Isy and I needed to be in Ottawa for her cousin's wedding, so I jumped at the chance to go a week early so I could spend some time around Windsor.

As the Toronto to Windsor flights were too pricey for my tastes, I instead flew to Toronto and booked the 1am-5am Greyhound bus to Windsor. With a few hours to kill in between, I finally managed to connect with Monaghan for the first time in 5 of 6 years, where he told me to meet him at "this pub I'll love. they sell Labatt 50 in quarts."

I guess he didn't forget who I was in those years, lol.

The Imperial wasn't just oversized bottles of Labatt 50. It was a lot of wood grain and coloured glass, amongst a bar with carpeted floors at the ground level, a lounge/library on the second floor, and a rooftop patio.

This wasn't just a good dive for Toronto, it was a good dive period.

I rarely put any effort into finding cool shit in Toronto, especially downtown. I figure there must be neighbourhoods with old dives, classic diners and dated architecture, but not downtown at Yonge and Dundas Square where the glass, flashing lights, and advertising feels like something out of Blade Runner.

I have no idea how a developer hasn't come along and made The Imperial an offer they can't refuse.

Monaghan and I reconnected like it was nothing, leaving me with the realization that I need to have more Toronto layovers in the future.

One of the things Monaghan was focused on was how I was going to have a cushy ride to Windsor on the bus tonight, as he was sure that there were extremely few people getting on a Thursday 1 a.m. bus to Windsor. I disagreed, since the only empty Greyhound I've ever been on was a Detroit to Chicago run, and that's out of riding Greyhound 7 or 8 times now.

Anyway, saying our goodbyes, I walked over to the station at 610 Bay Street and discovered that I needed to hurry into line as there were already about 20 people standing there waiting for the same bus as me. In the end there were 31 people who got on the bus, so I texted Monaghan, "I won. There are 31 people on the bus, not 5 like you predicted!"

He texted back with his usual snark, "yep, you sure are winning. Enjoy that bus ride!"

I'd meet up with Donnie & Steve my first night back in Windsor, heading to this cul-de-sac on Drouillard where there used to be a DIY skatespot. The concreted jersey barrier was featured in a lot of a Instagram videos lately and it really was a smart spot to build a DIY - an obscure and rarely visited dead end where there's an empty lot from a long gone building, where almost no one would go up there except to turn around for the auto shop.

Except it's still a city road though, so of course someone (the city?) recently came and destroyed the homemade transition. Regardless, the same things that made this a great spot for a few makeshift ramps, also make it a great spot to post up and bullshit into the night.

If you're wondering why Steve is wearing lime green, it's because he was damn excited about the t-shirt he found at a second-hand store in Leamington, haha.

It was a somewhat short night, but we still found time to hit up a few drinking establishments and wander upstairs where we shouldn't have been.

The bartender was up real quick to throw us out, lol.

The next day my old high school friends were having an afternoon BBQ/potluck, so I borrowed Don's car to deal with the whole responsibility of a potluck.

Instead of preparing food myself, I headed over to Detroit and grabbed a Crave Case, which went over extremely well when I arrived with a briefcase containing 30 White Castle sliders. I also grabbed some White Claws because I kept hearing about them on Twitter, but this was so long ago that no one at the party even knew what White Claws were yet. (I can't say I've drank many more Claws after this initial tasting. As someone who enjoys Hoegaarden and 211, White Claws are just a little bland for my taste.)

Anyway, it was fantastic that Warriner & Ingram happened to be home the week that I was home, allowing us to get almost the whole group back together on Lesperance Road. Warriner's kid climbed all over me, Aaron showed up hilariously full cut after a sunny golf tournament, plus whenever I went inside the house there was a cat to hang out with!

The next day I headed over to Detroit to hang with Nailhed. He asked if there was anything I wanted to see and having done zero research and made zero plans, I shrugged.

It's here that I almost wondered if Nailhed was trying to teach me a lesson about pulling my own research weight when he then said, "okay, I know about this shelter we can check out on Belle Isle."

An abandoned park pavilion? Really?

Of course with this being Detroit, the shelter wasn't going to be a simple, mundane shelter like you'd find attending some community beer fest in small town Ontario. I can personally attest that the old shelter at the Belle River Marina didn't have decorative pillars or archways.

This shelter is known as the Newsboy Shelter, because of the nearby statue gifted to the city by Detroit News founder James E. Scripps, recognizing the orphans who worked to deliver his newspapers in the streets.

Nailhed's writeup about this day, which I'm lifting all of this information from, surmises that this shelter was built sometime in the 1880s or 1890s.

It wasn't the most captivating or breathtaking ruin, but it was still pretty cool. I've spent a lot of time looking at old photos where people are in parks with elaborate park buildings, so I enjoyed being able to check one out that's still around.

The Newsboy Shelter gave me enough time to think about where to head next and I came up with this old structure on 17th Street. It wasn't much, but in a city where they've put a real effort into obliterating all graffiti, it was nice to wander into this building that's been here forever and still have some old paint.

The building's interior provided zero clues as to what it originally was, but it wasn't hard to see that it was a hodge-podge of buildings and additions built at various stages.

Nailhed says that the 1897 Sanborn map shows structures here from 1884, labelled as "Bailee Bros. Coal & Wood Yard"; while the 1921 map shows a much more important Detroit tie-in as the property had been swallowed up by the David Stott Flour Mill. While Stott owned other mills and real estate, this mill would have contributed to his wealth and ability to build the 38-story David Stott Building in downtown Detroit at a cost of $3.5-million.

Anyway, after this building on 17th Street, Nailhed and I tried to check out the new rooftop bar at the Metropolitan Building, but they were at capacity. He then needed to head off to a card game, leaving me to walk down to Jefferson Ave to catch the tunnel bus back home.

The next morning it was time to catch the 5:30am train out of Windsor. Trying to get some work done along the way, I loved leaving at dawn and watching the dewey grass of Kent County glow as the sun came up on the day.

By 9:30, I hopped off at the Aldershot station and there was Clarkman, right on time and ready to take off for some Cleveland baseball!

That's right, along with that time Clarkman met up with me in Detroit for a Thursday Tigers game because he'll drive Barrie->Detroit like I would, he also thinks Barrie->Cleveland is an acceptable 1-day trip. Therefore I'd checked in once again to see if he wanted to go on a mid-week road trip and here we were.

Man was this trip home checking off visits with a lot of good people.

I thought about getting Clarkman to stop at League Park or that abandoned observatory in East Cleveland or the Barcelona NY lighthouse along the way, but after leaving at 7:30 this morning for a 5.5-hour drive plus a border crossing, I figured he wanted to get to Cleveland and park the car.

Even if we weren't stopping anywhere else, I was excited because this was only my fifth time in Cleveland and the four previous trips only included downtown, some Big Boy on the edge of town, and a trip to an abandoned hospital where we went straight to the hospital and straight out of town.

Tonight we'd be staying in a different part of Cleveland as I found a hostel just west of downtown in the Ohio City district. The only worry was a few reviews concerning car breakins, but I asked the check-in guy and he knew exactly the review and the person I was talking about, as the guy was apparently moving across the county and left his television, laptop and other valubles all in view in his jam-packed car, parked in what was a sketchy lot five years prior to us arriving today.

Yeah okay, lol. The conceirge guy put us at ease that this wasn't some hotel plagued by smash and grabs.

The front desk put us in a room with a half-dozen bunk beds, but said it was all ours.

This was the view out of the back window. I was very pleased to find myself here.

Down the street, we stumbled upon the Great Lakes Brewing Company, which is a pretty big brewery to simply discover without realizing it was there in prior research.

The only problem was that I should have been consuming the Lighthouse Blonde with its "navigable malt finish"; except it was sold out.

Although, as someone who references "the gales of November" and "Whitefish Bay" so much that I've been sent bottles of the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, I suppose I was meant to have the porter as well.

Staying in Ohio City, we walked over the Hope Memorial Bridge en route to Progressive Field. This was a great way of approaching the ballpark as the Cleveland Indians would change their name to the Cleveland Guardians at the end of 2021 - the new name referencing the eight Henry Hering sculptures on this bridge that serve as Guardians of Traffic.

While everyone was criticizing the Guardians name at face value, it was neat that because we walked this bridge, I knew what the name referenced.

It had been a long time - 11 years - since I'd been to the ballpark in Cleveland, which was known as Jacobs Field at the time.

It was actually with Clarkman that I was here 11 years ago, but he had been here a few times without me in the meantime.

Cleveland was taking on Houston this night and didn't fare too well. The Astros took the game by a score of 7-1, with us missing George Springer's leadoff homer as we were still in the concourse - which was sort of annoying as I have him in fantasy.

I just wanted to be in my seat to savour the moment!

Anyway, I know they say no one cares about your fantasy team, but Springer ended up with 3 runs, that dinger, plus 3 walks. My opponent French Lick couldn't have been amused.

After the game, with tomorrow's early morning drive in mind, I still convinced Clarkman to give me one shot at stopping at some sweet dive near our hostel.

Spotting the outside of "ABC the Tavern", I liked our chances and inside we found a relaxed atmosphere, a strange interior brick wall, beer choices like Stroh's and Carling, plus it was dark and had those sickly yellow glowing lights behing the booze.

It was a little bit fancier than a dive, but it was a good Cleveland bar. I would like to visit again in the future.

Following ABC the Tavern, it was even easier to bring up that we should probably finish off the Yuenglings we purchased earlier by heading up to the hostel's rooftop deck.

It was getting late by this point, but holy hell, sitting on a rooftop with no one else but one or more of your good friends, in the midst of a great midwestern city? Aw man, that's the good shit.

The next morning Clarkman dropped me back off at Aldershot, where I rushed onto a local Go Train, then caught my VIA train up to Ottawa from downtown Toronto.

This great week would continue as I arrived in Ottawa to find out that Isy's father had been roped into (and saved me from) going to the mall with her while she waffled about which dress to buy for her cousin's wedding. Score!

As for the wedding, I was excited because it was at a golf club, but this one group hogged the putting green the entire time. Away from that, there was a donut bar, a horrifying moment where they just suddenly played Bruno Mars and everyone was supposed to rush the dance floor (and having just come from the washroom I couldn't excuse myself again); plus I played cornhole with a Francophone old-timer who didn't realize how little French I knew. And oh yeah, my suit that I bought for my cousin's wedding 17 years prior was horribly out of date and fit terribly, haha.

Anyway, we left the wedding quite early and were flying back to Newfoundland before we knew it.