Trip to TO. Day 2 of a 3 Day Story. Skip ahead then come back and read this one... It will make more sense. Maybe.

I'm up. But barely. If you call eyes opening to somewhere - up, then yeah. My head is killing and my limbs ache. Am I still dreaming or do my eyes and fingernails hurt too? Can you feel pain in a state of REM sleep? Possibly. I'm in a blue room in a comfy bed but I feel like shit. I think I'm still in Toronto, but I'm not really sure. Katie is sprawled out next to me not looking any better. And she's sleeping. Information starts creeping back into my rocked brain and I wonder if the 47 beers and 18 shots I consumed yesterday had anything to do with my present shittiness. Shitty-ness? Shiteenis? Shit. That's how I feel and that's what someone says from somewhere outside our door when they realize we have to get up and leave soon if we're going to make it to the Jays game we plan on attending. It's 11 am and the game starts at 1. If I were laying dead in a strange bed with a face-full of sun anywhere else we'd have plenty of time. But this is anywhere but anywhere else. It's TO. Somehow we all get up, shower and leave. Not sure how, but we all exit together. Before heading to the game we bolt haphazardly and without fear (as if we'd just woken up and left the house immediately after a night of drinking) across the street to the twenty four hour Portuguese bakery. The Portuguese Bakery of all Portuguese Bakeries. And located within three minutes of our friendly innkeepers home. How Toronto you must be saying. Within two minutes of walking in any direction in Toronto you will see either a) something cool, b) something weird, c)something big, d) something gross, or e) something undefined. The Bakery was cool. And a bit exaggerated (which I think falls into the something 'big' subcategory). They had breads that looked like cakes, pastries that probably tasted like sandwiches, counters upon counters of croissants and danishes galore, yeast and cookies and donuts and pies and bread overflowing and falling onto the floor. A lot of foods I've never seen nor ever knew existed in my wildest dreams. So I bought a coffee. "Two sugars and two creams please," I say because for some reason nobody in Toronto knows what a double double means. "You want four-fresh-blueberry-swirl-topped-pound-cake-stuffed-hand-made-cheese-ball-muffin-cod-loaf-straight-from-Lisbon-extra-flaky-butter-smothered-croissants?" (had to throw a 'fish' reference in there). No. With a coffee finally in hand and a weird hankering for something warm from the oven, we're gone. We rush to Jeff's apartment driving Jeff's truck, pull up to Jeff's and a million other people's building, meet prompt as usual Mr. V-Neck and walk quickly up the stupid hill to get to the Rogers Centre. A few minutes in line and the seats are seized. We take a nice little detour around the entire building, because Jeff said I needed the exercise. He was right, but we didn't have time to dilly. Or dally. Our seats are directly behind home plate, but about a third the way up the CN Tower. I'm obviously exaggerating but we were high up in the air like a flock of Blue Jays trying desperately to escape a stranded, giant concrete spaceship. How convenient of an allegory at the time. And it was hot as hell. And I was still recovering from the self-inflicted and ingested brew-fest from the night before. And I had a hot plate mess of greasy ten dollar fries and a slimy six dollar dog waiting patiently but deadly for my soon to be churning stomach on my lap. And I was as close to the sun as I'd been in a while. And I didn't care. Play Ball! In our mad dash up the never ending concourse to our premiere seats in the sky we had missed a homer by some Cleveland nobody - but we would soon find out there were some more jacks to come. In the form of home runs. Three more to be exact. All by the Jays. All to left field. One off the foul pole. (though it's fair if it hits it so...?) But the Jays pulled one too few long balls as it turned out. By the eighth inning, we had walked down to the lower level in search of closer seats, less heat and stray foul balls we could dive head first for, and over ten seats and the roar of the crowd make an amazing jumbo-tron worthy snag in mid-air - barehanded. With a beer in one hand. And money for another in the other. And if I catch it, a ball as well. It is summer time after all. Baseball and beer go hand in hand as they say. And sun. And jumping out on the field in a football formation with the sole intent of making it to across the field. From first to third as we so perfectly concocted during last night's drunk breakfast. Now for that to be done would have taken more than just a good jump out of the box and some above average speed. We would have to avoid the players, and the umpires and the cops and the tazers. I'll follow you Phil. Promise. The game had some pace to it and the score stayed close til the Majors home run leader JoBau, pronounced Ho-Bow (as Jeffrey and I so hilariously dubbed him) came up in the bottom of the ninth with two out, one on and down by one. Pressure time. Even for Baustista the Destroyer. Even for Jose Can You See The Ball Flying Over The Fence Bautista. Even for Boom-boom-Bau. Even for a good player. I wonder if he's Portuguese? Bautista that is. Has a pure Portuguese guy who purely calls Portugal his pure home ever played in the bigs? I mean straight pure. Maybe for the Marlins? The Dolphins if he were bigger and stronger and faster. Would not the Blue Jay be the natural enemy of the Portuguese baseball player? Not if he has thirty two home runs at the end of July. But here's the situation that separates the big from the time. With the weight of a semi-decent Sunday afternoon crowd cheering down on him, the full count pitch approaches our latest local mostly unknown hero. With a swing so hard my back hurt - Ho-Bow whiffs. The legend ends. Game over. The Sky Dome weeps. Just kidding. It was a fun game and even Cleveland gets to win sometimes. What's next we say as we pour out of the stadium with the rest of the let downs. Me not so much, and my Tiger hat I was sporting at the time and always, would back me up.The natural swing of the exiting masses brought us down towards the water. Past the black guy on drums with the head set and the bucket, the same poor percussionist who's been singing and pointing and doing his little drum act in the same spot since at least 1992. "Thanks you very much!" Thank you, thank you and thank you!" Past him. Past the packed brewery and the weird tiny but to scale childrens train, pulling children, conducted by a middle aged man in a childrens train engine, around a miniature track, puffing real, thick smoke from its stack all over everything. Past that. Past the underpass. Or is it under? Past the Craziness of the Caribbean Fest, past some boats, some cool buildings, and a restaurant with a patio on an enclosed little lake designed for casual family canoeing. Past all that. And also past the outdoor, fake ice designed for real skates plastic pad area that it's users were walking on. With real skates. Outside in the sun. Past all that too. And past the free give-away but tips invited power drink and water stands, past a corner in front of a dock and stop. Turn towards the large, packed patio with the extra-sized Gallagher like umbrellas and chill. Now this is summer livin'. Pass the beer, the high-flyin' insults and the good vibrations. Our way that is. Ears are ringing in the west but we don't care. We kind of like it. This is why you go to Toronto. To not be in Windsor. It's an act of cathartic cleansing that everyone needs, craves and deserves once in a while. Just ask Hank - he'll tell ya. Four or five pitchers of beer, some juicy booze and a plate of Toront-ized nachos and we're ready to go. Coffees. We need coffees. Now bro. And naturally, some more booze for it's only the latter part of a perfect TO afternoon and there is plenty of prime boozin' light left for us to absorb. To the liquor store! Dammit. Since today is Sunday that means that the booze depository (Or LC as Lahey calls it) is operating on more restricted hours. Phil, call your more of an alcoholic friend than us (and see if he (or she, for this is 2010 after all) can direct us to some black market rum runnin' China town back alley after hours bodega. No dice. I tend to think this same informant is the same person we called the night prior for the after-party directions, if so his insider information is lacking at the moment. It's understandable. A long weekend, in the dead of summer, smack dab in the middle of a crazy Caribbean fest in one of if not Canada's most exciting, fun and busy cities. Plus he (or she) was probably drunk themselves, but that's okay b/c we had more reserves than first panicked. Moving on. The day and night ended without incident, aside from the amazing peanut butter cookie ice cream chocolate dessert contraption Mich laid on us and we crashed early. The whole weekend was a complete success and I want to go back. But this time, maybe not on the bus, for the ride back (as prefaced earlier) was a nightmare and I need an entire separate blog type blog like thing to describe that fucking ordeal. Another time. Sleep tight TO but don't get too comfortable b/c I'm coming back. I don't know when, how or where I'm going to get the money to support it - but I'm coming back.