Toronto, One Month Later

On the first night of the Stanley Cup Finals, it seems appropriate to finally wrap up the trip that included my encounter with hockey’s Holy Grail itself. So, on with the trip-reporting excitement.

The Drive Up

Leaving from Christiansburg following a post-Wesley Weekend lunch, I didn’t hit the road until 3 PM for my scenic 10.5 hour drive through almost the entire North-South length of West Virginia (save the Northern Panhandle), along the western border of Pennsylvania, then from Erie to Toronto via the rough S-curve of I-90, I-190, the Peace Bridge, and the QEW around Lakes Erie and Ontario. Fun times:

• Goal 1: make sure my brand-new E-ZPass worked: SUCCESS. It doesn’t do anything for me in Virginia yet (Smart Tag facilities will be integrated by the fall), but it saved me at least 10 minutes northbound and 15 minutes southbound on this trip.
• Goal 2: avoid stopping in West Virginia: SUCCESS. After last year’s ACC mess, I wasn’t eager to leave my Hokie-plated TDI unattended in WV, especially as I-79 took me through Morgantown. I managed to clear the state by 7 PM, and stopped for dinner outside Pittsburgh.
• Goal 3: survive PA roads without major trouble: NEUTRAL. It was foolish of me to hope for smooth sailing through that miserable state, but even though 79 narrowed to one lane in each direction for about ten miles around Grove City (halfway up), I managed to hold the 45 mph speed limit through that section.
• Goal 4: make the border by midnight: SUCCESS. Even better, the Canadian border agent gave me no trouble at all. It was a bit worrisome that he didn’t ask for a bit of ID: no passport, no car registration or insurance paperwork, NOTHING, but I wasn’t going to complain (besides, all that stuff was sitting on my passenger seat in plain view).

As for Toronto itself?

• Hockey Hall of Fame: AWESOME — and would have been so even if the trophies weren’t all present. As it was, I saw the whole group, including the Cup itself. My only regret from this is that, since I left my Canes jersey at home, I couldn’t represent my team in hockey’s heartland.
• Toronto’s transit system was kinda neat, with its combination of subway lines and streetcars; I was able to leave my car parked from Sunday night to Wednesday morning without inconvenience, and that’s the ultimate test.
• Fort York: interesting. At the Imperial War Museum in London over New Year’s, Gwen had mentioned that she’d be interested to see how the Brits told the story of the War of 1812. They had nothing about it at the IWM, but Fort York is all about that war and the founding of Toronto twenty years earlier. Its modern-day location is a bit unfortunate, looking over a railyard in the shadow of the elevated Gardiner Expressway (it was originally on the shoreline, but years of landfill have left it about a half-mile inland).
• CN Tower: tourist trap, but the views and pictures are still almost worth the cost of admission.
• Blue Jays vs. Red Sox at SkyDome: one of the best early-season pitching matchups, Pedro Martinez vs. Roy Halladay, which the Sox won 4-2. Ballpark-wise, SkyDome is pretty decent even with the roof closed (the temperature was in the 50s Fahrenheit that evening), and I imagine it’s rather nice with it open.
• Tim Hortons maple walnut dip donuts: BEYOND FREAKIN’ AWESOME. These were good enough to make me unfaithful to Krispy Kreme — I actually bought a dozen before I left Canada and drove them back to Richmond, refrigerating them upon arrival and rationing them over the next week. My only mistake? I should have bought two dozen.

The ride back was a bit less fun than the ride there, but was broken up nicely with stops at Niagara Falls and Winchester. It’s just not enjoyable to spend five hours in Pennsylvania, particularly on 15-mile stretches of the Pennsylvania Turnpike where trucks are restricted to the left lane, forcing you to either roller-coaster from 60 to 30 and back, or shoot the gap in the right lane between the wall of trucks and a four-foot Jersey barrier. And I made my first acquaintance with Breezewood, that despicable place where mindless adherence to rules and subsequent political pandering have left a stretch of three stoplights in the middle of Interstate 70.

Totals? About 1500 miles, 22 hours of driving, my first ever 50 MPG tank (50.68 MPG, Blacksburg Sunday morning to Beamsville, ON on the QEW Thursday afternoon), and a nice way to get over two straight weeks of on-call. And my ability to drive insane roadtrips solo: VALIDATED. :)