Toronto for Glenn's wedding

So I went to Toronto this past weekend to go Glenn's marriage. It has been such a long time since I saw most of the other folks from Wawa there that some didn't even recognize me. A few of the key folks I came to meet were there, which was really cool.

First of all, I would like to point out that if you see 'Econo Lot' signs when trying to find parking at the Vancouver airport understand that 'Econo' doesn't stand for 'economy', 'economical', or even 'economic'. From what I could tell it stood for 'lots of money', 'rip off', or 'only complete morons park here'. I mean, it was like $15/day in those lots, where one street away there's a lot for $7.50/day. I didn't know about the $15/day until I was at the gate on the one way street with no way to turn around. Luckily I was early enough to get the heck outta there and go back to the other more reasonably priced lot. Unluckily for me, for my 30 seconds in the lot I had to pay $2.50. I suppose this was a small price for the $30 in savings I would get from going anti-econo.

While on the economic track... I'd like to point out that Cheryl had somehow managed to get me a flight to and from Toronto for $230 CND all included, and a rental car for 3 days for $57 CND total which is unreal. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to justify the 3 day trip.

One problem with the flight was that it took off in Vancouver, which is a bit of a problem because as most of you know I live in Seattle... The other problem was that I thought the flight left Friday night when in reality it left Thursday afternoon which really changed the dynamic of my Thursday evening.

Anyhow, the flight to Toronto was on an MD-83 and went fairly smoothly. It left at 11pm Vancouver time and got in at 6:30am Toronto time (an entire hour before the car rental place opened which meant we had to stay at the airport and just wait which wasn't that fun at that time in the morning). Eventually we got the car and arrived in Kitchener by 9:30am Toronto (and now Kitchener) time where RJ and Amy weren't yet home. Shortly after we arrived RJ came in and mentioned that he wouldn't be completely upset if we decided to try and grab a bit of sleep. We took that offer with no complaints whatsoever as I didn't even sleep a wink on the flight over and it was now almost 7am my time.

After a short nap, we took Ryan to the park near their place to play. It was such a nice day, and I was so expecting much lamer weather. I think it was about 24 degrees Celcius all weekend long which was outstanding... Anyhow, while at the park I called my brother in Sault Ste. Marie to give me Mike's phone number (yeh, same Mike as a couple of posts back). He's in Cambridge, so we decided we'd drop by and pick him up to come over for steaks later in the evening (right after I had a much needed haircut).

Mike and Shannon came over to have some wine and steaks at RJ and Amy's. We played some guitar, some foosball, some golf, watched some trampolining, and eventually brought Mike and co. back home before going to get some much needed sleep.

After waking up Saturday we went for a bike ride with the kids. Although I didn't notice the large DH/freeride hits I was promised I still had a good time riding around the block. The wedding was at 3, so we didn't have much time to waste. I got into some decent clothes and we headed off to Toronto.

I will not spend too much time describing the wedding other than to say that it was really nice. Good singing, piano playing and also fairly succinct - I haven't been to too many weddings, but this one was by far the fastest from start to finish which was good. The focus was on the bride and groom, and they did not drag people into a ton of extraneous process that most weddings are plagued with: I thought it was really well done.

Anyhow, we headed back to the hotel room for a couple of hours where Becky and Ryan decided to buy some Red Cap beer to relax a bit before the reception. We had a few of those, and then it was already time to get food.

Crap... I just remembered we have a fire alarm test today at work. I'm going to get outta here as the noise is painful, and then I'll finish this from home.

Ok, back to the post...

Well, this is getting pretty long. Let's say the reception was really smooth, the hockey challenge instead of the normal 'clink your glass' tradition was a nice touch, the speech by the best man about the Tao of Wawa, and the open bar were all highlights in my mind. The music included Home for a Rest, and Cotton Eye Joe, which are songs I haven't heard in a long time, but have sentimental value for lack of their musical value (I actually think Home for a Rest - from Spirit of the West is a really fun song) and are songs I haven't heard in public for years.

The night eventually ended around 1am, and Sunday we went to visit Alana and Ryan who live near Becky's on the Beaches in Toronto. More good weather. We ate at Lion on the Beach and didn't have time for much more than a short walk on the beach before heading back to the airport for Vancouver.

I rode back to Seattle with nothing exciting to report I'm happy to say. Anyhow, I promise the next post will be much shorter than this one...