Tuesday July 24th to Friday July 27th

Well I had written a brilliant post for you but the useless wordpress app I use overwrote the local draft with no warning when I connected to wifi. Oh well 2 hours down the drain. Let’s start again shall we?

A special thanks to Ian Shearer and family for putting me up this week. His wife actually went on vacation leaving us four boys to fend for ourselves but I am sure she was thinking about us she relaxed on the beach at the Cayman Islands. I’m sure it was well deserved though!

Actually Ian took care of everything which was no small task with his two boys Will and Jack with me in tow. He made dinner most nights and kept the place clean while I zoomed around Toronto trying to get on the news and caught up with supplies etc. Please note the next few paragraphs are not in any order as far as timeline but I don’t think it will matter much.

In downtown Toronto I managed to get a hold of an Old Whistler buddy Bill Penton and we decided to go for some sushi and drinks. While waiting for him to show up I went to a bar for a few drinks and saw this horrendous sign:

Boo leaf's!

Yes a count down to the next Leaf’s game. As I mentioned in a facebook post “Who the fuck cares?” but of course Facebook doesn’t seem to publish profanity -who knew?

Bill showed up with his girlfriend Nathalie and quickly order Sake before I could breathe a word. The meal was great and we talked about old times like when I smashed my first guitar because “I don’t want to ever play a shitty guitar again and this will force me to buy a good one” or something like that. I later burned what remained of the guitar with Scottish Kevin (sadley Kevin died this year in Peru while doing a motorcycle tour of South America). At the time we were living in a house with Ian, Dan Patterson, Pat Holohan and Mike Jelenko. It was a lot of fun and Bill swears he gave us culture since we had no TV and we listened to music all day. I can’t argue because it was about 20 years ago and Bill had now dragged me over to his house to drink the rest of his wine and have a smoke. It was really great to see him and we may cross paths in Gander if the timing is right.

Chris Wilson who has been friends with Ian for many years came by for dinner. I met Chris the first year he was in Whistler and remembered how he could clear a room, right Crusty? It was good to see him since I hadn’t seen him since Ian’s wedding about 10 years ago. He has two kids now and lives in Barrie but he wished me well on my journey. Earlier that day I had gone to the Toronto Islands which are accessible by ferry for $7. The ferry leaves the harbour near Union Station and takes about 15 minutes to get over to the islands. I went to Ward Island which is probably only a kilometer or two squared. You can walk 10 minutes from the ferry dock to the other side of the island where there is a beautiful sand beach that has water you can actually swim in. In fact there has been a serious effort to clean up Toronto’s beaches and waterfront which is a great idea. How can you have one of the largest cities in the world situated on a fresh water lake without a large beach and boardwalk in the downtown? Anyway they are working on it and out by Ian they have a beautiful beach that is literally a ten minute walk from their house!

On the last day I finally caught up with Craig Reithmacher who is a good friend of Colin “the koho” Morrisson. I met Craig a few years ago during the famous towel cart incident which he has sworn to secrecy on. He did have some printed photos which was an attempt at blackmail but I have some backup. He was just back from a vacation in Alaska and was literally heading to his cabin just North of Peterborough with with Carol the following day. We decided to meet at the Black Dog pub for a few where they convinced me to come up to the cabin. I really didn’t want to go but the look on their faces made cave in, I mean who wants to sit in the sun on a dock drinking beer on lake that is 80 degrees?

Finally after a few rounds on the trampoline with Will and Jack, Ian and I had some down time to polish of a couple bottles of wine on his deck looking at the huge green elm, maple and pines that wrap around the little lake in his back yard. Even though the house is in the suburbs there is a little green belt here and he has a very small lake front along with neighbors. It has been great to chill out with Ian and I owe him one for sure. It is also time to get back on the road as I don’t want to get too far behind the coming season change.

View from Ian's deck!