28 06 2004
Busy weekend, and despite all the sleep, I’m still tired.
Friday, everyone at work kicked out early. We were all going to some park up on Stouff-ville Rd. for a Livewire Picnic party. I have to say, it was one of the best Livewire events we’ve had yet. Lots of Frisbee, volleyball, beer and hamburgers. What more could you want?
The weather was just right (not too cold, not too hot) and the wind was just strong enough to keep the bugs away.
After the event (around 5:00) I drove down to Fairview and caught the TTC downtown. I met up with Simone, Sabrina and Rita to go see Fahrenheit 9/11. I remember that when I was reading Michael Moore’s “Stupid White Men”, I kept putting down the book because I was getting so upset. Likewise, there were several times during the movie, I felt like getting up and leaving the theatre… unable to handle any more.
There were a lot of tongue-in-cheek jokes, but I didn’t laugh at most of them. I couldn’t, they would have been funnier if it wasn’t real, and if the Bush’s weren’t getting away with all of it.
Simone’s dad loves Bush because he’s “a friend of the Jews”. He’s pretty right-wing (and to his credit, doesn’t usually try to spurn me into an argument over politics), so he’ll never watch this movie. But I wish he would… just to see how close Bush really is to the Saudi’s.
Saturday afternoon, Pete and I drove out to Kitchener, and then further to St. Thomas where there’s a dragstrip. One quarter mile of asphalt where you can push your car to the limit in order to see how fast you can cover 1320 feet.
The Vin Diesel line, “I live my life one quarter-mile at a time” became quite overused by Pete and myself. We haven’t had that much fun quoting a movie since we rode on Top Gun at Canada’s Wonderland eight times in a row.
It was a really sweet experience. It’s like going to the Molson Indy, and then getting to take your car ON TO THE TRACK, just to see how the vehicle you commute in every day can compete against a suped-up Dodge Charger (hint - it can’t).
One of the oddest experiences there was the lack of Imports. Sure, the people who drive imports don’t tend to take them to the dragstrip, but I’m just not used to seeing that many domestics after spending five years in the GTA. There were a LOT of Mustangs (especially Cobras), one driver had a Ford SVT Lightning, a couple Turbo’ed Volkswagen Jettas and Golfs, some police-issue Crown Vics and another ZX2 that has had a lot of work done to it, and got a time under 16 seconds (vs. my best of 18.011). There were some really amazing cars there, but the most stunning vehicle was an ATV that was posting in the mid-to-low 16’s.
I forgot my time slips at home (at work right now), so I’ll have to post my full numbers later. However, with Reaction time, 60′, 330′, 1/8 mi. and 1/4 mi. times and speeds, I’ve already created an Excel file that will plot my speed curve. I’ll post the graphs later.
Sunday was quieter. Simone and her roomie-to-be were looking downtown at apartments. One was just East of Parkdale (Queen and Dufferin) and the other was just West of it. We walked through the neighbourhood, and I decided that I never want to live in Parkdale… and I certainly would not want Simone living there!
Despite my earlier rant on how much Toronto has changed me, there’s still a lot of irrational fears I have about “The Big City”.
Maybe I’ll get over those fears someday, but far more likely is that I’ll move to Barrie, Kitchener, or some other non-Megacity.
