Travelling (i)

It was going so well. I got up on time, got to the airport with plenty of time, checked in ok and boarded. The flight was tedious but I found entertainment in using the interactive TV’s on the chair backs and spotted a couple of pretty girls on the same plane – although the furthest I got with any of them was letting one use the toilet before me. Unsurprisingly she didn’t seem interested in making conversation and maybe flirting wedged with me between the plane wall and central divide. Oh well, no mile high club for me just yet…

No problems at Toronto either, just no internet (hence the delayed posting of this piece). Got off the plane, walked about half a mile to customs and was waved through when I wielded my British passport like a shield. The taxi, while expensive, was fairly quick and happily lacking in unpleasantness. After a brief spat of confusion at the Greyhound station about my bus time I found somewhere to wait and eat. I got my food and found a table.

And then it all went wrong. Instead of putting salt on my chips (fries) I reached for the first white-substance container I saw.

It was sugar.

Worse, I only figured out why my food tasted funny after about three mouthfuls of chips. They are currently sitting beside me and are reaching room temperature as I type this. Fortunately the burger was pretty much unpolluted by sweetener, artificial or otherwise, so I coped with that and a bacon sandwich.

There’s a fire engine outside the Red Lobster opposite me; it says “hazardous materials” on the side. I’m glad I decided against going there then. While this suggests I’m neglecting the opportunity to explore Toronto I’m really not; I’ve been here before and had a little look around. This time I went the other way out of the Greyhound station and found a couple of shops that sell impulse-buy brick-a-brack which usually entices me. At the time however I reasoned that I had little Canadian pretend-money left and had better save it in case I got hungry again later.

I did however meet a couple of tramps/buskers playing bagpipes and joined them for a while singing made up songs to the noise they made on their demonic sonic-warfare artillery in my best Scottish accent – which I do not think is fantastic and would probably get me killed in Scotland but the passersby seemed to like it well enough. A few even stopped for a while and several gave money. One mother urged her child to go give a five dollar (Canadian) note to the “nice Scottish boy who was singing”. I cannot even begin to describe what is wrong with that sentence. Three out of five words, at least. I got to keep some of the money for my time and efforts and the other two guys were great to talk to for a bit. By this time however it was getting close to my bus time so I headed back to the station, only to discover that I had managed to miscalculate the time difference.

So I thought I’d blog some more because apparently you have to put a lot of work into this whole blog thing. I’m not sure that sits right with me ethically but we’ll have to see. I’m also intermittedly talking to a girl I helped find a power point for her phone between her conversations with just about everybody in Ontario who has a mobile phone she can call. It’s fun though, and she’s quite pretty so I’m sure I’ll find a way to cope. Maybe she’s coming to Buffalo too? I should be so lucky. I’ll cross my fingers anyway.

I wonder if anyone actually reads these posts? Something else I’ll have to wait to find the answer to. Be good to know someone cares, but I guess that’s why everybody and their mate has started a blog; they just want someone to care about what they say.

The HazMat fire engine just left, apparently red lobsters safe. I might go and see what there is to eat there, because as predicted I’m hungry again. Hopefully the other customers won’t be sprouting tentacles because of irradiated food. Although I guess I could always try putting sugar on my food again as a preventative measure.