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.