A Fat Purple Fig

Our adventure begins at Parc Omega, home to over twenty species of wild animals, near Montebello, Quebec. Team, welcome to The Amazing Race – you are about to race across Canada and the United States of America, for prize money soaring into the negatives. Choose between a car or a steel-reinforced golf buggy, and make your way through the ‘self-drive safari’, where you will face many trials.

We go with the car. It’s our rental, and it’s rutting season, so the males are ‘aggressive and therefore dangerous’, but the metal-caged golf cart is $100 and, worse, it’s conspicuous. We grab a bag of carrots, and follow the self-drive signs into the park.

We’re met by female elk, en masse. It’s an ambush, and rows of wet noses are soon wedging themselves into the half-lowered windows. As fast as we can snap carrots, they are inhaled, their drool smearing across the glass, and running in rivulets onto the armrests

The only way out is to keep driving, slowly but surely, and to focus on making ground when we are free of the pack.

We shrink from the males, fearful of being rammed, and attempt to put distance (or other cars) between them and us. They are quite majestic, bellowing and staring us down, but we photograph them only in our rear-view mirrors…or from a distance.

The appetite for carrots, from what surely must be the best-fed herds of deer in the country, is insatiable. The fallow deer are smaller, but are no less hesitant to swarm us, mouths agape as they beeline the windows. We start throwing carrots from the car and veering around the other vehicles, to hasten our exit.

Lots of deer ✅
Moose ✅
Canadian Geese ✅
Arctic fox ✅

Done, done, and done. We’re soon searching for exit signs, fearful of being trapped, and therefore delayed, by a herd of lazy bison.

My favourite photo? This greedy guts:

From here, drive the five-hour, toll-free journey to the capital of the province of Ontario, Toronto, and make your way to The Rex Hotel Jazz and Blues Bar. There, you will be required to park, and make sense of jazz while facing an additional, unknown challenge.

It is dark by the time we drive into Toronto, searching for the parking garage that is a block away from our digs. The Rex is Toronto’s longest-running jazz club, presenting 14 shows each and every week. The girl behind the front desk is on the phone when we arrive, and treats us like the interruption we are.

‘I’m loving the welcome,’ Kitty whispers, as we drag our cases up two flights of stairs. Our room is capital-b basic, but we happily take a quick look around, reserve our beds and head down for dinner.

Kitty can’t decide what to drink, so orders a Canadian Club. ‘Neat?’ the server asks. Kitty nods, then whispers, ‘Oh, shit, I’ve made a mistake.’ It arrives, and sits, watching us, potently. ‘I just can’t drink straight liquor,‘ she wails.

‘Buy a coke a pour it in,’ I suggest, helpfully, but Kitty’s not having it. Her pride is on the line. I take a sneaky swig in support, then Kitty does the same. We gag and giggle, and try not to get sprung.

We stay for ‘Teri Parker’s “Free Spirits” CD Release Event’. It’s fun seeing the musicians arrive and start setting up their instruments. This is a regular crowd, so it’s a bit like being in someone’s lounge room, as they welcome their guests.

The music doesn’t win me over immediately, but it does weave its way into my admiration. I like the lauding nature of the solos, when the other musicians clap, and look at each other with, ‘wow, how good are they?!’ expressions. I particularly like the drummer, who has this wonderful, lost-in-the-moment vibe as he plays.

‘They all just play different things at the same time,’ Kitty will say, later. Yep, they sure do. But I’ve realised for the first time that it works somehow.

Your next challenge is to spend the day in the thriving metropolis of Toronto, home to the CN Tower, skyscrapers, a castle, a 400-acre park, and almost three million people. Choose one of two options:
1. See every major sight
2. See no sights whatsoever

We hit a shopping centre, where Kitty tries on clothes in H&M. We don’t like asking for assistance, so the hunt for a little knit dress on Kitty’s phone takes an age. At one stage, I’m waiting near the changing room when she texts me to say she is stuck in a top. She’s stuck all right, with both arms pointed upright, and red splotches over her skin. It takes us forever to stop laughing.

After sushi and salmon, in downtown Toronto, we decide we love this city. Kitty says, ‘I could easily live here,’ right when the same thought occurs to me. The shops are as eclectic as the residents; mochi donuts, sneaker stores, Afghan food, cannabis dispensaries.

(Canada smells like pot.)

At siesta-time, we watch Guy Fieri’s Halloween-themed ‘Grocery Games’, then emerge in search of souvenirs and maple syrup, getting lost in a Chinese shopping centre on the way. Later, we take a final commemorative stroll in our favourite city to date, to buy Chick-fil-A for Kitty’s dinner, passing a dance class in an optical store, and passing our remaining Canadian dollars to a guy sitting in a doorway, wrapped in a blanket.

‘God bless you,’ he says, ‘God bless you.’

Your next journey is a lengthy one. You have until 3pm to return your vehicle to Alamo Rent A Car at Federal Circle, Jamaica, near JFK International Airport. Pass by the second-largest waterfall in the world to see the sunrise. Cross the border, avoid tolls, and ensure the vehicle is filled with gas upon delivery. You will face a special challenge in New York of a driving nature. Survive this, and you will have completed this leg of the race. You are currently in first place.

During a discussion about the different sides from which to view Niagara Falls, my colleague at work added, ‘…whatever you do, avoid Tacky Town.‘ And so began the research to work out the perfect place and time to see the falls. The final decision? The Free Viewpoint, on the Canadian side, at sunrise.

Much effort has gone into choosing this specific time and place. The Canadian side reportedly has the better view, but also the ‘Famous Street of Fun by the Falls’. I’m with him; Dinosaur Adventure Golf and the Movieland Wax Museum are pretty low on my list of must-sees, as are shitloads of people. It isn’t possible to avoid the crowds at night either, when the falls are transformed into ‘a kaleidoscopic cascade of color’.

So, here I am, in silent, chilly darkness, parking the car and waking Kitty. We trudge across the Niagara River Parkway via a covered pedestrian walkway, and wander through the near-abandoned Table Rock Centre, to a creepy, echoey Frank Sinatra soundtrack. The mist from the falls billows up into the sky, meaning you can see it long before the falls themselves. The sound rises to meet us early too – a low rumble that crescendos as we approach.

I’m awe-struck by the time we reach the barrier. We are there with a couple of sunrise-chasers, who walk past us, back and forth, with cameras, muttering variations on, ‘It’s going to be a good one this morning!‘ It’s already stunning, in first light.

I take what feels like hundreds of photos, that all look the same. As light fills the sky, it is easier to make out the three distinct waterfalls; the whopper, Horseshoe Falls, which is hard to miss, but also American Falls, and the smallest of the three, Bridal Veil Falls. Kitty has seen enough. ‘You already have some really nice photos,‘ she pleads, thirty minutes short of sunrise.

‘Save your breath,‘ I reply.

Others arrive, as sunrise grows nearer, setting up cameras and, for one, smoking a big joint. As I said, Canada smells like pot. Kitty sees a skunk in the bushes, telling me delightedly when I call her over for a selfie.

See? We were here.

The small crowd that has gathered seems to hold its collective breath as orange burns on the horizon, signalling the sun’s imminent appearance. I tear up a little, when it peeks over, in all its glowing brilliance. Monumental sights can do that; make you (me) feel incredibly small and insignificant (and therefore all your (my) troubles equally small and insignificant). I am awed to be in the presence of something so powerfully-immediate and uncontained.

Hands frozen, we cough up an eye-watering parking fee, and get on the road. I have my best coffee so far, at a Dunkin’ Donuts just over the border, and a Green Goddess wrap, which is damned delicious. Who knew? I thought it would just be cops buying donuts before work. Kitty settles in for eight hours of reading (she sure is a scintillating driving companion when she gets her nose stuck in a book), so I get a podcast going, which keeps me entertained for the duration.

What is to come, after hours of the fall foliage of New York State, will be a truly hair-raising driving ‘adventure’, through urban New York on a Friday afternoon. It begins in New Jersey, then pushes us onto the lower level of the George Washington Bridge, with a thunder of cars above us, and across the Harlem River on the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, to the Bronx, and the Whitestone Bridge, before eventually placing us in a standstill of traffic on the Van Wyck Expressway, where it takes us 45 minutes to travel the final five miles. I start laughing (hysterically?) at one stage, and say, ‘Holy shit! I can’t believe I’m doing this.‘

From there, we will catch the subway, and tuck ourselves up in the basement bedroom of a glorious Boerum Hill brownstone, in Brooklyn. And we will sleep the sleep of the travelled.

The Amazing Race is complete.

(We won.)