It was time for the annual Christmas trip with Donnie and Steve, and this year we decided to do a loop of places about 5 hours away. Some of these places I'd visited previously (Barrie, Midland), while some of them would be all new (Peterborough).

I'd recently learned that Peterborough has one of the last stadiums in the Ontario Hockey League that isn't just a mini version of the modern day NHL arena - so of course they're working fervently to replace it. I now needed to see the old Peterborough Memorial Centre and that was a good enough reason for a little trip around Simcoe County and the base of the Kawarthas.

Getting scooped up in Belle River, there was one last stop for gas at the Flying J in Tilbury. I purchased some pickled eggs in a cup and failed to eat all five, leaving one to freeze and grace Steve's car throughout the journey.

Taking the ol' Highway 2 instead of the speedy 401, we weren't committed to the same rest stops only found every couple of hours at the OnRoutes®. Needing to use the washroom along the way near Woodstock, we were able to casually pop around back of Nikki's Roadhouse.

It was funny to learn that a bunch of stray cats hang around the back of the club. The dancers better be using some of their money to buy them treats.

Flurries started around Kitchener and turned into blowing snow as we curved around Toronto and north to Barrie. Donnie had grown tired of carting me around whenever I come home and was ranting about this, so now it was time to take over and do some of the driving myself (I never had a problem with driving, he didn't ask!)

Driving north of Toronto, Clarkson had long ago informed me about the winter weather of Barrie and how much worse it is than Toronto - but truth be told, I always envisioned this to be hyperbole. Sure enough the snow really was blowing tonight as Steve's dim headlights barely illuminated the pitch black night and I squeezed past cement jersey barriers guarding closed lanes.

I was relieved to arrive in Barrie and grab a poutine at Barrie Burger.

Next up was grabbing a motel, which really shouldn't be too hard in Barrie in late December. This is why we were over at Barrie Burger, checking on Barr's Motel across the street. Unfortunately it seems like we just missed the boat, as possessions were piled outside a couple of the rooms, with dim lights emanating and no one in the lobby to welcome us.

(Barr's Motel has since been converted into affordable housing for the homeless.)

Looking on Steve's phone for somewhere else to stay, all three of us were amazed with costly Barrie. Next up was the Barrie Motel, where the mobile wagon that helps the homeless and those needing addiction services was parked right in the middle of the lot. This didn't seem like where we'd want to spend the night, but options were slim and Donnie/Steve both like a good value motel as much as I do.

Unbelievably though, I went inside and discovered that the Barrie Motel wanted $149+tax for one night's stay. I was baffled at how these people suffering from unfortunate circumstances were managing to stay here.

Finally we returned to the spartan Knight's Inn, which was still a ridiculous $139+tax, but after turning down this price earlier to go check on the Barrie Motel and Barr's Motel, we accepted that this was just the cost of doing business in Barrie. A mental note was made to avoid staying overnight in Barrie in the future.

Throughout a night of watching Extreme Couponing and mocking the people getting orgasmic pleasure from having bunkers filled with 17 shelves of fabric softener sheets, we also observed characters coming and going from both the Knight's Inn and the bar next door, the quaintly-named Sticky Fingers.

Eventually someone even knocked on our door, but thankfully it was Donnie who answered it. Where I would have trusted in the visitor and not really stopped him, Donnie is more of a quick thinker and blocked the 6'6", fit dude from stepping into our room as he intended. Instead he got a fair shove back out into the night.

It was on a later road trip that I was telling Clarkson and his girlfriend about our stay at the Knight's Inn. She interjected that she knew the motel, as she was cutting through their parking lot one evening and looked up, only to find a buck-naked guy watching her and rubbing one out in his motel room picture window.

And that's the type of place you can get for $139+tax in Barrie in late December! Even with the old Barrie Arena no longer standing across the street.

(The only problem is that the Knight's Inn and Sticky Fingers will soon be demolished to build a creek to deal with flooding issues in the area.)

The blowing snow continued the next day, calling for a stop at the Crappy Tiyah in Midland for new wipers.

Heading from the big box wasteland of Midland into downtown, I was floored by the fact they had levels of snow equal to Corner Brook. Here I thought such horrors only existed in Whistler, Lake Tahoe and Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula.

We were in Midland because Donnie wanted to visit the old Canadian Leica camera factory, but he was also happy that I found a nearby lighthouse and we were making a whole day out of things we wanted to see.

This is the Victoria Harbour Rear Range Lighthouse in the village of Victoria Harbour, and I just about fought my way up that snowy hill to count it as my 9th lighthouse visited in Ontario.

This lighthouse was built to guide lumber ships coming in off Georgian Bay and attempting to find themselves in the water between Victoria Harbour and Port McNicoll. It was built in 1910 along with another lighthouse down by the shore, but both were relieved of their duties when a single steel structure was built in 1968. Thankfully the two range lights stayed around into the 1990s, when sadly the front lighthouse was torn down, but the rear lighthouse was donated to Tay Township and renovated as a historic site. Good on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for checking if anyone wanted the back light.

Instead of trudging up that front hill, we found a back street that led to a short unplowed road to the lighthouse. It was still to the point that the cold, knee-deep snow left my feet stinging with a frostbite feeling I'd never felt before, but at least I made it. I was left with doubts that I would have made it up that hill in this cold.

The drive from Midland to Peterborough was over fast-moving rural highways with abandoned gas stations and rolling farmland. Arriving in Peterborough, we scurried over to the Peterborough County Courthouse because I knew there was a ruin garden out back featuring pieces of the old county jail.

Opened in 1842, the Peterborough County Jail operated here until 2001 when an inmate riot damaged the structure and officials decided to close the building early. It was around this time that the conservatives were in the process of closing 20 small city jails and sending everyone to 2 "super jails", so the inmates simply moved things along in Peterborough a bit early.

As with all major sights of a smaller city like Peterborough, the jail was the focus of much local lore and even had a song written about it. The song was Johnston's Hotel, so called because of the jail's governor from 1920 to 1950, one Dalton Johnston.

"On the banks of the Otonabee
There's a nice little spot
There's a boarding house there where you get your meals hot
And across from the Quaker comes a corn flaky smell
To remind you that you're boarding at Johnston's Hotel."

All three of us enjoyed and appreciated the heritage garden featuring an old cell and some of the walls, but it's also close to the least they could do. While it's better than a new subdivision of vinyl siding-clad McMansions, I really hope Windsor does more with their own old jail that they're currently in the midst of sorting out.

After about 10 minutes amongst the ruins in the brisk night, we were already running late and it was time to get over to the Peterborough Memorial Centre. The people who find this place inadequate must be the big wigs who want to sell corporate suites, because the fans were out, the lobby was jammed, and there wasn't an empty seat in the house.

Tonight's matchup featured the Peterborough Petes taking on the Ottawa 67's.

Even though it's easy to find an extremely detailed history of curling rinks in Peterborough, it's not as easy to find the same for hockey rinks. In fact, I almost threw in the towel on research here, but I'm the Google Master and that can't stand.

Instead, I finally found the Peterborough and District Sports Hall of Fame website, which references hockey players playing many of their games at the old Brock Street Arena. This arena was built in 1904 at 181 Brock Street, replacing the old arena that was on Race Street near Brock. This arena would last and double as the social hub of Peterborough as the Brock Street Gardens until 1942, when the city lost all ice services because the arena was sold to an entrepreneur and turned into a dance hall.

(I don't think there's much chance of the 1903 arena surviving today, but the FreshCo grocery store at 181 Brock sure looks like an arena.)

In the meantime, the City of Peterborough had plans for a new memorial gardens, but their inaction wore on local citizens and since the city was taking too long, they instead raised $148,000 themselves to build a new civic centre on Park Street.

The city continued with their plans to build a new rink anyway, and by 1956, the Eb Zeidler-designed Peterborough Memorial Centre was built and the Kitchener Greenshirts moved up to Peterborough to become the TPT's (not named for temporary part time workers in the auto plants, but rather the Toronto-Peterborough Transit Company.

Through all of that Peterborough got one thing right, as the Queen's portrait hangs over the south side wall.

A 2003 renovation worked towards bringing the PMC up to the standard arbitrarily set by the Ontario Hockey League. $13 million dollars bought new luxury boxes, seats and boards; improved the scoreboard and installed air conditioning.

Disregarding those renovations, in 2017 the City of Peterborough paid $157,800 for a study to determine if it was worth it for them to build a new OHL arena. Of course the consultant found that it was worth it, and the chief administrative officer pointed towards the fact that the GM Arena has positively benefited Oshawa's downtown and the K-Rock Centre has done similar things for Kingston's downtown.

And so, now Peterborough is paying the same consulting company $126,500 to assess a variety of sites around Peterborough to build their new $85 million dollar events centre. Reading a news article about the proposed sites, it seems Morrow Park is in the lead, with Market Plaza in a distant second and a host of other sites far behind.

In the meantime, Peterborough spent $3.5-million this year to replace the deteriorated cement floor beneath the ice surface, the boards and the ice-making infrastructure, which will provide the arena with another 10 years of life. This will also give councillors time to select a site and borrow the money for a new arena.

Normally I'm always against replacing arenas, but after talking about arena poutines and exciting Donnie, we couldn't even find a poutine in this fancy carpeted area!

Therefore it's probably best that the town of 81,000 spends $85 million taxpayer dollars on a new rink. The $85 million would be well spent constructing a new rink that features a poutine food truck behind the corner glass, like that Kia at the Barclays Center or the ubiquitous Škoda at every European rink.

Regardless of its poutine deficiencies, I really dug the Peterborough Memorial Centre and a smile grows on my face every time the city has to repair something at the 62-year-old rink, or a snafu derails city councillour plans to construct a new arena as a self-serving legacy. I could have went for attending a less busy game than one during the Christmas rush, but otherwise it was a great time.

In the end, Peterborough eeked out the win 5-4, where Tye Felhaber ended up getting a hat trick and I struggled with the decision of throwing my hat on the ice for the first hat trick I've ever seen in person. The only problem was that it was my cherished Minnesota Timberwolves toque, which Isy was sweet enough to buy 24 Coors Light to acquire after seeing my excitement that the Timberwolves were one of six free team toques at the Cape Breton liquor store.

The funny thing is that I lost said toque a few months later, but at least it wasn't before wearing it in all of the group shots of a future Mississippi trip.

We didn't have much desire to stay in Peterborough following the game, so Donnie took over driving and I lounged in the back (apparently like I always do, haha), sipping and stealing the aux cord to put on Migos and Fabolous, annoying the driver in the process.

We spent the night in Whitby, where I saw some guy get Roadhouse'd and pulled up and slid across the bar by security for the first time ever. Good times.

By morning, it was so cold that we had to sit in the car for 10 minutes, while even the dash was iced over with a layer of frost. It wasn't going to get much warmer today and there would be no biking once I got back to Windsor.