Toronto, record hunting……

Flight was good, watched a few TV shows on my laptop and fell asleep for an hour, by the time i woke up there was 30 minutes to landing.

My friend Bob had arranged for his friend Andy to pick me up from the airport but first i got  a second questioning at Canadian Immigration and also got pulled over at customs to open my bag, they were all very polite and i have to say nowhere near as stern as US custom!

Just as i walked out of the airport Andy arrived and drove me over to Bobs house where I'm staying for the next couple of nights. I dropped my bags and headed downtown into Toronto on the subway, took this picture for Lauren as i was on my way, i know there's nothing more she likes than a good drug store, lol :)

 

Laurens dad Mike has been building his collection of vinyl singles for a while and is planning on getting a jukebox for them all soon. He’d given me a list of singles he’d seen at a record store in Toronto that I'd found online and told him about. There were about a dozen singles on the list and i figured I'd just call in, pick them out and mail them back home to him. What i didn't figure on was seeing the best part of 35, 000 singles!!! Rock, Pop, Country, soul, anything and everything you could think of! 

 

I had a word with the guy in the store and asked him if i could leave him the list and come back in half an hour to pick them up, if only it was that easy! he told me where to look and to let him know if there were any i couldn't find, after 25 minutes of searching through boxes id found three! He said not to worry and took me to an upstairs room that had about twice the amount again as downstairs!!

I counted 32 of these racks all full of singles!

Another hour upstairs  and id managed to find them all with the exception of four, actually they didn't have them as i did find the correct section and band label for where they should be but they just didn't have them. After all the above when it came to looking for the single i want to put on the jukebox they didn't have it!

I took the subway back to Bobs and packaged the records to mail back to the UK, am just sat here waiting for Bob to come home after work, then  just chilling out for a couple of hours before meeting up with Jens, Philippe, Gail, Joe, Suzanne and 20 other friends for a meal out in Greek town tonight

Day 1

5:30am, Laurens dad Mike picked me up at home, i loaded my case into the car,  said goodbye to Lauren and we started the drive to Heathrow. The second we set off a track from Rocky Erikson comes over the stereo in Mikes car and we both here the lyrics “ oh my darling im sorry im leaving you" or something simlar to that. We both bursted out laughing, i thought Mike had queued up the track as a laugh but he hadn't!,  as i looked out of the window i saw Lauren standing in the doorway in her pink dressing gown waving goodbye! awww
Arrived at Heathrow around 5:45 and by 6am i was checked in, bags dropped, exit row seat secured and i was in the lounge eating breakfast!  two little cheese and a few crackers
Heathrow terminal 3, the first of many airports I'm gonna be going through in the next 3 months!