls (Niagara River? That’d make sense.). Then we went shopping, which would have been better if I weren’t so po. Aside from trying to find a hotel most of our time was spent in a grocery store. I love grocery stores in the States. The boy took me around and pointed out all the stuff he liked and I reminisced about the family trips we used to take to New Hampshire when I was a kid. The States have the best cereals. I was always so jealous of that. When I was growing up you could never get Apple Jacks unless you were in the US, or Frankenberry or anything fun like that. We bought some Slice for me, some Kettle Corn for him, and some more water and decided to head back to Canada, since we couldn’t find a hotel for less than 79 US,(and we were willing to stay in some pretty sketchy places).
Now, I realize it was the long weekend and all, but honestly, how is it possible that we were unable to find any sort of accommodation between the States and the Hammer? We started our hotel mission in good spirits, hopeful, happy, excited about showering in new locals and being allowed to toss the towels on the floor, we ended it sore, exhausted, and bereft of speech. He had an epiphany while we were driving through the “worst area ever” of Hamilton. It was sketchbag central. We were on Barton Street, and – I’m sorry to those who live there and think it’s lovely – but maybe something happens when the sun goes down. There were men in grimy wife-beaters staggering down the street, weaving from side-to-side, one of whom actually stopped to throw his head back and start yowling at the moon. I didn’t know what to do with myself, there were so many things to comment on and mock. It was sensory overload, and the boy was trying to drive responsibly so that we wouldn’t end up stuck there because, duhn duhn duhhhhhn, we were running out of gas!
Anyway, the long and short of it is that he got the inspired idea to try a local college, as they often use their residences as hotels during the summer months when students aren’t there. We approached the place and I said I’d go in and check if they had space, and they did! The girl behind the counter was a little….scattered.
“Okay, you’ve paid, and you have your room keys, you’re all set to go.”
“Yeah, great. Would you mind telling me where we can park? Oh, and the room we’re in.”
“Oh. I should tell you something. During the summer we do a lot of international programs and there are a bunch of ESL kids right now. I’ve tried to put you away from them, and they’re all supposed to be in bed, but if they’re making noise just let us know.”
This is one of those forbidding statements you would expect to be accompanied by some sort of music. I collected the boy and we took our stuff up. We arrived at our floor and walked past about four hundred thousand Spanish kids eating pizza and having “the loud contest.”
Our room turned out to be apartment style. There were two rooms with double beds (and a pile of sheets in the middle of each of them), one bathroom and a central kitchen space with a microwave, sink, and fridge. He said, “I don’t think they cleaned this place,” just as I opened the fridge. There was a half-eaten plate of white macaroni and cheese and a partially consumed, and open, carton of chocolate milk. Maybe it was a perk? I would have preferred a mini bar.
I didn’t pay too much attention to the bathroom, partly to protect myself but mostly because of fatigue. The boy assured me it was vile, but, God love ‘im, he did his level best to clean it up. We were way too tired to try and get another room, and even too tired to complain about the one we had. From all of the standard driving he’d done that day the boy would be lucky if he were able to walk the next day.
It was time to sleep. We were as clean as that shower and those sheets would allow, and cool, and hydrated, and finally not moving. It was time to just slip away….RING, RING, RING, RING, RING, RIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG. Being the man and all it was his job to lurch out of bed and investigate all foreign sounds. What if it hadn’t been a phone? What if it had been a giant hairy spider pretending to be a ringing phone? He missed the call and came back to bed. I was now in a heightened state of exhausted alertness. I could hear sounds in the hallway, and I was tense imagining what was going to happen next. I was just drifting off again when the phone started up for the second time. I rolled out of bed so quickly that I almost fell over. I strode to the phone and lifted it to my ear.
Me: Hello?
Random Female Voice: Bueno?
Me: What? No, not ‘bueno,’ you have the wrong room.
She then proceeded to say something else, and I actually tried to listen for a minute before I remembered “screw this!” and slammed the phone down. In an inspired move, I unplugged the damn thing.
It was after this that the loudest conversation ever needed to take place directly outside our door. The boy had a pillow over his head, and two doors separated us from them, but if we’d spoken Spanish we would have been able to follow along. He crashed around a bit and slammed a door to convey his discontent, but they kept at it. I phoned downstairs to enlist some aid and was told it would all be over soon since they were checking out at four. Even after the noise stopped I couldn’t fall back asleep because of the tenseness. It was a very long night.
Anyway, the plus side of all of this is, I really did have a lot of fun with the boy. It was a great trip full of lots of laughs. It was certainly a bonding experience. Plus, after our adventures in the “hotel” I was called and given a full refund on the room. How about that? Apparently there was a mix up and we were put in a room we had no business being in. So, no one who reads this has to worry about staying in residences during the summer, ‘cause on a normal day it would have been business as usual.
“What are you doing for the long weekend?”
“Nothing, I’m here, I don’t have any plans.”
“Really? I’m here too. We should do something with that.”
“We should.”
“What can we do that’s fun?”
“We could go see your parents, but I’ve never met them before, so that might be weird.”
“Yeah, you’d want a little pre-exposure before committing to a full three days with them.”
“Well….the car club I’m with is doing their annual ‘cruise’ this weekend. We could do that if you’re interested. It’s all through the Niagara wine region.”
“That sounds good, I’d do that.”
“All right, well let’s play it by ear and see how it goes.”
So, I hear cruise and automatically think of lounging on deck in the sun with some sort of cool beverage (maybe some wine, since that’s where we’ll be), just slipping along watching the waves and the other boats. I should have thought this out a little more carefully. Why would a bunch of guys who like to talk about the type of race car they have in common want to take a boat cruise together? Wine isn’t grown on water. It’s grown at a higher elevation, and it likes dryer, well-drained land. “Cruise,” as it turns out, refers to them whipping around the countryside like their lives depend on it for about four hours.
I tend not to drive all that fast, not on purpose anyway (I seem to keep ending up doing one forty on the 407 though), and I am not at all aggressive. On occasion I’ve been known to apply the imaginary brakes, but I try to keep that knowledge to myself. Therefore, for the more timid of drivers, this was mildly terrifying, but after about an hour I stopped praying and bargaining with God.
We all met up at McDonalds and then got our instructions for the route. I was going to be navigator. Since I was still labouring under the assumption that there was a boat in my future I was a little confused about being given a task. I don’t like navigating, too much potential for screwing up. Fortunately, we were in an area I knew fairly well, so I wasn’t too worried, I’d lived around there for eleven years, after all. Despite my superior knowledge of the area the race started off this way.
Me: Okay, you want to turn right out of the parking lot, and then you have to take the very first left onto that highway.
Him: Are you sure?
Me: Positive.
Him: Okay.
Him: Are you sure we weren’t supposed to go right? A lot of people went right, and we’re in the lead.
Me: Yes, I’m sure. Not only did it say to go left on the directions, I know where we’re going, and it’s not right, it’s left.
Him: We’re in the lead.
Me: Oh.
Him: (moving into the right lane and unrolling the window to talk to two people in the car next to us) Were we supposed to go right? Where’s everyone else?
They reply that we’re going the right way and that they don’t know where everyone else is.
Me: I’m going to hit you so hard in about five seconds.
Him: What?
After we established that I was the directional goddess things went much more smoothly, until I sent us astray, but it wasn’t really my fault. How could it have been?
The boy’s a really good driver, and he really enjoys it, unless he’s on the highway and people are being stupid at him. My knowledge of his skills didn’t keep me from white-knuckling my way around the escarpment. I was so sure I was going to die. However, you can only maintain that level of terror for so long, so I was gradually able to relax and enjoy the scenery.
There were some highly impressive houses scattered throughout the wine region. I think a lot of them were in the Grimsby area, it’s a little hard to remember correctly as we were whipping by at quite a clip: “Heytakealookatthatplaceoverthere!WOW!” The boy probably missed the bulk of them because of having to, you know, watch the road and all. A fact for which I am very grateful.
When the day was over we were exhausted and sweaty. I looked like a rung out dishtowel. The car (a sexy sorta ride) is black, has black leather seats and his air conditioning is out for the moment. Most of the summer has been lame and damp, but on this particular Saturday it was balmy and sunny. We ate with the crew and tried to decide how to spend the evening. We were in Niagara Falls and there are tons of touristy options. The most appealing thing I could see to do was push around a bulldog puppy who was sitting in a baby’s stroller, ooh, or get my picture taken with a giant alien. We weren’t turned on by wax museums or gambling, so we decided to go to New York State.
That was nice. I don’t really know where we were exactly, but we walked down the gorge next to the river fed by the falls (Niagara River? That’d make sense.). Then we went shopping, which would have been better if I weren’t so po. Aside from trying to find a hotel most of our time was spent in a grocery store. I love grocery stores in the States. The boy took me around and pointed out all the stuff he liked and I reminisced about the family trips we used to take to New Hampshire when I was a kid. The States have the best cereals. I was always so jealous of that. When I was growing up you could never get Apple Jacks unless you were in the US, or Frankenberry or anything fun like that. We bought some Slice for me, some Kettle Corn for him, and some more water and decided to head back to Canada, since we couldn’t find a hotel for less than 79 US,(and we were willing to stay in some pretty sketchy places).
Now, I realize it was the long weekend and all, but honestly, how is it possible that we were unable to find any sort of accommodation between the States and the Hammer? We started our hotel mission in good spirits, hopeful, happy, excited about showering in new locals and being allowed to toss the towels on the floor, we ended it sore, exhausted, and bereft of speech. He had an epiphany while we were driving through the “worst area ever” of Hamilton. It was sketchbag central. We were on Barton Street, and – I’m sorry to those who live there and think it’s lovely – but maybe something happens when the sun goes down. There were men in grimy wife-beaters staggering down the street, weaving from side-to-side, one of whom actually stopped to throw his head back and start yowling at the moon. I didn’t know what to do with myself, there were so many things to comment on and mock. It was sensory overload, and the boy was trying to drive responsibly so that we wouldn’t end up stuck there because, duhn duhn duhhhhhn, we were running out of gas!
Anyway, the long and short of it is that he got the inspired idea to try a local college, as they often use their residences as hotels during the summer months when students aren’t there. We approached the place and I said I’d go in and check if they had space, and they did! The girl behind the counter was a little….scattered.
“Okay, you’ve paid, and you have your room keys, you’re all set to go.”
“Yeah, great. Would you mind telling me where we can park? Oh, and the room we’re in.”
“Oh. I should tell you something. During the summer we do a lot of international programs and there are a bunch of ESL kids right now. I’ve tried to put you away from them, and they’re all supposed to be in bed, but if they’re making noise just let us know.”
This is one of those forbidding statements you would expect to be accompanied by some sort of music. I collected the boy and we took our stuff up. We arrived at our floor and walked past about four hundred thousand Spanish kids eating pizza and having “the loud contest.”
Our room turned out to be apartment style. There were two rooms with double beds (and a pile of sheets in the middle of each of them), one bathroom and a central kitchen space with a microwave, sink, and fridge. He said, “I don’t think they cleaned this place,” just as I opened the fridge. There was a half-eaten plate of white macaroni and cheese and a partially consumed, and open, carton of chocolate milk. Maybe it was a perk? I would have preferred a mini bar.
I didn’t pay too much attention to the bathroom, partly to protect myself but mostly because of fatigue. The boy assured me it was vile, but, God love ‘im, he did his level best to clean it up. We were way too tired to try and get another room, and even too tired to complain about the one we had. From all of the standard driving he’d done that day the boy would be lucky if he were able to walk the next day.
It was time to sleep. We were as clean as that shower and those sheets would allow, and cool, and hydrated, and finally not moving. It was time to just slip away….RING, RING, RING, RING, RING, RIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG. Being the man and all it was his job to lurch out of bed and investigate all foreign sounds. What if it hadn’t been a phone? What if it had been a giant hairy spider pretending to be a ringing phone? He missed the call and came back to bed. I was now in a heightened state of exhausted alertness. I could hear sounds in the hallway, and I was tense imagining what was going to happen next. I was just drifting off again when the phone started up for the second time. I rolled out of bed so quickly that I almost fell over. I strode to the phone and lifted it to my ear.
Me: Hello?
Random Female Voice: Bueno?
Me: What? No, not ‘bueno,’ you have the wrong room.
She then proceeded to say something else, and I actually tried to listen for a minute before I remembered “screw this!” and slammed the phone down. In an inspired move, I unplugged the damn thing.
It was after this that the loudest conversation ever needed to take place directly outside our door. The boy had a pillow over his head, and two doors separated us from them, but if we’d spoken Spanish we would have been able to follow along. He crashed around a bit and slammed a door to convey his discontent, but they kept at it. I phoned downstairs to enlist some aid and was told it would all be over soon since they were checking out at four. Even after the noise stopped I couldn’t fall back asleep because of the tenseness. It was a very long night.
Anyway, the plus side of all of this is, I really did have a lot of fun with the boy. It was a great trip full of lots of laughs. It was certainly a bonding experience. Plus, after our adventures in the “hotel” I was called and given a full refund on the room. How about that? Apparently there was a mix up and we were put in a room we had no business being in. So, no one who reads this has to worry about staying in residences during the summer, ‘cause on a normal day it would have been business as usual.
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