Being on the bus overnight is terrible.  I really do hope the train is a lot better.  Should be, it looked like we were making some pretty good time on the highway and passing a lot of vehicles.  Probably explains a lot of the swaying…

I never got a great chunk of sleep.  But I did watch the 2nd half of The Walking Dead on Netflix.  Coverage was pretty decent – it hiccuped a few times, but I needed the rest to put off the queasiness anyway.

Great colours out the window with dawn:

Got into town and tried to check in – but without any open spaces, the hostel couldn’t give me a room.  I ended up wiping myself down with a wet cloth in the common area washroom.  Left my bag in the locker room and headed out to meet up with a friend for a morning ride.

Streets closed off for Pride weekend:

BMO closed – I needed to pick up a new bank card at an open branch, but it was too early in the morning:

Met up with a bunch of old co-workers for the morning.   Crashed a vid-conference meeting with London and Barcelona and got to see a few people before heading out for lunch.

Wall Street Martini- Tanq 10, vermouth garnished with cucumber.  Seemed a touch questionable when I ordered it.   And after getting it, my concerns were well founded. Wrong on so many levels:

At least the club sandwich lunch was decent:

Got some free tickets to the qualifying events for NASCAR.  Loud, slow, boring.  Not worth risking getting close to anyone, so there weren’t going to be any accidents.   A few of the GT cars got squirrelly under braking and a few cars spun out.  But not much to see:

We figured since it cost us $6 each to take transit in and out, we should walk around the paddocks too.  Interesting experience – the mechs were either not taking things seriously or done for the day.   Lots of them were standing around drinking Bud Light, smoking and yakking about the cars.

After leaving NASCAR, we went back to the hostel for a drink before dinner.  The friend I was with had been complaining about flavourless beer, so I chose “La Fin du Monde” as our drinks.  Just as nasty as I remembered, but he seemed to like it.

Met up with some friends in Montreal and went to Schwartz’s.  Line was ridiculously long, so we just grabbed some takeout and ate on a bench across the street.  Ordered the full fat – very much not necessary.  Should stick with the Medium like everyone else:

Did some shopping downtown before heading over to Crescent St for their NASCAR festivities.   Not much happening, seems like the recession is still in effect.  Used to be 3 closed off streets and down to the one.  Not much free stuff being handed out either.   At least the stage was busy:

Ended the night with a lot of walking and back to the hostel for another drink.  Loud live music, and if we hadn’t wasted so much energy wandering around, it would have been a fun party to join.  But by the time we got there, it was winding down anyway.  The neighbours were complaining about the noise and the band had to stop playing.   Made getting to sleep easier, anyway.