Day 22: Toronto
Welcome
Yesterday we crossed the border into Canada for our long awaited Toronto show.
We gave ourselves a sleep-in after our long night of driving. At 11am Jon was again behind the wheel of our Mercedes Benz Sprinter, the recent winner of the 2022 Vincentric Best CPO Value in America™ award in the Large Cargo Van segment. We got an hour of road time under our belts before making a breakfast stop at a Trader Joe’s. I bought an Italian Style Wrap which featured uncured smoked ham, Provolone cheese, Genoa salami, Sopressata, and a creamy mustard spread.
For several hours we headed west on i90 which was designated the New York State Thruway for this stretch across the widest part of the state. As I was writing this I wondered to myself: what exactly is a throughway? I hopped onto Al Castro’s blog and found a series of perplexing riddles that left me even more confused.
‘ALL roads are not necessarily ALL turnpikes, causeways, parkways, freeways, drives, expressways, or throughways.’
‘ALL highways and roadways are not necessarily ALL turnpikes, causeways, parkways, freeways, drives, expressways, and throughways.’
‘Some freeways and expressways are throughways, but not all throughways and expressways are freeways.’
‘All turnpikes are throughways but not all throughways are turnpikes.’
In any case, we travelled along New York’s 900km tolled superhighway which took us all the way to Buffalo where we followed the Niagara River up to the border crossing. Jon found the correct area of the customs facility and operated our carnet with the minimum of fuss and bother thanks to his several hours of internet research and satellite reconnaissance.
The 400-series highway Queen Elizabeth Way carried us around the edge of Lake Ontario and the view across the water was awesome, as was the view of the huge flag in the Smart Centres Stoney Creek carkpark. Less than an hour after arriving in Canada we were pulling up outside Lee’s Palace in the Bloor Annex neighbourhood.
Load in was across a busy bike lane and was accomplished swiftly and safely. Soundcheck was also accomplished swiftly and safely leaving us to focus on the most important business of the day, celebrating Gabe’s birthday. Those of you who know Gabe will already be aware that there are few things he cares about more than shrimp so to help him celebrate we ordered him three pounds of shrimp boil. He is a generous man and did share his Cajun crustaceans with us but sadly this led to him falling short of his single-sitting shrimp consumption record by around fifty units.
Right after finding the hidden shrimp in the dressing room.
📷 Rosie Tucker
This Toronto show is one of those that has been postponed numerous times since 2019 so we were thankful to everyone for holding on to their tickets for so long. It was sold out and the vibe in the room was great. We ended the night on a high, specifically a key that was too high to sing when we attempted to serenade Gabe with his birthday song.