Then you get to the hotel (Embassy Suites Syracuse), and your pullout couch tilts toward the head of the bed by about 20 or 30 degrees. Scary.
And then you make the turn and head towards Niagara Falls, bypassing Buffalo (though you joke about heading over to visit Marcellus Wiley). And for awhile, it's more of the same -- trees, field. Then civilization resumes -- industrial suburbia. Slowly but surely, things change as I-290 changes to I-190. You hit the first bridge onto Grand Island, and the anticipation begins. You hit the second bridge, back onto the mainland, and the mighty Niagara River rages below you. Then you try to find your way through tacky and largely unsigned Niagara Falls, N.Y. to the Rainbow Bridge, and see the mist off to your left. Work your way through the toll plaza and get to the border guard. Coming back, there's always a scary-looking man with a buzzcut in sunglasses. "ARE you bringing in any ALcohol or FIREarms?" "NO DRILL SERGEANT!" On the other hand, going this way, there's always a woman, and she always talks in a pleasant monotone. In Champlain, in Vermont, whichever bridge you go over here, always a woman.
Regardless, then you're there, Niagara Falls, Ontario. And if you take out the falls, know what you have? Las Vegas. Vegas, but with only one casino and with the amazing hydroelectric plant moved an hour closer. They're still building hotels like crazy, a couple of new Planet Hollywood/TGI Fridays, with a whole bunch of sleazy T-shirt shops in between.
But then you go up in the Skylon Tower and see what you're there for, what all those Planet Hollywoods and sleazy T-shirt shops are there for.
There can't be many sites in the world more wonderful, in the most literal sense of the word. It's stunning as you approach from behind. There's the raging rapids of the Upper Niagara. Roaring and churning along at some 40 miles an hour. Bounding and roaring, carrying the water of Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie.
And then, suddenly, the entire thing disappears.
You head for the rim, and you stand there against the concrete wall among the press of tourists, stuck as close to the wall as you can get, and thus barely 10 feet from the edge. It's loud. The water races over the edge -- it doesn't look more than eight feet deep at the rim -- and then plummets in a roar, charging down and breaking up until it disappears under all the mist, maybe halfway down the drop. The mist is so thick you can't see the other side of the rim from the other.
You walk away, but you've got to go back. And again.
We ate at Casa D'Oro on Victoria Ave. The restaurant looks like a hole inna wall, but it is really a beautiful Italian restaurant.
Regardless, once your eyes uncross, today is the day we've been waiting for, the arrival in T.O., Hogtown, the Canadian Big Town, home of over 300 decorated moose sculptures (all sponsored, trying to raise money for a Toronto bid for the 2008 Olympics).
You follow the QEW (lovely little rural areas until the bridge over Hamilton Harbour; more comforting industrial-suburban thereafter, through towns you only know either from faded memories or junior hockey) into the Gardiner Expressway by Exhibition Place, and then into downtown, past the Dome (excuse me, past SkyDome), with the roof closed 'counta the morning rain. Past the CN Tower, flying ridiculously high over the town. And as you swing out for the Yonge Street exit, past the spankin' new Air Canada Centre. You make the turn up Yonge and pass the new Hall of Fame, which from the outside looks appropriately grand but surprisingly small (reason being: it's mostly underground).
So you park, and you check in at the Delta Chelsea on Gerrard between Yonge and Bay, and you find out you're not getting the free breakfasts they promised your dad over the phone, which is good and bad, because breakfast isn't your favorite reason to drag yourself out of bed in the morning.
And then you go out to find soda and instead end up getting the first emotional hit of many. You come out of the little park onto Carleton Street, and there it is, to your right, just past the little market and the Days Inn. The facade is the same, the marquee still flashes its welcome message, and the signs directing you to the box office and the ticket window remain, but it's sad to see Maple Leaf Gardens like this, almost closed, almost dead. You can get into the lobby still, through one of the middle doors, and straight ahead of you is the Holy Land, the last even semi-functional of the Original Six buildings, locked off but still visible through glass doors.
Your first thought, besides "This is it," is, "This is it?" It looks so small. You know the street is only about 20 feet behind you, so there can't be much seating overhead. And what's visible just doesn't seem like what you saw on TV. The Knick looked bigger. If the New Haven Coliseum had a second tier, it would look bigger.
The Gardens just feels like a minor-league barn with a second deck and in some places a third. You stand there, at ice level (actually, the slab is probably at street level, so the ice is a little higher), and you look, and it just doesn't seem possible that this little barn with the high, arched ceiling is what it is.
My dad and my brother went off to look for someone, see if there were tours (there aren't, says the recorded line at the Air Canada Centre). I just sat and looked. I mean, this is the place. A couple of my Stanley Cups were won here. To think that the Leafs had to leave. To think that they're going to gut the inside, maybe make a small rink and a subdevelopment. Hockey's Mecca, this was, really, the home of the mighty Leafs and Foster Hewitt and Hockey Night in Canada and all. Feeling that was all I could get from the building, that little glimpse through the glass doors, I walked out more than a little misty, glad I'd been able to make the pilgrimage.
We got the soda on the way back, and also got four bars of Aero. This is crap that really has to come to the States (I could swear we had it in the States when I was a really little kid in the Bronx, but I can't remember for certain). It's made by Nestle, milk chocolate base with light milk chocolate on top with tiny bubbles throughout. It's hard to describe, but it's good shit. It's definitely the highlight of a trip to Montreal. In Toronto, it's just a great aside.
We spent the night at SkyDome for the Jays and the Royals, the immortal Esteban Loaiza against (Win) Blake Stein ('s Money). Three field-level seats, row 34, behind first base, almost close enough to touch Carlos Delgado, $100.50 Cdn, which at present exchange rates is something like five bucks, I think. Had we wanted to sit in the middle of a row (which Dad does not -- aisle seats are premium), we could have sat eight rows from the field, just a little further out than third. The place was at best a third full, a far cry from our 1989 trip, when we spent something like $75 a ticket to scalp our way into the eighth row -- from the top of the stadium.
There was almost no juice in the yard at all, even as Alex Gonzalez homered in the first to give Toronto a 2-0 lead. Kansas City chased Loaiza in the fourth, putting up a five- spot to take an 8-2 lead. The Jays got one back in the bottom, but it stayed that way for what seemed like forever (damn American League baseball), and we not-so-jokingly talked about going up to the concourse to watch the end of "Survivor." The Jays waste a first-and-third, no-outs situation in the sixth (thanks in part to a gorgeous diving catch by first baseman Mike Sweeney) and trail through the seventh-inning ("OK! BLUE JAYS! LET'S! PLAY! BALL!) stretch.
Stein's pitch count must be up around the CN's observation deck [124, it turns out], or maybe he just failed the Best-of-10 Test-of-Knowledge, so Tony Muser pulls him in favor of the immortal Kris Wilson, who promptly gives up a line-drive, opposite-field homer to the overdue Carlos Delgado, his 37th of the year. He strikes out Brad Fullmer, but Tony Batista lines a double to left. Darrin Fletcher grounds out, but then Jose Cruz Jr., who hasn't hit since he was a major prospect in Seattle, bombs a home run into the second deck in right, making it 8-6.
Ain't over. (Harry Calas voice) Mickey Morandini walks. Shannon Stewart singles, chasing Wilson, and in comes Andy Larkin, who promptly gives up a two-run double to Gonzalez.
He strikes out the ancient Dave Martinez to end the inning, but then instead of Pedro Borbon ("Pedro Borbon?" Dad asks, playing off Pedro's dad, "He's older than dirt!"), Kelvim Escobar comes in and scares us in the top of the eighth. No harm. And then there was Carlos Delgado again, hitting a BOMB, straight up it seemed, arching somewhere up toward the roof. It looked like it could have been one of those Canseco blasts that kept going, but then it reached its pinnacle and started down, down, down...
And over the wall, just to the right of the 375-mark in right-center. Billy Koch comes in, throws a bunch of 100-mph fastballs for show, and the Jays win 9-8.
On the way home, our cabbie preached Second Corinthians. His sport is reading the Bible and praying, he says. I debate whether to say my religion is hockey, but it's 1) not really true, 2) sacrilegious and 3) unreasonable antagonism.
For the first time, I saw the Holy Grail with my crusaders' names on it.
You see where they added Eddie Olczyk and Mike Hartman's names later, almost spilling over the edge of the rim (it was the backup; the real Cup is still out on the road), and you laugh. To finally see the Rangers' names on the Cup -- I'd seen the Cup before, but not since early 1994, before the Rangers had won it for the first time in 54 years -- was as moving an experience as I've had in some time.
The new Hall is sweet. The film on hockey's great dynasties was well-done. The Gretzky exhibit was tasteful (though it's kind of rough that one of only two Rangers sweaters we saw was the semi-infamous "Gretkzy" one). It's a shame that they have almost no 1980 U.S. Olympic items. The biggest unexpected highlight was moving in to take a look at the exhibited Italian national team sweater and discovering that it belonged to Mario Chitaroni, perhaps our favorite New Haven Nighthawk of all time.
Came back and did a little rambling around town. Sadly, the World's Biggest Bookstore let me down -- nothing, really, that I couldn't get at home over the 'Net (often cheaper). The little used bookstore next door is no real help.
Things seem more expensive here than they were in Montreal two years ago, particularly in comparison to prices home. I don't know if that's because Toronto's just a more expensive city, or if the Loonie had just taken such a severe nosedive back then that prices hadn't caught up yet. Regardless, everything from books to soda is pricier.
Dinner at the CN Tower. Ridiculously expensive, but you'd spend much of the difference between that and a regular dinner to get up to the observation deck anyway. Circle the city twice, looking out over the lights and the harbor and the airports, and just wonder at the view.
Then at the end of the day you look back on the afternoon in the outer vault of the old bank, looking at that little engraved panel for the first time, and the tear finally comes.
We go up to the concourse level, take a look at the Raptors' practice facility. We go up to Curtis Joseph's suite in the top corner, take a distant look at the press box (the Foster Hewitt Media Gondola -- I answer Alexander's involve-the-crowd question about who Foster Hewitt was), then head back downstairs. See the Coca Cola suite down in the bowels, pass the closed-off Leafs dressing room with the aircraft-hanger doors, then go out into the main arena. The basketball floor is on the slab for polishing, so we don't get to go all the way down. We sit in the gray (OK, platinum) seats as Alexander points out the various restaurants and stuff, along with the retired and honored numbers, rather screwing up the reasons for both. But it's OK, because it's kind of nice just to be there.
In the concrete on the sidewalk outside the barn on Bay Street is what presumably will eventually be a year-by-year representation of the Leafs' record; there are spots for the wins, losses and ties, but none are filled in. A fourth column does indicate the Leafs' Stanley Cup wins, though. Matt stands on 1994 and points out that 1940 is almost a city block away.
On the way back to the hotel, Matt and I stop at Legends of the Game, a sports collectibles store at King and John. Kind of disappointed, though I'm not sure what I expected -- most of what they had was singles among the older stuff. The 1990-92 stuff was, as you'd expect, plentiful and, well, not particularly cheap, but cheap. I spring for a 1991 Score hockey traded set (to open -- I have one already to keep), featuring Sergei Nemchinov and Mark Messier and Adam Graves, and a box of 1991 Score baseball cards, just because I kind of like the set (and it's the cheapest box in the store besides some scary 1991 Pro Set hockey).
For dinner, we go next door to the Colosseum Restaurant, a mistake that must not be repeated. We decide to hang out at the patio bar so Dad and Matt can smoke their Cuban cigars, but as Matt goes up to get their lighter and cutter, I take a little walk. There's a convenience store up the block that advertises sports cards, so I take a run in, and just as quickly run out. Call me weird, but there's something eerie about a place that has tables set up in front of their display cases where people are sitting playing Magic: The Gathering. Not wanting to go too much farther up Yonge, I go the other way, into that used book store I wrote off yesterday, a BMV two blocks down. I grab Rick Carpiniello's Messier bio and take a little longer look around. On a shelf above, where I don't remember it from yesterday, is Stephen Cole's _The Last Hurrah_, about the 1966-67 season, cheap. I grab that one, too, and pass on a Canadian history book (those, I can generally get from the library; none of the political history books I've seen have grabbed me this week). So I don't come back with any serious hockey-card purchases, but I will make it back with two hockey books.
The Canadian folkies at the bar, in between Irish jigs, play "City of New Orleans," a strange choice -- Canadians singing about the decline of the American railroad? OK. Especially since she messes up the second verse... They also play "Piano Man," which sounds weird without the harmonica. Oh yeah, and the PIANO!
All in all, though, not a bad trip.
THE ROAD HOME is long, probably too long, because we go down I-87 from Albany, fighting through all the folks heading back to the City from upstate. But things aren't bad, because as we stop for the night again in Syracuse, we meet up with a golf outing group at the hotel, and they lead us to a pretty good Italian restaurant around the corner. We don't have to divide the price by 1.5 to figure out what we're paying anymore. It's nice to be home. But still, I love Toronto. Its rhythms are so much like home's, except more people know hockey up there. Can't wait to go back.
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Michael Fornabaio--mef17@oocities.com