Road Trip 2009: Days 6 & 7

Day 6

We left Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, and we were on our way to Toronto, Ontario, Canada. We had to stop in Detroit, MI, because my buddy needed to get a Visa to enter Canada. I've never been to Detroit, or entered into Ontario, Canada from the west, so it was a day of many firsts. We left Cedar Point around 6am and arrived in Detroit around 8:30am.


The downtown area of Detroit was surprisingly nice, especially the waterfront area. But the odd thing about downtown Detroit was that no one was around. You can walk a block and not run into another person, so it made things a bit eerie.


My buddy got his Visa and we headed for Toronto. During our drive there were several delays getting to Toronto. First, instead of taking QEW 401 we took QEW 403 and we ended up having to backtrack about 30 minutes. Then we hit some major traffic due to a fatal car accident on the Gardiner Expressway ... so in retrospect, we should have stayed on the QEW 403 because we would have avoided this delay. But we made it there safe, so it doesn't matter if we arrived an hour or so behind scheduled.


We arrived at the hotel, freshened up and made our way to Chinatown.


It was a really chilly day so we had to bring our jackets. Yes, jackets ... in July! Walked along Spadina Ave. and we knew reach Chinatown when the all the signs change to Chinese (an obvious sign). We stopped in a couple of markets, before looking for a place to have dinner. We didn't know where to eat, so my buddy stop an elderly Chinese couple and asked for a recommendation for a restaurant. In Chinese, they recommended a restaurant called New Sky. We thanked them and made our way to the restaurant.


Food was Cantonese and it was delicious. There was so much of it that I stopped eating halfway through. I was pushed by my buddy to eat more .. so I did and we cleaned our plates. My buddy asked a waitress to recommend a Dim Sum place so we can have lunch the next day. She thought for several moments but she finally told gave us place to visit.


We left the restaurant and walked around the Eaton Centre...


and the Church & Wellesley gay area...


before taking the TTC back to the hotel for some rest.

Day 7

We headed back to Chinatown to the Dim Sum place recommended to us the previous day. I had no idea of what Dim Sum consisted. I thought it was something like potstickers, but I was so wrong. Dim Sum in a bunch a light dishes that you can order a la carte and the meal comes with tea.


If my memory serves me correctly, we had about 10 different Dim Sum dishes. My buddy urged me to try chicken feet and I resisted for a bit before relenting. Our first dishes came out and we began to eat our meal. I tried the chicken feet and I didn't hate it. Maybe if it was fried I would had liked it a bit better. Dish after dish ... when I thought we were done, something new came to our table.

We finally finished our meal and walked around a bit. We headed to the University of Toronto, headed back to the Eaton Center because it was open


then we headed to the CN Tower:


After viewing the city from high atop the CN Tower, we quickly walked back to the hotel to get cleaned up and meet my friend Paul for dinner. During our travels around the city, we noticed that the trash from the receptacles were just overflowing throw out the city:


I didn't know why, but we decided to ask Paul since he is a resident of the city. We hopped on the TTC to the Danforth Area of Toronto and had dinner at Astoria which has great souvlaki (I like the lamb). During dinner we were informed that trash is not being collected throughout the city because the sanitation workers were on strike. That explained the squalor we've seen on the street. After dinner we walked back to the downtown area through wealthy Rosedale neighbourhood, past the Royal Ontario Museum to see the completed renovations, around University of Toronto and back to the hotel.

More to come ....

Road Trip 2009: Day 5

This is the day I was most looking forward to. It has been my dream to go to Cedar Point Amusement Park after watching countless roller coaster specials on television. I finally arrived. I am going to breakdown all the roller coasters I went on in order:

Maverick

This coaster was not biggest but it really powerful. A 95 degree drop, lots of twist and turns made this ride really great.

Mean Streak

A huge wooden coaster with no line whatsoever so me and a friend of mine were the completely alone. It was a was a typical wooden coaster with a lot of bumps and drops, but it was really tame compared to Maverick.

Gemini

This is a challenge coaster where two trains ride at the same time on different tracks to see who finishes first. When I rode it there is only one train. It has the feel of a wooden coaster but has tubular steel tracks with made it oddly quiet during the ride.

Magnum XL-200

The coaster may have been built in 1989 but it is big and fast and a great ride. The best part of this ride were the covered portions of the tracks that had unexpected drops. They came out of nowhere and made the coast fun and scary.

Corkscrew

An okay coaster that was built in 1976. A lot of inversions but not really intense.

Iron Dragon

Pretty good "swing" coaster where you site below the tracks and dangle. It wasn't scary but a the swinging effect made it a lot of fun.

Mantis

This coaster required you to stand-up during the ride. Although it was fun, it was also painful. The force of ride but so much pressure on my calves, and my crotch because of the seat that held you upright.

Disaster Transport (x2)

This coaster reeked of the 80s and was very cheesy. It was a coaster in a building and mostly covered by darkness. I rode it twice because the line was short and it was indoors away from the sun.

Wicked Twister

This coaster was very fun. You went from 0-60 in the matter of seconds and you went back and forward up two twisting columns. This was a very fun ride.

Blue Streak

The "classic" wooden coast is almost 50 years old, but the ride with all of it's bumps and hills made it fun. It seemed unsafe and dangerous, but that was part of the fun. :)

Raptor

The ride was not operational for most of the day but when we saw they were testing the ride my buddy and I went over and stood in line. We got through the line pretty quick and it was worth the wait. The ride resembled the Batman rides at Six Flags theme parks where you sit in a chair underneath the track. After we exited the ride, I wanted to get on again, but the line had grown so we moved on.

Cedar Creek Mines

A ride built in the 1960s that looked and felt so dangerous made it a fun ride. Not thrilling, but wondering if you were going to survive it made it interesting. lol

Wildcat

This coaster was really dangerous. When the ride operators tell you to "brace yourself" when you stopped at the end of the ride do you don't bash your skull. With all that it was fun and the line was short.

Millennium Force

At one time the coast was the biggest and fastest in the wold. With a 310 ft climb and a 300 ft drop, it was fast at 93 mph ... but the ride was kind of boring. After the drop there was very little to be excited about.

Top Thrill Dragster

This ride was filled me with such fear. The entire day you hear the screams adn seeing people being shot 420 ft up in the air only caused more fear and dread, but I knew I had to ride it or else I would hate myself for chickening out. Here some video:



Scary stuff ... huh? This made my fear worst.

So at the end of the day we waited in line for an hour and finally got the beginning of the line. What made things worst is that when the previous trains were at the very top of the hill, the trains looked like it was just barely making it over to the other side. I commented on this to my friend because it really concerned me, but I still got on. We got in our seats and prepared for the ride. We pulled up to the launch section of the track, prepared for launch .... then the ride broke down. WTF!!!

We sat on the track for about 15 minutes before we were pulled back to the starting gate and the ride reset itself. We weren't told what happened or given option to get off. The train pulled up to the launch section of the track, and in a matter of sections we were jettisoned off at 120mph, up 420 ft and down 420 ft.

At the end of the ride we all just looked at each other and were very happy we survived the ride. There was a lot of nervous chatter after we all exited the ride, but like Millennium Force, it was just an okay ride. You go so fast in the beginning that everything else seems tame.

So did all the adult coasters in the park and the top 3 for me was Maverick, Magnum XL-200 and Raptor. The scariest ride for me was not a coaster. It was the Demon Drop (see vid):



I think it was the most scary to me because, unlike a coaster, you drop straight down and can you can prepare for it. Also the ride is so loud with these industrial noised that it make you wondering if it will break down at any given moment. I screamed the entire way down after we were dropped and slide to safety. The people who were with me laughed at me, and I laughed at myself as well. I wanted to go back on but we had other rides to conquer. Another fun non-coaster was Skyhawk(hard to explain, see hyperlink).

I had a great time during my trip to Cedar Point. I wish I could have stayed longer, but all good things must come to an end.

More to come ...

Road Trip 2009 - Day 4

Road Trip 2009 - Day 4
Originally uploaded by KillerVirgo

I am currently in the car en route Sandusky, OH heading to Cedar Point
Amusement Park. The trip so far has had it's share of delays.

The rental car we got from Hertz during the car ride from Dallas to
Memphis ended up breaking. Some screws fell out of a plastic panel
under the grill causing it to fall and scrap the pavement. We got the
car replaced at the Memphis Airport Hertz location which ate up an
hour or so of our time. We ended up getting the same vehicle, 2009
Chevy Malibu, but it was a high class version with leather seats,
Bluetooth, etc ...

We ended up in Chicago area around 11pm after a 9 hour drive on Day 2.
It rained on day 3 and we couldn't do much of anything outdoors so we
headed to the downtown area and walked the Michigan Avenue shops and
stores. Later that evening we headed to dinner in Chinatown, and
luckily the rain stopped by then. We had some authentic Chinese dishes
at a popluar szechaun restaurant, and finished the meal with a
pineappple/mango smoothies with Boba.

We left Chinatown and heading to Boystown, Chicago's gay strip. It was
oddily empty for 10pm on Saturday night. We walked for a short while
before leaving and heading back to the hotel for the evening.

This morning we headed to the Navy Pier and walked around and took
some pictures. It was very touristy, but the view of the Chicago
skyline were great. We stayed for about an hour before continuing to
Ohio.

Chicago was fun. Due to time constraints I didn't get some deep dish
pizza or see Oooopraahh WinFreey! Maybe another time.