Meaning to leave by 10 AM, my alarm clock went off at 7:30. Mom had been packing and getting things ready all night. As a result, she had only been sleeping an hour and a half at that point, so we slept a little later and got up at 9. We were both groggy still, but we were ready.
Despite being later than planned, things were going pretty smoothly, until a staple of our roadtrips went missing: the car adapter for my iPod.
After about fifteen to twenty minutes of searching both the house and the van for it, I decided we should just leave it behind and go.
Granny stopped by to see us off and we headed out to the van. As I went through the front door, I saw my first few snowflakes of the winter. It was a nice little surprise, but also a subtle harbinger of approaching chaos.
At 12:20 PM, we finally hit the road.
A light snow came down for the first leg of our ride. It was nice traveling on a Monday, the freeway was pretty much all ours.
WALL-E on the roadEverything was gray. The sky, the trees, the ground, even the snow looked gray. Ahh, December.
Just before we reached the rest stop in Angola, Mom and I heard a small, high-pitched chime. Halfway to Toronto, my fully charged phone died.
Item number two on the day’s glitch list.
We stopped in Angola to eat and gas up the van. I fiddled with phone, but had no luck.
As we approached Buffalo, the weather got bad. Real bad.
It was rush hour and there was a big burst of lake effect snow coming down. This resulted in us traveling at 10 mph through Downtown Buffalo with about 100 feet of visibility.
Mom’s a nervous driver and an extremely nervous winter driver, so it was an interesting few minutes.
But we made it through.
It was dark out by the time we made it to the Peace Bridge. The next hour and a half on the QEW was nice and uneventful.
Though it was only evening, it felt like we had been driving for days. If only I knew...
We pulled up to the Cambridge Suites at 7 PM and were up in our room minutes later.
As has happened in the past, the room wasn’t as wheelchair-friendly as I needed, so we had to change rooms. The people at the hotel were extremely helpful and we were moved into the new room by 8.
The roomWe switched the TV on and caught part of ET Canada’s week-long feature on Chantal & Raine’s wedding vow renewal. Pretty cool and bizarre seeing friends featured on TV like that.
The viewThe show was over and bellies were a-rumblin’. The search for food began at 10.
We wandered up and down Yonge St. a bit to see if any restaurants caught our eye and ended up stopping at Mamma’s Pizza. We grabbed our grub and took it back to the hotel just as a light snow began to fall.
Mamma's PizzaMom had manicotti and I had gnocchi, it was great. I need to find some gnocchi like that around here.
Completely exhausted, I was in bed at 1 AM. The next day was set to be the big day of the trip, I wanted to be wide awake for it.
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