Just to prove I needed to fit more 401 time into my life, we paid a surprise trip to my little sister-in-law's place for her mid-late twenties birthday who lives in Wroxeter about 100 km or so northwest of Kitchener. Observations:

• Watching your Leafs get smoked by the Flyers on a TV set that is five feet from corner to corner still sucks. They are extra sucky this year. Brother Jake (hub of sis-in-law) thinks making the playoffs will be a fluke.  He must know as he is my manliest man pal: he has a beer fridge, he knows when deer season is for bow, rifle and powder;
• Lion Extra Stout 6.6% from Trinidad in a 500 ml tin is a beer well worthy of both kinds of respect and somewhat odd to find only in the LCBO of the whiter-than-white town of Listowel;
• Mennonites bust their asses all day long. All these long beard guys were out with their teams of horse on Saturday afternoon plowing in the rain. They better believe Satan wears John Deere green and yellow because otherwise they are missing the boat on getting ahead of their work. When I get that ska combo together, I am calling it Desmond and the Mennonites in their honour;
• Self-serve gas is between 65.5 and 69.9 in the greater T.O. area. Kingston is 65.5;
• One county should not have a village called Dorking and another called Gorrie. Too much for the juvenile humour set;
• Queens choked big time in the Ontario University football semis Sunday with a double overtime 36-30 loss to Laurier after the kicker stubbed a conversion at the end of the first OT with Laurier making an amazing first time throw into the end-zone on their possession. I have totally accepted the Golden Gaels as my team, never having gone to a university with a football program - Kings, Dal, Strathclyde;
• Hard to be unhappy in the car listening to first wave ska;
• Most of what you see from the 401 is the most amazingly productive farming country in Canada - black soil, tan blocks of dried standing cow corn and bright gold willows down at the bend in the river. Even where the 401 crosses the Credit river in the heart of Mississauga there is still a family farm where the combine was out Saturday.
• Port Hope is a gorgeous red brick town with a big CN mainline train trestle right in the middle of town - dream date town for Wally or Jon and respective spouses.