A Very Asian Vacation

I have returned. From a short vacation. With Dan. And Dan's parents. It was fairly fun, and definitely Very Asian.

We left early Sunday morning, not at 5:45 AM. The original plan was to leave at 5:45 AM, and no matter how much Dan bargained, he couldn't get his parents to push up the time a little. I wasn't too scared, though, and I was right, because...

"No, Bei-bei! We must leave 5:45, no later, there will be traffic!"

 turned into...

"OK, are you and Grace ready for trip? We must leave no later than 6:30 AM! There is often line at US-Canada border."

turned into...

"Daniel, are you packed and clean? It is now 6:40 AM. We are coming in now."

So when all was said and done, we left a little past 7:00 AM.

Dan's parents had rented a car for the trip over. It was a nice, new car that drove smoothly, nothing like my Civic, which sounds like it's falling apart if you drive over 65 MPH. However, my Civic still has a better sound system. Dan and I had fun not being bumped and tossed around in the back seat.

If only we had known the terror that awaited

We drove ponderously along for a while, got breakfast at a Sheetz outside of Scranton, and looked at the never-ending forest outside the window. It was semi-fun.

Anyway, one thing that you need to know about Grace that you don't actually want to know: Grace has a long-standing codependent relationship with the potty. Dan and his parents know that all trips with Grace involve multiple trips to stop and use the potty, and the stops are not optional.

After we got into New York, we made a pit stop at a roadside waystation so that Grace could visit her friend the potty. Unfortunately, eight out of the nine toilets had flooded. I had the option of waiting in line to use the unsullied ninth toilet, but why wait? We headed off into the horizon once again.

Dan's dad pulled off at the next exit and headed for a Friendly's. I was a little confused. Unlike a fast food joint where the teenagers don't give a poo what you do, you can't really nicely use the potty in a Friendly's without buying something. I brought it up, but Dan's dad said don't worry, he would buy some ice cream so I could use the Friendly's bathroom.

Ice cream? It was 10:30 AM!

So when I had chatted up with my friend the potty and we had pulled off back onto the highway, Dan's dad was sitting there in the back seat with not one, not two, but three pints of ice cream. At 10:30 AM. Apparently he thought that we would all want some Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip ice cream. At 10:30 AM. We all declined, even Dan, who is still recovering from being fat and occasionally has relapses of fat kid syndrome. Dan's dad said it was quite alright that we didn't want his ice cream, he would be all too happy to eat the ice cream himself. And then he finished all three pints in the next hour.

Anyway, we wandered along. We stopped at the flagship Wegmans in Rochester. They had a wine dispenser and a food court and numerous PGA officials roaming around, but aside from that, it was a lot like the Easton Wegmans. We had a bite to eat (and yes, Dan's dad had a full lunch) and set off again.

I don't want you to feel the pain that we felt during the long slog over sitting in traffic for 90 minutes, so I'll skip ahead to when we actually got to Canada. Our first stop was Niagara Falls. We checked into the hotel and were all set to go down to the Falls, when...

...we noticed Dan's parents were in their pajamas and watching TV.

We asked if they were going down to the falls with us.

"No, no!" said the both of them, in unison, as if it had been creepily planned. "We have been there before. You go and enjoy. We will be here if you need us."

Crud.

We've accompanied Dan's parents on enough vacations and day trips now that we should have known this was going to happen. For some reason, Dan's parents seem to think that going on "vacation" with them means that they drive, pay, feed us dinner... and then hang back and sit in the car while we actually do the fun things. They seem to believe that having them not there means that we can have much more fun. They don't seem to realize, even though we've told them before, that vacation is much more fun when they do accompany us. It must be an Asian thing.

Thus abandoned, we tried to have fun by ourselves. We went to the Falls first.

Most of our pictures were actually this pretty.

We went to Johnny Rocket's for dinner.

Awesome malt shakes not pictured.

Then we went back to the hotel, had a drink, and went to bed.

The next day we went to Toronto. This was the stated reason for the trip. Dan's dad was attending a statistics conference in Toronto... which he attended for about four hours. Sigh. Once we checked into our Toronto hotel, the same pattern unfortunately repeated itself. Dan's mom turned on the TV and told us to go have fun. We were sad. Life went on.

So we went to eat Japanese food.

Ground chicken, egg, and rice bowl with spices. Yum.

We wandered around Toronto and went into a Loblaws, which is like a Canadian Wegmans just more hipster. We also went to a Bulk Barn, which sells stuff... in bulk. It was actually really fascinating. Where else can you find psyllium husks by the pound?

For dinner we went to a fancy Chinese restaurant to meet up with Dan's dad's one-time graduate student and his family. The dinner had about ten courses and was all very Chinese. Including that stupid bone-in chicken dish that's served at every Chinese banquet... which I hate but everyone tries to make me eat since I can't eat shellfish. Sigh.

We went back to the hotel. I yelled at Dan some more and fell asleep through the power of pure anger.

We left the next morning. It was a terrifying ten-hour slog back home and wasn't much fun at all. I amused myself by rereading Empire of the Summer Moon. Seriously, what better way to make yourself feel more comfortable than to read about 18th century Comanche torture practices? 

The one light of the ride home was when Dan was taking local roads in rural New York. We were driving behind a big truck. Dan's dad, who is the ultimate backseat driver, gave Dan the following instructions.

1. I know the speed here is 55, but go down to 45.

2. If you go down to 45, you will put some space between you and the truck.

3. There is no need to go anywhere near the truck.

4. You shouldn't go near the truck because trucks give off exhaust fumes.

5. And even if you take these precautions, some exhaust fumes might come over to our car.

6. So you should close the outside air vent in case exhaust fumes get in our car.

Nobody could argue with that logic, but at least Dan and I could laugh internally.

We finally got home about 8 PM on Tuesday night. It was a long, exhausting, Very Asian Vacation. Unfortunately, now I need another vacation to recover from my vacation. And I need it now.