The Last Eighteen Hours of my Trip

[rfmcdonald]

I left the hostel at 9 o'clock, buying chips at a nearby convenience store before taking the College/Carlton streetcar as far east as Shelbourne Street. I found Ontario Street easily enough, but I made the mistake of walking south instead of north--I got to 340 before I realized I was going in the wrong direction. Still, I did get to Craig's place in the end, and Queer as Folk was fun. I'm not a fan in the original sense of that word, as in a fanatic, a partisan; still, it was enjoyable enough on its own terms. (The company of my fellow viewers, of course, was my primary reason.)

I took my leave of them all at 11 o'clock, to return to finish packing. I walked west on Wellesley to Jarvis and then west at Carlton onto College Street. I saw two transvestite prostitutes on the way, incidentally. (I seem to have a weak tendency to encounter prostitutes before I leave a place, as evidenced by my departure from Richmond last year; the difference, of course, was that the Richmond lady was in fact biologically female and we did talk. Oh, and she was somewhat attractive, too, though of course I did nothing with her.) Packing went well, and sleep came after midnight, continuing with interruptions until 6 am.

Full consciousness came at 7:30, shower at 8, departure for the Royal York hotel and its shuttle at 9 (via the College streetcar to the subway and thence to Union Station). In the Royal York, I decided to get my shoes shined, just as I did before leaving Toronto last July; it took some 15 minutes to finish, since the polish was quite worn off and the shoes were salt-stained and a bit dirty. It went nicely, though, as she cleaned the shoes with a toothbrush, inserted playing cards between my socks and the shoes to protect my socks from the polish, and actually applied the polish. In some ways, it was a nice foot massage and was (on its terms) a fairly sensual thing in its own way. Shoes shined, I got to the shuttle loading area at ten minutes to 10 and bought the ticket with no problem.

Boarding the bus was uneventful, as was the trip; there were only three other passengers on board. The bus, though, was decorated on the plan of The Lion King, painted various shades of yellow, with single-quote plaudits from critics frosted on the windows and tufts of imitation grass hanging from the overhead baggage compartments. Too, the dirver (originally from the Ottawa valley) had a long conversation with a passenger (a gregarious and athletic blonde returning to Thunder Bay) that touched on everything from their different perspectives on catch-and-release and ice fishing to the fact that one of her sisters was surrogate mother for another sister's child.

Airline security at Pearson seemed tight. A model of the CN Tower, for example, had to be packed with my baggage because of its dull-pointed plastic tip, while my cup of Tim Horton's coffee was scanned before the lid was taken off it to prove its bona fides. Getting past security, now, not much happened. As I wrote those words, I was sitting on the airplane, drinking a white wine (2001 Grande Cuvée, an Ile la Forge Chardonnay from the Midi) and reading, and writing, and avoiding the glances of a SARS-paranoid man who was sporting a face mask and disposable plastic gloves. (He told me that himself.)

The plane approached PEI a bit to the south--Evangeline and Summerside were farther to the north, and the plane crossed PEI from southwest to northeast before descending. The ice was entirely gone and the forests were generally greener while the red of exposed soil had largely replaced stubble (and had spread into Bedeque Bay thanks to runoff from the heavily-farmed west-central portion of the Island). The clouds lightly scattered over the Island created a three-dimensional effect (plane's wing, clouds, surface). Landing was uneventful, and the taxi home was quick.