I rolled out of bed around 4:15am, having slept for probably around three hours in total. I did kind of make an effort to sleep super early last night, but what with losing an hour to the whole Daylight Savings business and me being so excited I couldn't fall asleep (seriously, I haven't outgrown that yet?!), I failed to ensure myself sufficient rest. After I washed up and showered, I looked a little more normal...
Unfortunately, I was first in line to be the driver since I'm only legally allowed to drive in Ontario. We were planning to grab breakfast at Tim Horton's on the way, since that's always fun. Too bad 25-hr Timmys in Scarborough are too lame to actually have any food available in the early morning. So we just redeemed an extra-large coffee from a previous roll-up-the-rim, and then we were off, on the DVP.
It wasn't my first time driving on a highway, but it was definitely my first time driving on a highway at 5:30am in the morning only 80% awake and in the crazy wind and rain conditions. The streetlights reflected off every puddle, making it extremely difficult to actually see the lane markings. That made me a bit nervous for the first forty-five minutes or so, but I kind of got used to looking for it. The rain never really let up for the entire day. Somewhere around Burlington, there was this one spot where a car was merging into my lane from the right, just in front of me. It went through a massive puddle and I literally saw this blade of water spew out from its wheels and come flying at my windshield. It looked like some slow-motion ninja move in a movie; I screamed in terror and scared my parents half to death. My windshield wipers proceeded to do their job and take care of the issue, and everything was okay again. =3
Driving on the highway in the dark is weird. All the random office buildings and warehouses that seem to just squat beside the roadway are dimly lit, presumably to save power or something, and they just freak me out a little. They remind me of some zombie nightmare, as though some kind of creature would come slinking around a corner or oozing out of a window. To make my drive even more stressful, there was classical music playing in the car (my dad's choice, of course), which was no Little Night Music but rather some epic symphony that sounded like the soundtrack to a scene where dragons descend menacingly upon a battered hero on his way to retrieve a magical amulet. Cool, eh? So I ended up listening to music from my phone using earphones...
America turns out to be much the same as Canada. Well I'm not sure what I was expecting in the first place, actually. Anyway, even the road signs are more or less the same colours, just with the speed limit in miles rather than kilometers. They even have quite a few Tim Hortons along the way (just that part close to the border), since I think Wendy's owns it now...
My mom gave me some $5 bills to have in my wallet. I am thoroughly disappointed that the greenback is no longer actually green. Well...it is, more or less, but it looks like they've added a tint of colour to some bills, probably to not anger the visually impaired population?? That's just practicality, I guess, since they used to be pretty much all the same just with a different president. It's just that...iconic "American Dollar" idea in my mind got smashed into smithereens. Just a little. Am I the only one who didn't know about this change? =D
I woke up sometime around 11:30 as we were just parking beside a diner in a town somewhere. Inside, it was a pretty traditional-looking place with a counter and stools and neon lights, and there were some regular tables also. The interior decor had a theme of Teddy Bear. I suppose one could say it was pretty adorable, but at the same time it was rather creepy. They were all shades of brown or white, covered in what was probably decades' worth of dust, piled on various shelves and other surfaces or stuffed into hanging baskets. Some had clothes and accessories, others did not. None of them looked particularly happy, or loved. Hard to do, I suppose, when you've been stuck in the same place place for years, soaking in the grease and smells of the diner and silently observing the comings and goings of people who either ogled at the novelty or couldn't care less. It gave the diner a bit of an incongruous feel, as thought a child's playhouse had been wrapped around a trucker's rest stop, then filled with the town's uniformly plump locals.
Speaking of plump, the food probably deserved to go on http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/. So greasy and fattening! Even the salad came with twice as much dressing as I thought it really needed, and contained a generous helping of meat. I can think of a few people who would be pretty happy to find meat in their salad, but together with onions and tomatoes and peppers and slices of processed cheese, it seemed to me like a burger or something pretending to be a salad. Which is a little awkward...
