Day 3- On Our Way Home

Saturday, February 24th, 2007

I slept better than the previous night, but I was still a bit tired when I woke up to a sunny Windsor Saturday morning. The previous two days, though jam packed with activities, went by surprisingly fast. Even though I had an amazing time, I felt ready to head home.

Once again, Mom was up and active a while before I was, packing and getting ready for the drive. I flipped through the channels as I woke up and was surprised at what I found. It wasn't Saturday morning cartoons, it was Saturday morning Veronica Mars. Not a bad thing to wake up to by any means.

Not much later, we were packed, bundled, and in the lobby, ready to go. I waited by the luggage while Mom made a quick stop in the gift shop to grab a copy of the local paper, in hopes of there being a review of the concert. When she got back with the paper, I smiled when I saw Chantal featured on the front page in a story about her visit to the children's ward of the Windsor Regional Hospital before the concert.

We readied our maps and road music and made sure snacks were handy (as we were traveling on empty stomachs) and finally set out.


The drive had a slightly bumpy start, thanks to some useless steps in the directions from MapQuest that led directly to a dead end, but we eventually found our way to the Ambassador Bridge.


Mom's not a fan of bridges, heights, or large bodies of water, so it was understandable when she got visibly tense when we saw how backed up traffic was on the bridge. I figured it would just be a few minute long thing, but we were on that bridge for 45 minutes because it was so backed up at customs. Even so, Mom still did great.


A few more confusing directions came and went, but we found the freeway quickly and were on our way. The drive was relaxed and smooth as we listened to my new Our Lady Peace CD and ate the occasional pretzel. A quick three hours later and we were home.

Approaching Cleveland

We unpacked, told Dad and Kris about the trip, and settled in. While watching the news, we saw that the same icebreaker we had seen the day before was now in Cleveland. Also, it looked like we had gotten out of Windsor at just the right time, as they got hit with a pretty nasty ice storm that night.

The night continued with a nice chill session with Corey, Jeff, and Eric. We kicked back, played games, swapped music, and watched my new Trailer Park Boys DVD, which is easily the funniest movie I've seen in ages.

It was a great night that wrapped up a great little adventure. Here's to the next one!

Day 1- The Winds of Windsor

Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

I woke up at 10 AM, which is like the crack of dawn for me. My throat felt a bit scratchy and I desperately hoped I wasn't going to be sick for this concert too. I decided to pop a tylenol, ignore it, and keep getting ready. I threw some new music onto my iPod for the road while Mom got herself ready.

We loaded up the van and set out at 1:00. It was a pretty overcast day, but it wasn't snowing or raining, which was nice. The only bad factor from the weather was the wind. It wasn't terrible, but it was just enough to where Mom couldn't just relax and cruise. Sadly, the wind stayed with us the whole drive.

Approaching Cleveland

The drive to Windsor isn't nearly as scenic as the drive to the Falls, unless you're a big fan of fields, that is. There isn't much to look at along the way, so to pass the time, I would overly excitedly point out every frozen body of water along the way. Rivers, ponds, lakes, even ditch water. Maybe you had to be there.

Traffic wasn't too bad, thankfully. I guess we were driving at the right time. Even so, there was one semi driver who cut us off and missed us by about three feet.

I never used to think crossing state lines meant much of anything, but it is a bit weird how things can seem different the moment you enter another state. The road feels different, the bridges and freeways have a different look, and when we crossed into Michigan, it even seemed like a different season. There was much less snow on the ground and the sun came out for the first time all day.


Also for the first time on the trip, a favorite Chantal song of mine, Little Things, randomly came up on the iPod and I took it as a sign we'd have a good trip.

After sharing the road with the crazy Michigan drivers (they don't seem fond of turn signals), we arrived in Detroit and came to the tunnel to Canada, which I just found out is "the only vehicular international subaqueous border crossing in the world." Groovy.

Detroit

Three hours after leaving home, we arrived in Windsor.


The high winds were strong as ever when we pulled into the Hilton (get it out of your system, insert cheesy "That's hot" joke here). Alas, it wasn't just windy, it was bitter cold and windy. With the help of Marty, the awesome bellman, we got our stuff and settled into the room a bit.

The view from our room

It was a bit cramped with my wheelchair, but it was nice. If they could combine the room from the Marriott at the Falls with the amenities of this room, it would be perfect. Tons of TV channels and free highspeed internet, including free wireless, though apparently the wireless doesn't work above the 3rd floor for some reason. We were on the 9th. Ah well, I didn't travel up there to play online.


A bit later, we were off to the mall. Yeah, I'm a sucker for shopping. Mom made me wait inside the hotel lobby while she lowered the lift on the van, that's when I heard familiar notes over the hotel music system. They were playing another of my favorite Chantal songs, Wayne. As we pulled away from the hotel, we were greeted by her name on the marquee of the Chrysler Theatre next door.


A ten minute drive and a few pictures later, we were at the Devonshire Mall.


Though the Pen Centre in St Catharines is bigger, I think I preferred this mall. It just seemed to have more variety and better stores. I bought myself Trailer Park Boys: The Movie on DVD and Our Lady Peace Live on CD. Excellent finds.


Neither of us having really eaten all day (aside from some pretzels on the road), Mom and I stopped in the food court and split some fries from New York Fries.

On the way out of the mall, I decided to indulge the action figure collector in me and head to the Toys R Us across the street. That's when it got crazy.
Since it was still windy and freezing out, Mom told me to get inside the store while she closed the van. The parking lot was empty, so I took off. Halfway to the door, a gust of wind hit me and I felt my Our Lady Peace hat quickly leave my head. I yelled out "My hat!" and spun around. The trooper that she is, Mom was already right on top of it. I spun again and resumed the journey to the door. That's when the second gust hit. This time, it caught my sweatshirt and blew it up over my head, completely covering my face. I could still see out of the corner of my eye, so I kept driving as I looked for the ramp to the door.
When Mom saw me driving across the parking lot with a sweatshirt over my face, she freaked and ran for me. Meanwhile under the sweatshirt, I have tears running down my face from laughing so hard. Mom flipped the sweatshirt down and ran back to finish closing the van while I finally got inside.
Seriously, she's a trooper.
Oh, and to complete this story, there was no trace of any figures I was looking for, though I was still laughing too hard to care.

We braved the wind and returned to the van to head back to the hotel. After dropping our stuff off in our room, we went down to the fancy restaurant on the second floor, The Park Terrace Restaurant. Maybe it's stupid, but I try to treat myself while on vacation and eat at one restaurant I'd normally consider too expensive. Sitting in the dimly lit restaurant overlooking Detroit and the Detroit River, Mom and I sipped on wine and ate bread (accompanied by fancy looking butter) before digging into the main course, roasted chicken (Mom's had fruit salsa, mine didn't) and mashed potatoes. It was pricey (to me), but fantastic.


By the time we finished, it was nearing closing time, so we took our piece of hot chocolate cake back to our room.


We split the cake and I checked my email before hopping into bed after a long, busy day.

Holiday Recap

I hope anyone reading this had themselves a nice holiday. Mine was enjoyable, I'd say it started for me on the Wednesday before Christmas with the Bullcrank Christmas party.

It was about an hour's drive and we got lost along the way, but we eventually found the place. Due to some miscalculations regarding the door to the house and my wheelchair, the party was moved out to the garage, which was surprisingly enjoyable. It was really nice just hanging out with the whole crew, chit chatting and watching Aaron's new short film.
A lot of the gang has been a bit down lately, so Larry secretly cut together a video to rally the troops and showed it at the party. I gave him a hand with some animation for it. It's funny, I wasn't even present for most of the stuff in the video and it still makes me sentimental. You can check it out here.

Corey drove in from Pittsburgh on Thursday, so we chilled out several times throughout the weekend. We had ourselves a big Christmas-time game night on that Friday, the last one with the whole gang for a while as Brendan moved down to Florida this weekend for an internship at Disney World. He'll be down there until August. Not a bad gig, eh?

On Saturday night, Eric and Aaron visited along with Corey for a bit before they headed out for a night of barhopping. Aaron was the hero of the night, letting us have his old TV to replace the tiny one we've had standing in for our broken one.
Sharon visited on Christmas Eve and then Corey swung by for a little Madden football and a couple episodes of Trailer Park Boys.

Christmas morning was nice, everyone seemed to be happy with their gifts, I know I was. You can't go wrong with CDs (Gnarls Barkley, Regina Spektor, KT Tunstall, and Our Lady Peace), DVDs (Justice League Unlimited: Season 1, The Chronicles of Narnia: Extended Edition Gift Set, and Short Circuit- also, Corey got me Over the Hedge and The DaVinci Code), Superman stuff, and iPod accessories.

After unwrapping, we ate and Kris & I played The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, courtesy of Brendan and Mikey. A little bit later, we were off to Granny's.

It was a good time hanging out with everyone there and just relaxing. I'd have to say the highlight of the night was Jeff messing with Aunt Karen. He broke out some classic word play and wrote down "I am sofa king wee Todd did" and had her read it out loud. It was hilarious listening to her read it over and over until it finally sunk in. The moment of realization was priceless.

This Christmas was nice, but it felt slightly...off. Everything we did was 100% Christmas, but for some reason it didn't really feel like Christmas. I can't quite put my finger on it. Even so, I did have fun and I hope you all did too.

Niagara Falls 2006: Day III

The first order of the day was to shop. I've been a huge fan of Chantal Kreviazuk for at least ten years now, and her newest CD, Ghost Stories, was released in Canada last week. If I had ordered it online, it would have arrived at the house while I was away, so I just decided to buy it while I was up there.
After a bit of research, I found out about the Pen Centre, the fourth largest mall in Canada. Sounded like a plan.

So, after waking up from a (slightly) better night's sleep, we hit the road for the Pen Centre in St. Catharines. We weren't on the road long when I completely cracked up. What could possibly crack me up on the road like that? A Canadian biker.
Now, there's nothing immediately that funny about a Canadian biker, the funny part was his choice of music. Picture, if you will, a big, gruff looking older man with a grizzly beard riding a heavy duty, mean looking motorcycle. What would you expect to hear blasting out of his speakers? Probably something like Born to Be Wild, right?
Guess again.
A fit of laughter overtook me when I recognized the music to be (Everything I Do) I Do It For You by Canada's own Bryan Adams.
At full blast.
I'm not knocking the song or Bryan Adams by any means, but in that setting it was absolutely hilarious.

About twenty minutes later, we arrived at the Pen Centre.

After seeing this place, I can really see how far downhill our mall here has gone over the years. It's big, nice looking, tons of stores that are actually open, etc. Even the food court was impressive. They actually have sinks and microwaves if you needed them. It may not sound like a big thing, but it was a nice little touch of convenience.

It was strange not recognizing so many of the store names as we roamed the mall. I was pretty amused by the name of one store in particular...

They also had a giant chess board on the floor, complete with huge, movable pieces. It was kind of like that scene in Harry Potter, but less violent and with senior citizens instead of magical British children.

I eventually found my way to HMV and grabbed my copy of Ghost Stories. I also treated myself to Trailer Park Boys: The Complete Fourth Season on DVD. Mmm...Canadian goodness.

On my way out of the store, I stopped and posed for a quick picture with a poster of Chantal.

Before heading back to the hotel, we took a slight detour and drove by the Centre for the Arts at Brock University in St. Catharines, where, to my extreme excitement, I'll be seeing Chantal Kreviazuk and Raine Maida perform in November.

Back at the hotel, the sun and clouds decided to give us yet another beautiful photo opportunity.

Even more great shots presented themselves as we journeyed to the Skylon Tower.

The Skylon was cool again this year, though it was already getting dark out, so the pictures didn't come out very well through the windows. We tried to find a wheelchair-friendly way to leave that would aim us toward Planet Hollywood, but that turned into a twenty minute headache full of running around, broken elevators, and badly lit sidewalks.

We eventually got onto the right path, though I underestimated how long the walk actually was. It was long and dark and the night air was chilly. Mom even temporarily ditched her shoes at one point to ease her feet. Just after passing Clifton Hill, they started to shoot off fireworks over the Falls, so we paused to watch.

After a run in with a kiss, we continued on our way.

I'd been wanting to check out Planet Hollywood for a while, so I was relieved when we reached the end of our long walk.

Once inside, I took a quick picture with the Terminator, but that was just about it. I wasn't really into anything on the menu and the tables were too tightly packed to walk around and look at all the stuff, so our visit was relatively short.

We wanted to avoid having to go up the big hills on the way back to the hotel, so I lead the way toward the main road. At least that was my intent. About a half hour later, it was clear I had gotten us lost. Sort of. We could see where we wanted to be, but had no idea how to get there or where we were. Passing tattoo parlors, small foreign food restaurants, liquor stores, and the serial killer museum, we eventually found ourselves on a familiar street. A few blocks later, we were back by the hotel.

Cold, hungry, and tired from our several miles of walking, we went to Fridays, it's become a tradition for the last night in Niagara Falls. We split some chicken and I tackled an Ultimate Long Island Iced Tea.

Back in the room, I took a last nighttime look at the Falls. It was something I hadn't seen before, the mist was so thick, it would occasionally entirely block out the American side of the Falls. Impressive, to say the least.

Knowing I had to be up early for checkout, I headed to bed after another busy day.