This past week I went to the country right above ours.
I’m talking of course about Canada.
My primary reason for going was to work a fundraiser for my Masters Commission Program but in all honestly, it was a mini vacation.
The company that I worked for this week put us up in the Hilton Toronto. It was one notch down from the Ritz-Carlton. It was fantastic.
All of our lodging, food, and transportation was all paid for.
After working from 6:00am till about 5:00pm everyday, we hit the streets to see just what Toronto Ontario had to offer. Needless to say, it didn’t disappoint. There were shops, restaurants, street performers and I don’t know what all. Anywhere you went there was always something to see or to do. There was never a dull moment.
I suppose I’ve gotten far enough into this blog to where I must explain the title.
We were stopped at the border of Canada for about an hour while they ran our passports and gave us our worker visas. But while they told us to wait we had no clue about the worker visas, so we immediately and jokingly started thinking of reasons why they wouldn’t us in. As we crossed the border one my friends whom shall remain nameless let out this really big yelp And from the drivers seated I yelled in to the backseat, “_______! You can’t do that here! We’re not in the land of the free and the home of the brave on anymore.” For the rest of the week any time someone did something outlandish, or crazy someone would always shout out, “You can’t do that here, we’re not in the land of the free anymore! Or We’re not in the greatest country on earth anymore!” So yea that was our joke for the week.
While on this trip I got to cross something off of my bucket list! I saw, live, in person, in concert, in the flesh, in real life, the one, the only, OWL CITY!. Anyone who knows me knows that this is a big deal for me. I was too busy singing my lungs out to take pics. Sorry. He played so many of great songs, all of which I knew MOST of the words too. I saw Mr. Adam Young at the Mod Club Theatre in Downtown Toronto about 10 block away from my hotel. Opening for Owl City was the very beautiful Jaymee Dee. If you are unfamiliar with her work, here is the song that made me fall in love with her. You’re Welcome.
Here are, in no particular order, the songs Owl City played that night
The Real World
Angels
Deer In The Headlights
Dreams Don’t Turn To Dust
Galaxies
Yacht Club
Plant Life
Cave In
Hello Seattle
Tip Of The Iceberg
Meteor Shower
Dementia
Umbrella Beach
Shooting Star
Gold
Take It All Away
Good Time
This was basically the best night of my life…
On the last night we were in the city I had to work late and I had to go to this Concert Venue for the after party for the conference we worked and when I got there I found out that I was going to be treated to yet another concert but this time I saw the one and only Train! They played many of their great his such as, Drops Of Jupiter, Hey Soul Sister, and Save Me San Francisco. They did a great cover of Dream On by Aerosmith and did a mesh up of Hey Soul Sister into We Are Young by Fun. Needless to say I was totally ok with working late that night.
The morning after we were on the road back towards the Greatest Country on Earth. Just before we got to the border we decided to make a stop at Niagara Falls. Most of us have never been there before and were just like YOLO. So we stopped and hung out for a bit. After that we decided it was time to get back to the USA.
Just let me say that Border Patrol Officers are enough to make you cry with just one word from their mouths. I guess they have to get some kind of entertainment out of their job so they have a contest to see who they can get to cry.
After our collective embarrassment, we were on the road back to NC. It was very nice drive through upstate New York. We were just riding along and enjoying the view. Then our driver for that leg of the trip look at his GPS and said, “uh guys we passed the exit about an hour ago.” I was like “great.” You might be asking oh that’s not a big deal just turn around. The thing is, we couldn’t. We were on a toll road(the inventor of toll roads should be shot.). So if we were to get off and get back on it would have been close to 40 bucks. And that wouldn’t have been such a big deal of the ATM’s would have accepted our debits, which the didn’t. So we were screwed or so it would seem. My very good friend Ryan Mauler has a father. He is a genius when it comes to the interstate system, and told us of another way to go that would bring us back around to where we needed to be. But here’s the kicker. It took us 4-6 hours to get back. So a drive that was supposed to take 14 hours ended up taking closer to 21. Even though we did have a huge set back as far as time goes, after the fact i was glad it happened. It was a lot of fun to be able see that much more of the country. If nothing else, i got closer to some really good friends.
And as I always do, I take my camera everywhere I go and took some snapshots of our Journey and the City of Toronto. Below are just a few of them, but if you would like to see the rest you can click here.
God Bless,
Eian
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