Day 22 - Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada

Today I went to a car meet hosted by the Toronto Prelude Club, and met some cool people with some cool cars. Fab had to go to a wedding that night, so I got back on the road in the late afternoon. I only drove for a few hours, then it became dark and then stopped in a place about 40 miles from the US border called Port Colborne, a small town on Lake Erie.

I found a cool little Motel, and when the owner saw that I was from Virginia, he told me that After he served in the Royal Canadian Navy in the 70s he went to a school in Virginia called Christopher Newport College, which was a branch of William and Mary at that time. He was very surprised to hear that I had just graduated from there, but it was now known as Christopher Newport University and was about 4 times larger now than when he attended. Talk about a small world.

So I walked down the main drag and went into a bar called City Tavern, the ideal kind of hole in the wall that I had enjoyed so many times along this trip, and this one was a perfect example. Once the bar patrons found out that I was an American on a cross country road trip and I had decided to stay in their little Canadian town, it was over. Just to make sure I got the full "Canadian experience", someone even put Anne Murray on the Jukebox (the very fact that they even had Anne Murray on the jukebox immediately tells you where you are) to which everyone in attendance started booing, and the bartender had to use the remote to skip the song. These were some of the nicest, most friendly people I had ever met, and like many times before, we spent the whole night drinking. Jokes were made about the stereotypes of our respective countries, and they wanted to know about where I had been. Thanks to Derek, Ivan, and the rest of the crazy people there for showing me a good time.

Canadians are some pretty cool people, and I was very glad to spend the final night of my trip in this town. Once again, I really hope I find myself back here someday.