Backlog 4: The FINAL hotness
The midwest, where Toronto is, though not as West as Chicago or even Dtroit or Buffalo, but still midwest in my opinion... um, where was i? Ah yes, the midwest gets HOT and MUGGY in the summer.
Now, I'm very good at thermo-regulating but many are not, including everyone's favourite soaker
Sadly, a puppy licked him up only minutes later.
To escape the perceived heat of the city, I joined my former flatmate from McGill and his fiancee at his family's house in the holiday wilderness of Lake Muskoka. The long-weekend was the REGATTA weekend I was told; they being a rather upstanding family, I assumed there were poncey rowing races and such, but NO such thing. The regatta was a family sports day: wet tshirt swim-relays, canoe races and, for kids, "blow the ping-pong ball along the water" races.
I turned out to be the best swimmer of the Stephen's Bay regatta. Surely there was much slanderous gossip around this family bringing in an outsider to win for them. Our proudest moment was the "RACE OF THE AGES" which I will document now:
In the race, a person of a different age-category does each stage. The race started with some 6-year old kid pushing off our canoe, we (the aged father and the young man) paddle hard out to the buoys.
Our canoe reached the first buoy well in the lead and we headed at a lick over to the second buoy nearby.
At the second, yours truly was required to jump from the speeding canoe and swim to shore. I'm not sure how but I managed to not tip the canoe and drown the unable-to-swim father.
I made it to shore with a good lead but I was drowned by the time I finished. I really understand why in rowing they always said if you tip don't try swimming to shore, it's much further than you realize. Sadly, the swim while making my muscles swell a bit for the day, demonstrated to me that I was a *bit* less fit than I imagined.
Me thrashing my way to the finish:
---
That ends my story of Muskoka, but now onto my departure from Toronto.
---
The day I was leaving, was the day the Irish girlfriend of my Canadian classmate arrived. Perfect, I had a ride to the airport and I could also welcome the girl who is also my friend.
Not-so-perfect was the fact that a certain Air France flight was due to land twenty minutes earlier...
Here's my morbid picture of the arrivals screen, taken in ignorance.
At the time, we and the family's of the AF passengers knew nothing at the arrivals area. A shockingly poor communication job on the part of the airport/security staff. The first we knew of something wrong was when a passenger FROM the flight (who managed to hail a car on the highway close to the crash site) came running into the arrivals shouting,
"EVERYBODY THERE HAS BEEN A CRASH! THE AIR FRANCE FLIGHT IS BURNING ON THE RUNWAY!"
The second he started speaking, in his tone, thick accent and darker french complexion, my friend and I both were thinking to ourselves, "oh shit, this guy's making some speech before he blows us all up -- he's got a beard even!"
Alas, all ended well, no one had died or been badly injured; we spent the REST of the day, finding out that MY flight to Vancouver was cancelled and that the girlfriend's flight had been sent to an airport an hour's drive away; the passengers would be bussed up to Toronto airport by the airline.
Toronto = big international airport. Hamilton = tiny international airport... this means 13 international flights were sent there and TWO customs agents (instead of 10) had to clear all the passengers. The airline, a cheapo budget airline SkyService, didn't have a clue when they would arrive by bus. However that didn't stop them from lying to us.
"They'll be here by 8:30pm but I'm certain their bus will get here by 8pm"
ticktockticktock
ticktockticktock
At 10:30pm, we gave into our hunger and stopped our vigil at the coach area, headed upstairs for some lovely yum burgers, dressed with amazing skill...
At 11pm, the clock-faced, weary friend called the airline again... "The bus will arrive at 1am"
1am!!! And they told us 8pm!
THEN, not a minute later, my friend's phone rings... our girl is waiting downstairs.
I left Toronto the next day.
My new flight was delayed while they switched airplanes; but before deciding to do that, the captain came on the PA as we sat at the gate,
"We're sorry for the delay due to some technical problems; we're gonna try one more thing, to shut the whole system down and start again -- you know like with Windows on your computer, when things go wrong you just turn it off and re-start it and hope things sort themselves out?"
...things sort themselves out... nice. Anyway, I made it back safe.
(This is the last Backlog of my hot summer.)
Now, I'm very good at thermo-regulating but many are not, including everyone's favourite soaker
Sadly, a puppy licked him up only minutes later.
To escape the perceived heat of the city, I joined my former flatmate from McGill and his fiancee at his family's house in the holiday wilderness of Lake Muskoka. The long-weekend was the REGATTA weekend I was told; they being a rather upstanding family, I assumed there were poncey rowing races and such, but NO such thing. The regatta was a family sports day: wet tshirt swim-relays, canoe races and, for kids, "blow the ping-pong ball along the water" races.
I turned out to be the best swimmer of the Stephen's Bay regatta. Surely there was much slanderous gossip around this family bringing in an outsider to win for them. Our proudest moment was the "RACE OF THE AGES" which I will document now:
In the race, a person of a different age-category does each stage. The race started with some 6-year old kid pushing off our canoe, we (the aged father and the young man) paddle hard out to the buoys.
Our canoe reached the first buoy well in the lead and we headed at a lick over to the second buoy nearby.
At the second, yours truly was required to jump from the speeding canoe and swim to shore. I'm not sure how but I managed to not tip the canoe and drown the unable-to-swim father.
I made it to shore with a good lead but I was drowned by the time I finished. I really understand why in rowing they always said if you tip don't try swimming to shore, it's much further than you realize. Sadly, the swim while making my muscles swell a bit for the day, demonstrated to me that I was a *bit* less fit than I imagined.
Me thrashing my way to the finish:
---
That ends my story of Muskoka, but now onto my departure from Toronto.
---
The day I was leaving, was the day the Irish girlfriend of my Canadian classmate arrived. Perfect, I had a ride to the airport and I could also welcome the girl who is also my friend.
Not-so-perfect was the fact that a certain Air France flight was due to land twenty minutes earlier...
Here's my morbid picture of the arrivals screen, taken in ignorance.
At the time, we and the family's of the AF passengers knew nothing at the arrivals area. A shockingly poor communication job on the part of the airport/security staff. The first we knew of something wrong was when a passenger FROM the flight (who managed to hail a car on the highway close to the crash site) came running into the arrivals shouting,
"EVERYBODY THERE HAS BEEN A CRASH! THE AIR FRANCE FLIGHT IS BURNING ON THE RUNWAY!"
The second he started speaking, in his tone, thick accent and darker french complexion, my friend and I both were thinking to ourselves, "oh shit, this guy's making some speech before he blows us all up -- he's got a beard even!"
Alas, all ended well, no one had died or been badly injured; we spent the REST of the day, finding out that MY flight to Vancouver was cancelled and that the girlfriend's flight had been sent to an airport an hour's drive away; the passengers would be bussed up to Toronto airport by the airline.
Toronto = big international airport. Hamilton = tiny international airport... this means 13 international flights were sent there and TWO customs agents (instead of 10) had to clear all the passengers. The airline, a cheapo budget airline SkyService, didn't have a clue when they would arrive by bus. However that didn't stop them from lying to us.
"They'll be here by 8:30pm but I'm certain their bus will get here by 8pm"
ticktockticktock
ticktockticktock
At 10:30pm, we gave into our hunger and stopped our vigil at the coach area, headed upstairs for some lovely yum burgers, dressed with amazing skill...
At 11pm, the clock-faced, weary friend called the airline again... "The bus will arrive at 1am"
1am!!! And they told us 8pm!
THEN, not a minute later, my friend's phone rings... our girl is waiting downstairs.
I left Toronto the next day.
My new flight was delayed while they switched airplanes; but before deciding to do that, the captain came on the PA as we sat at the gate,
"We're sorry for the delay due to some technical problems; we're gonna try one more thing, to shut the whole system down and start again -- you know like with Windows on your computer, when things go wrong you just turn it off and re-start it and hope things sort themselves out?"
...things sort themselves out... nice. Anyway, I made it back safe.
(This is the last Backlog of my hot summer.)