[Previous entry: "Toronto, ON and Niagara Falls -- Again!"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Sight & Sound's "Noah""]

08/22/2004 Archived Entry: "The Longest Day"

Two trips to Toronto in two weeks weren't quite enough ... so I made a third trip to Toronto in three weeks! This time it was "just" an airport run. I was aiming to be at the Toronto International Airport by 6 AM Friday, August 13. The group I was taking was to be picked up two hours away in south-central PA, making the trip too long to do one-way by myself, so I left early Thursday morning with a company van bound for Corning, NY. I got a hotel there by about 2 PM and went to bed to make sure I was well rested for a midnight start. Another driver did the pickup and brought the motorcoach to me at Corning, and arrived exactly at midnight, where I'd had more than the necessary 8 hours off and was raring to go.

So we left Corning at midnight and arrived at the Queenston-Lewiston bridge to cross into Canada at about 3 AM, where we ran into a slight problem. I had 14 international passengers -- none residents of either Canada or US -- which means they needed to have passports stamped and paperwork reviewed (most were staying in Canada a year or more). But the immigration office closes during the night at that bridge, and they turned us away, saying we had to cross at the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls, where the immigration office was open all night. So they gave me a piece of paper that I thought would be a free pass back through US customs so we could get to the Rainbow Bridge -- but US Customs didn't take it that way, and it took us 30 minutes to satisfy them that we hadn't left the country and that everyone was legal. Then off to the Rainbow Bridge, where we apparently woke up a grumpy Canadian Customs officer, who wasn't happy to see us at that hour, but reluctantly processed everyone over the next hour and a half anyway. By 5 AM we were finally able to cross the border, and arrived at the airport about 6:30 AM, just in time for a 7:30 AM flight for one of the passengers (others were later in the day).

I headed back home until I ran out of hours at Bath, NY, where I got a hotel and slept 8 hours, then hit the road again. I ended up with 683 miles in the 24 hour period on Friday, my personal record -- all done legally, of course -- my longest day since I've been driving.