The Not So Good Friday

We, and roughly ½ of Ottawa, decided to drive to Toronto for the Easter Long Weekend and Jane’s birthday. It was, for the most part, an epic disaster.

Everything started fine. We drove up to Kingston before stopping for lunch. Its a lovely city, the site of Canada’s Royal Military College and generally steeped in colonial era history. It is also where things started to go wrong. We had our picnic lunch on a hillside at Fort Henry, the carpark for which is on the exact opposite side of the fort from the entrance. So, after lunch when Thomas declared himself in need of a toilet, I charged ½ way around the fort to discover if it was open (Good Friday remember) and if open whether they had public toilets. They were and they did. So I charged all the way back to the carpark, collected Thomas, and charged all the way back to the entrance and toilets with Thomas in arms for a thankfully successful toilet break. All of which brought on a rare (and mild) asthma attack. I suffered childhood asthma, and even though it is rarely an issue I keep a puffer in the house just in case. The puffer was of course still in the house.

So, a bit over 100kms of wheezing later, we pulled off for a break at a petrol station about an hour from downtown Toronto. Jane pops the GPS unit into her bag and everybody hops out to stretch their legs for a pleasant ½ an hour. Back in the car for the final push, and the GPS will not start. It continues to not start until Jane goes inside to buy a map of Toronto. While she is inside I discover the coin that has found its way into the SD card slot on the side of the unit while it was in Jane’s bag. Seems she had not put the GPS into its carry case before popping it therein.

*sigh* The thing you need to understand about my lovely wife at this point, is that she is a terrible navigator. Really, just not good at all. And so as we set of into Toronto, the largest city in Canada and a city neither of us have ever visited before, I was a little concerned. She tried very hard, and I know she tried very hard because only once did she send me into the extreme left of the 5 lanes when I needed to take a right hand exit. Only the once. Other than that little mishap we found our way directly to the Hotel where I pulled into a parking space, immediately hitting some glass in the gutter and puncturing a tire. In the middle of downtown Toronto on Good Friday. OK, fine. Its we are in the middle of a completely unknown concrete jungle late in the day on Good Friday, so there isn’t really anything that can be done about it. Everybody up to the room.

…where the air conditioning wasn’t working on the hottest Easter weekend on record. Yay.

And here endeth the first, and admittedly worst, day of the holiday. The rest will follow when I stop twitching enough to work the keyboard again.