The Trip

Oct. 13, 5:15am
I wake up when my dad comes into the room and says that I'm late. Jay and I were supposed to fly to Minneapolis but had a late start as we were supposed to leave the house about 30 minutes earlier-- not a good start to the day.

5:34am.
A quick stop at Tim Horton's (despite our being late, we've always got time..) for a medium dd and we're off again.

5:45am
Driving along the QEW, everything is fine.

5:46am
White out conditions.

5:51am
We see our first car stuck in the snow trying to depart the highway. A quick survey of the scene tells us that this guy is going to need some help, and with not a lot of people around... 1st car pushed out of the snow.

5:58am
Turn on the radio for this little tidbit "Buffalo is experiencing an unprecedented storm in the history of weather" - no jokes, that's a direct quote. (3 hours later we hear this little nugget "If you have an emergency you'd like to share on the air give us a call"-- ya, if I'm in an emergency, the first thing (or last thing) on my list of to-do's is to call talk-radio.)

After that it was pretty crazy- we decided to press on to the Buffalo airport, despite the fact that we knew our flight was delayed- this was an adventure! After an hour and half of waiting for the Peace Bridge to open we finally crossed the border into the war zone that was Buffalo-- massive trees down everywhere, deserted highways, no power- it was crazy. Anyway, we spent the morning pushing cars out on route to the airport, which we arrived at around 10:45am, to find out that our flight had been pushed back to 7:30am, the next morning.

That was the first day of operation: visit Ian and Lauren (with a quick stop at a wedding in Minneapolis). It was a great 36 hour with the Mclarens-- full of poker, Arrested Development and my first ever trip to the Olive Garden.