Canada/USA 2009

As I wrote in my previous post, although I haven’t been on any long travels for 3 years, I have had plenty of little weekend/holidays trips. I have just never bothered writing anything about them. But about a month ago, after having spent 2 weeks in North America, I sent my friend Ben an email telling him about my little adventure. When I called him a week later, he told me he enjoyed reading that email very much, because it reminded him of the good old times when we were travelling together…
So I decided to edit that email a little bit and post it as a new article on my blog.
In the summer of 1999 I flew to Canada for the second year in a row to see my friend Iain, who lives in Oakville, Ontario. We were both dedicated rowers and with two other kids (Jon and Bob) we were training for the Royal Canadian Henley at the Don Rowing Club in Mississauga. One day after a very hot afternoon training session in the quad, we all climbed the nearby railway bridge and jumped repeatedly into the credit river, a process that Jon called “shimmying”. We had so much fun that afternoon that we all agreed to meet up again in 10 years and do it again.
10 years passed and before I knew it, it was 2009… So there I was, back in Canada for the first two weeks of September together with Angela.
We had a blast. It was nice to be able to relax and enjoy typical daily North American activities with Iain. We saw his friends again, watched him play hockey, ate way too many hamburgers and chicken wings, went shopping in Toronto, finally tried poutine for the first time (you can’t do anything wrong when you mix chips, gravy and cheese together), ate more wings and more hamburgers, played Frisbee golf (and lost a Frisbee in the process, sorry Iain), stuffed ourselves with Eggo waffles with Aunt Jemima syrup in the mornings, went rowing at the Dons again and spent way too much money overall. Thanks to Susan (Iain’s mum) for hosting us during those 2 weeks. And thanks Iain for those great and interesting longs talks on the deck outside in the fresh end of summer evenings.
Since part of Angela’s family lives in Detroit, we thought we’d combine the trip to Canada with a detour in the USA. After a 6h Greyhound ride from Toronto (including a 1h check at the American border), Angela’s grandparents were there to pick us up.
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