August 14 1996 - Canada's Wonderland
July 27 1996 - Home Cooked Meal
mmmmmmm. Food! For the first time in months (i.e. since I was home back in May) I was treated to a home cooked Indian dinner. NOTHING can compare to this. Some family friends from N.B., who moved to Toronto a number of years ago, invited me to their home for mutter paneer, saambaar, rice, naan, mango ice cream and some other favorites. What a feast!
Oh Yeah! In case you didn't already know, Canadian sprinter Donovan Bailey won the 100M sprint at the centennial Olympics setting a new world record time of 9.84 seconds.
July 25 1996 - Visit from the Slick master
Stephen Hickey, a buddy from Saint John N.B., visited me for the night. We spent a wild night of hopping from bar to bar. Montana's, Crocodile Rock, Whiskey Saigon, The Joker.....
July 21 1996 - It's all Happening at the ZOO!!!!
Lions and tigers and bears! Finally. After 5 years missed opportunities I made it to the Toronto Zoo. Saw Koala's, Snakes, Polar Bears, ...... Very cool. I must say though that I am not fond of seeing animals caged like that. On the other hand, I noticed that a lot of the animals are much better off in the zoo. For example, they had a poor bald eagle there whose wings were permanentaly injured. There is no way that it could survive in the wild.
I have mixed feelings about the animals on the endangered list. I don't think they should be caged and dislayed for education sake. A well produced video should be good enough for that. However, I do think that we should help them since we are the reason they are endangered. I guess I just think there has to be a better way. Like.... stop destroying their homes!
After the zoo, Angie was gonna drop me of at home and then head for Ottawa. Unfortunately, on the way home her car engine stopped on the 401. It just stopped! We figured out later that the alternator blew. Luckily a fellow with a tow truck saw us. He towed the car to a nearby garage and then dropped us off at a subway staion.
July 20 1996 - Centre Island
We actually started off at Ward Island dock because I had my bike and was only allowed on the Ward ferry. We pretty much toured the whole island. Rented a two seat 4 wheeled bike (call me if you want a desription of this contraption) for an hour. Then we tried out a cannoe and chased ducks for an hour. It is cool to be in such a beautiful, quite, relaxing place; all the while knowing that 200 meters away is downtown Toronto and fast paced life that goes with it.
July 19 1996 - Sarah McLaughlin + Sting
My friend Angie met me at my place at about 6:30 P.M. and we headed down for the concert at Ontario Place's Molson Amphitheatre. It was one of the best concerts I've ever been to. We sat at the very back of the hill, watched the sun set and listened to some chilling versions of Police tunes.
July 12-14 1996 - Ottawa
July 6 1996- B.H. Symphony of Fire Finale
Wow! I've never seen fireworks like these before. I wasn't even in Ontario Place. I can only imagine how spectacular it would have been from in there. Went down with Sunita, a friend from N.B., and a bunch of her friends from school.
July 2 1996- Erasor
A typical Arny movie. Some cheesy scenes, some funny one liners. I'll skip the details so as to not spoil it for anyone hasn't seen it yet. I give it one thumb up.
July 1 1996- Canada Day Move
Unfortunately my apartment in Toronto had been having water problems. During the past 10 months we had three major incidences. The last one ended up in my roomate and myself mopping up water for a few hours to keep it out of respective our rooms. Not fun at all. Fed up with this situation, we decided to ask the landlord to allow us to terminate the lease. She agreed, but decided that we had to be out of the place by Canada day so that she could paint in time to rent it out to some other suckers. Wouldn't want to fix the problem first.
It was by far the most disorganized/sloppy move I have ever been involved in. It was also the quickest. I still live in the same house, but I am out of the basement and far from the possiblity of any water problems. I think.
That night I went on a three hour boat cruise of the lake with Jon, Lisa and Scott. No fireworks on the lake; budget cuts!
June 27-29 1996- Biked to Ottawa from Toronto
Yup! I did it. It took me 2.5 days in total. Twenty-one and a half hours of actual riding time to bike 404 Km along the Trans Canada highway (#7).
The trip started on Thursday the 27th at 8 AM from Richmond Hill (Yes, I cheated a bit by getting a ride to the Trans Canada.) The ride started out out very fast. I was highly motivated and anxious to make good time. Unfortunately, hills and the sun started to wear me down later in the day. At about 4:30, 120 Km later, I reached Peterborough. I had originally planned to bike as far as Havelock and stop at a campground, but I had some trouble finding an entrance to the highway in Peterborough. So after adding another 17 km of 'lost' distance I decided to stop at the Carriage Inn Motel. (Sorry for the advertisment, but the owner was really nice, the motel was super and the price was adjusted to accomodate an exiguous budget. So this was the least I could do.)
I was on the road again at 7:30 AM on Friday morning. I would have prefered to sleep for a few more hours, but the previous day's experience with the sun motivated me to get going early. At 5:30 in the evening, 160 Km later, I decided to pitch my tent at the Silver Lake Provincial Park.
Saturday turned out to be wet one, but knowing that I was only 110 Km from Ottawa was motivation enough to get me going. I was on the road again at 7:30 in the morning and reached Ottawa at 1:30 in the afternoon.
A great trip, but next time I'd prefer to go with some other people, at a slower pace and with a little more planning (paniers would make the trip a lot easier, bike seats were not designed for a person to carry 30 pounds of equipment on their back.)