It's time for me to fill you in on my exciting life of late. On Thursday, June 30, my friends Mike and Tony joined me in my Jetta and we began our journey to Toronto for the 70th Birthday of AA celebration at the International Convention. We got about 30 miles south of Hingham and as we were busily chatting, Bambi suddenly painted herself across the front of my lovely red car.
We called the police and the helpful member of the Ozaukee County Sheriff's department called a tow truck. We were amused to find that it was Joe from A&A towing!
Joe towed my car to Kaliber Collision Repair in Port Washington and they were just wonderful! As I write this, my Jetta has been totally restored and it appears to be as good as ever. The people at Kaliber were just so friendly and helpful as we talked on the phone. I'd highly recommend this business for any in the area.
Liz came down and picked us up and drove us back to Hingham. So, about 2 and a half hours later, we left again for Toronto in Lizes Honda CRV. We got to Milwaukee and got stuck in a major traffic jam on the south side of Milwaukee where a semi had overturned and blocked all of southbound I-94. We were diverted onto 894 and ended up losing an entire hour to this mess. I had to pee like a racehorse too. I kept debating whether to pull over to the side and let 'er fly but there were young girls in a family vehicle behind me and I managed to hold out till we got to a gas station.
The rest of our trip to Toronto was smooth as silk. We arrived at about 8:30 central (9:30 eastern) time and Tony and I hit the sheets while Mike went out to explore Toronto.
We stayed at the Westin Harbour Castle Hotel (the conference booked us there, we did not choose it) and it cost about $240 CAN per night PLUS $30 CAN for parking each day.
We had an awesome view of the Toronto Harbor (there are islands in the outter harbor and ferries left from a dock near our hotel regularly though we never got around to riding on one).
We had a great time at the conference. It seemed like everyone in downtown Toronto was from our fellowship and they were all our friends. We met people from all over the world but mostly from the US and even more mostly from Canada. We attended sessions 2-3 times per day and there was a big meeting in the Skydome on Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday morning. The speakers were inspiring and the flag ceremony (90 countries represented) was very moving.
The Skydome is right next to the CN tower (built by the Canadian National Railway), the tallest structure in the world. It is nearly 3 times taller than the Seattle Space Needle. Needless to say, I didn't go up. They actually have a glass-bottomed observation area up there. I can see me fainting from fear, wetting my pants, generally going nuts. No freakin' way!!!
There were probably 50 thousand recovering people at this convention and it is an experience I will never forget. I'm definitely planning to attend the next one in 2010 in San Antonio, Texas.
We arrived home at about 11:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 3, three recovering alkies grateful for such a wonderful experience.
Ciao, babies!
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