#i have tripped across the country just to buy BBQ wings

[cam-the-orange-cat]

I don't really know how to explain it tbh, but I'll give it a go

When I was little, I wanted to be a NASCAR driver. My dad would put these old beat up muscle cars in our driveway and I'd grow up helping him fix them. I fell in love with the smell of burning rubber, the feel of oil between my fingers, the hum of a roaring engine. My grandfather took me to race tracks, and my love shifted from the mechanics, the engineering of these machines to the running of them. I got a shirt signed by a female racer who shared my first name, and I idolized her. I raced go-karts and never felt freer than when I was on a track going fast. Years later, when I started driving cars, that feeling... it never left me. And I still don't know how to explain it. Exhilaration? Awe? Contentment? I don't know. I'm just happy when I'm behind a wheel.

I'm not a NASCAR driver, and I've lost a lot of my engine knowledge (an embarrassing amount; if you don't use it, you lose it). But it's still a funny little dream of mine. I guess everyone has their passions, something they are inexplicably drawn toward and inseparable from, and driving is mine.

Sometimes I get this itch. I'm on the road, and I have an urge to just... keep driving. It's like wanderlust, but the destination couldn't matter any less. I just want to drive forever.

People who like driving are actually weirdos to me

[alwaysinairplanemode]

Baby’s First International Overnight

Over the 2+ years of my regional airline career many countries have been traveled, but almost every one of these has been in my spare time as a passenger, until this month, when I got to spend 18 glorious hours in Toronto, ON!

Growing up in Rochester, NY, I could see Toronto on a cloudless day at Lake Ontario. This fact didn’t rob me of any of the joy I experienced going through customs, or waiting on the hotel shuttle or bracing myself against the cold night air to grab some wings from the Anchor Bar and Grill (that actually originated in Buffalo, NY and not Canada). As much as I don’t want to be jaded in what’s a really unique job, travel has become my baseline, and I’ve been to every overnight we have-the novelty of this wasn’t lost on me!

Plus, the last time I visited Toronto I was 13 years old with my dad as a chaperone on my 8th grade class trip. Drake was still just Aubrey acting in a wheelchair and I had no idea who the hell Justin Trudeau was. I took my ready quiver of Canadian culture and set out to see what Toronto had to offer the adult version of myself! 

The train from the airport took about 30 minutes, was insanely clean and the ticket takers exceedingly courteous. Everything as expected so far...

Union Station drops off right next to Rogers Centre (notice the re vs. er, very exotic), the home stadium of the Toronto Blue Jays. I don’t understand why every major US sports league has one token Canadian team (maybe so they don’t have to put an asterisk next to “World Series”?) 

From here you can see the CN Tower, which I knew from prior pubescent experience included the standard glass floor all tall for tall’s sake structures seem to include at the top, on which one could stand and become afflicted with vertigo, nausea or a fainting spell if one felt so inclined. 

You can see the tower all over the city, and it quickly become the majority of my camera roll as we trekked around downtown in search of the thrift mecca, Black Market, and post shopping asian feast.

I started sweating as soon as we got in the store, it wasn’t just because I was in a turtleneck and we’d walked 10 blocks, or that I needed to use the bathroom, it was because I realized how vastly underprepared I was to shop this store to justice. I started rapid mental calculations on how much could fit in my already packed suitcase, then said fuck it, I can just buy a supplementary tote bag.

A wall of store made graphic t’s greeted us, and with every degree I turned my head I saw more racks of righteous vintage that I could rescue and bring to my sweet lonely clothes at home so they could all play together. 

The kicker? Everything in the store is $10 (except one rack of extremely dirty t-shirts that’s only $1. There’s nothing there, I promise, I scoured it).    

There’s also a record store and a barber shop inside making it an all day hang if you wanna kick back and recharge your style all around. 

After spending as much time as we could (with an impending departure and growing hunger), we set out to find some grub and peep a crazy building we’d seen on our walk. We were in the Grange Park neighborhood which is home to an Ontario College of Art and Design, so naturally the neighborhood has artistic tendencies like vegan restaurants, greenhoused plant stores and wafts of other greenery blowing out of second floor windows. That wasn’t surprising. But what was surprising was how immaculately clean the entire city was! My fellow flight attendant pointed it out to me, and my surprise didn’t diminish all afternoon. 

Toronto is freaking clean...

This is what happens when people are incentivized to recycle, or consumerism isn’t the main thing driving the city’s economy so there isn’t copious amounts of needless waste everywhere. I don’t know at all really, maybe Canadians just know how not to litter?

I wish I could include pictures of our spontaneous trip to a Korean BBQ restaurant, but I was too hungry and we had a train to catch to get ready for our return flight. So I’ll just say that while the kimchi wasn’t as spicy as I would have liked it, The Korean Grill House was a welcome diversion from a chilly winter day. It also gave me mad nostalgia about other cold days I’ve spent perched over a tabletop grill on another continent. 

Getting paid to take this little Canadian excursion made it even more enjoyable, and I’m keeping my eyes peeled for more long overnights across the border. “Au revoir”, Ontario!