Giving Thanks in Pennsylvania

We're back from four fantastic days with our great friends the Ballesty's in Wattsburg, PA. We arrived at Joyce and Dan's around 9pm Wednesday evening after a fairly decent 3hr commute down the QEW (Queen Liz ExpressWay), over the border into the states (just having missed the hockey crowd) and down I-90 through New York State to Wattsburg in rural Pennsylvania, about 20 miles south of lake Erie. Joyce out-did herself with a massive ThanksGiving feast on Thursday and I lapsed into a food-coma in the later afternoon with roast turkey, baked yams and pumpkin pie oozing out my ears. Magic stuff! The kids immediately settled into their familar routine. Frankly it's pretty amazing, I don't think I heard a single harsh word, let alone any fighting, for the whole time we were there. Joyce and Dan, always amazing hosts, kept the food, drink and fun coming and we'll have a hard time delivering pay-back.
From left, Liam, Erin, Cam, Jazz, Abbie, Elise and DeclanDan and I spent Thursday working up a ThanksGiving appetite/thirst by hanging around 50-60 metres of white lights along the roof line to put Casa del Ballesty into Xmas mode. After the kids hit the hay Dan and I moved into the basement and somehow thought it was a good idea to put together a HO scale train set that Dan had been gradually constructing. Our long-suffering wives had to put up with the noises of circular saws, drilling and hammering until about 2:30am when, exhausted and knees completely shot from scrambling around on all-fours, we ran a loco around the whole circuit. I agree with the kids assessment the following morning, as both Dan and I nursed our aching kness and pounding heads, that the track was 'awesome!'. Later that day, while Jo and Joyce headed off to Erie for some Black Friday shopping, we took the kids down to the local school for a bit of soccer, roller blading and general mucking about. Sadly for poor Erin we weren't long there when she had a nasty fall on her skates and had to be whisked off to hospital where Xrays confirmed a broken arm!The following day saw the arrival of Dan's brother Dave and his wife Barb, who like Dan and Joyce are great people, and we had a nice walk through the parks of Penn State university and threw a frisbee and gridiron ball around. Dave showed some form with the boot being an ex-Navy diver and rugby player while Dan tried to drill passes into the small of my back, through my chest, he has a decent arm. We could have stayed a month but we had to push off this morning and had a very quick trip back (why is it that coming home is always quicker?).After a quick 20 minute stop at home we changed and drove off again to help celebrate Aditti's 2nd irthday. Aditti is the ultra-cute daughter of our teams PM and our good friend, Srini, you can see some more photos on Flickr.

Andy, out.

Car Park Blues

Man, it's been a while since our last post but after such a recent flurry of activity things have died down a little. We've had a couple of lazy weekends, mostly involving partying with Garry and Laura. Last Saturday Ross and Joan, good friends of G&L, invited us to go to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in downtown TO. We left at around 13:00 and thought it would take 45 minutes to get to Exhibition Place, just west of downtown, but we were wrong. Toronto has exploded over the last 10 years, the immigration targets just keep going up and people from all over the world are flocking to Toronto looking for better opportunities for themselves and their families.

This makes TO a great cosmopolitian city but the rapid growth has not been met with rapid upgrades to infrastructure. The roads just suck. The 401 Expressway is the second most heavily used road in North America, the 1st is in LA. If you want to see 16 lanes of traffic at a complete stand still just come to TO at peak hour. The same can often be said of the Gardiner Expressway, the main freeway into downtown, but on Saturday it was pretty clear. Our problems started as soon as we took our exit and turned onto Lakeshore Dr, about 1.5k's from Exhibition Place where the Fair is held. It took 90 minutues from there to make it to the car park where only one parking attendent was collecting $10 for the privilege. No traffic management at all, tiny little single lane streets, not a cop in sight to help with the snarls. After leaving home at 13:00 we walked into the fair at around 15:30, I was steaming by the time we got into the Fair.

The fair itself is a mini version of the Royal Melbourne Show held completely indoors. The kids enjoyed the horses, cows, sheep, chickens etc but the rest of the show was mostly produce and gadget stalls goading you to buy things which after an entry cost of $50 further ticked me off. Anyway we had a nice afternoon with Ross, Joan and their kids. Cam and Morgan, their youngest and real cutie at 2yo, got along like a house on fire and were all over each other. Ross is a chopper pilot, usually off in Africa hammering around in the bush for mining companies etc. Joan is a great girl, she and Laura sure know how to party and she's really made Jo feel like one of the girls. We know that when Garry and Laura say that Ross and Joan are coming over that we're in for a good time. I must remember to get some photos of them the next time we're together, we took our cameras to the Fair but I clean forgot them after the parking debarcle so I don't have any new pictures to post.

Anyway that's us up to date, pretty dull at the moment and looking forward to our Pennsylvanian trip next week to see Joyce, Dan and the rest of the Ballesty crew in Wattsburg.

Andy, out.