First Leg
I'm feeling more tired than anything else. Jetlagged and underslept in general. It's nice to have some time to relax and write a bit.
Sudbury is a Cairns-sized town in northern Ontario. It's called 'northern Ontario', even though there's another 1500km or so of Ontario north of here, and only 500km further south. It feels pretty remote, but anything further north is probably much more so.
The town was built on the mining industry, but after a period of industrial turmoil and a rollercoaster economic history, it's made itself into a sci-tech research town as well, which also attracts a certain amount of tourism. My cousin recommends I check out the boardwalk that's just over the hill from this motel, which I fully intend to do, even though Googling 'Sudbury boardwalk' takes one to a page about bingo.
I'm here for her wedding. I haven't seen her yet, and I don't expect much catch-up time at the wedding either, since the groom's side of the invitation list has 400 people on it. I'm a bit saddened by this, since I once referred to her as my favourite cousin. The fact that she's one of my only cousins who speaks English as a first language made keeping up via snail mail much easier, and she's travelled even more than I have-much, much more. But we kept much less in touch after I came out to her in the early 90s. She didn't freak out or anything, but since then, I've found that my family does has a streak of homophobia that I would never have expected. I think the sadness is rooted in that.
The trip here wasn't the smoothest. I was feeling really good about having done pretty much everything I needed to before I left, and packing wasn't so much of a rush job either-I did my usual stressing out the day before instead. But some kind of spacetime distortion happened on Thursday morning. I guess these things are universal so I don't explain it to you all, but somehow, half an hour just evaporated and I found myself rushing to get to the airport. I did make my flight on time, but after the door closed, we taxied around for another half an hour as if the pilot didn't know where the runway was. We were thus half an hour late into whatever town in whichever Carolina my connection was in, so I had to sprint to make my other plane. When I arrived in Buffalo, New York, it turned out that my baggage had not made the connection.
The airline was used to this. They just handed me a form for me to hand to customs when I crossed the Canadian border, so they wouldn't get hassled when they couriered my stuff behind me. Since I had a bad headache, I made a detour for a nearby Rite Aid. When I asked the clerk for the quickest way into Ontario from there, she told me she didn't know where it was. It turns out she was less than ten miles from it.
The border crossing was simple enough, but ten minutes later I realised I'd forgotten to hand off that stupid form. I turned around to see if I could find a Canadian customs official at midnight on a Thursday without having to drive across that line again. Yeah, right. Crossing the same border twice within half an hour set off alarm bells of course, so I found myself wearily sitting on a concrete wall while six uniformed men searched my empty rental car. I hope those blokes are around next time I drop coins for bridge toll or something in a car seat.
I spent the night in the newly-refurbished basement of my aunt's Toronto home, and I have a hazy recollection of various family members, most of whom I'd never heard of, arriving the next morning in quick succession, greeting each other like deranged ferrets, and rushing off again. I decided not to rush; while Mum read a book on the back patio, I enjoyed having a nice house place to myself as I leisurely shaved and put on clean clothes. I navigated around the rats nest of downtown Toronto streets to buy a new bow tie, and stopped at a natural food supermarket to get some cereal I like. At 3 o'clock, Mum and I headed north, and only then did she tell me that my aunt recommended we get out of town before 2 o'clock to beat the traffic. Feh. It was 4 o'clock by the time we even made it to the 401. And how can a 16-lane freeway get so clogged up?!
This is my sixth visit to Ontario, but only the first time I've seen something other than Toronto and the road to Niagra Falls. The first 150km north was just six lanes of congestion surrounded by monotonous farmland, but somewhere past Barrie everything changed into pretty rocks and tall trees and clear lakes. The directions said to follow the 400 freeway to highway 69, but highway 69, although picturesque, was annoyingly windy and only took us back to the 400. Eventually it ran out and the 69 was back, this time as a nice two-lane road with a surprisingly low 90km/h speed limit. I went with the flow, though, which ranged between 110 and 130.
Okay, I'm going to stretch my legs around that lake and rejuvenate myself for the wedding. I hope there are nice people there.