#127 Intermission: Toronto

Transcript

Hey there, welcome to the Roaming Holiday Podcast. This is an intermission. So we just wrapped up Busan next episode. It's on the way to the Busan Airport and then flying to Jeju Island. And I feel like this is an approximate halfway point. But yeah, coming up on this podcast, we got Jeju Island, which I thought I was just going to visit and then return to the mainland, but small spoiler. So, uh, Jeju was so great. I ended up staying there for the entirety of my South Korea visa. Then after that, I'm going to go to Taipei and Taipei by the end of that day. As like, man, this is one of my favorite cities in the whole world. I love this city so much. And then after that, a grand return to Japan and that one is fucking excellent because I pulled off my plan, you know, where I from Yokohama had started going down the coast, a little farther and a little farther and I only made it to Atami. But I was like, how far can you go? Can you just keep going? Well, man, I fucking keep going. On my second visit, it is nuts. I visit so many different cities and go so many different places. It's going to be great.

So, we're about halfway through this run and I want to just personally thank you, whoever may be listening to this episode. Thank you times one million for listening to this show. Because I know this is a lot to ask. I mean, this is a lot of episodes. It's nuts. It frankly doesn't make sense. It does not make sense to chronicle travel to this level of granularity. But what I kind of hope to it happen is slowly happening that people are finding specific parts of the podcast, like I heard from someone the other day who found me through the Fukuoka episodes, because Fukuoka is his favorite city and he's planning to move to Fukuoka. And we had a little chitchat about Fukuoka and I was like, cool, like I hope you can go see the crazy panorama view near Desifu or go to the observation deck at the peninsula north of the city. And just like I hope I hope you can find some stuff that's cool about Fukuoka that maybe is not the most obvious thing, you know. Maybe I can even bring a little extra joy to a city you already love. So, that's kind of what I'm hoping will be, you know, the value of this podcast is that maybe people will find specific places, specific areas. Maybe something about that will be handy.

But to listen to every dang episode, that's crazy and I commend you so much for being one of the few, the brave and the proud that is doing that. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And if you are listening to every episode of this podcast as opposed to just specific areas or specific cities, maybe you're more interested in the overall shape, you know, of a gigantic year and a half long mega trip. So I thought we could do a little intermission right now as we transition from Busan to Jeju because in real time I'm now back in Canada, you know, in real time this trip has completed and I'm back home not all the way back home. I'm from New Brunswick but I've stopped at Toronto to see some of my friends, so I haven't seen since before COVID. So it's been delightful to see people that I haven't seen in five years and when I got back to Toronto there was snow everywhere and that was delightful too. I love snow. So it hasn't been bad getting back. There's been a lot of good.

However, at this point I've been in Toronto a couple months. I'm going to stay here one more month and then head home but I just thought I'd bring this up because I thought this was interesting and not what I would have ever guessed is that the whole trip went pretty well. It went pretty smooth, you know, like who knows what could go wrong. If you knew something was going to go wrong you could avoid it. Calamity happens I didn't know where and I got pretty lucky on this trip. Like off the top of my head so I had food poisoning on the first visit to Japan. That was a little bad.

The unexpected mega pollution in Seoul that was a little bad. I got a comment about that by the way someone from South Korea who was more or less on my wavelength of you know because I was afraid I was being a little bit of a dick in that recent episode where I was at the Busan Citizens Park 5:00 losing my mind about the pollution. But you know I tried to make it clear that it wasn't a criticism of South Korea that I feel bad for South Korea. I feel bad for Seoul. I feel bad for Busan. But just how crazy it is that this is not a more well-known phenomenon or a more well-discussed thing.

And yeah this guy from South Korea told me that apparently it really did calm down a lot during COVID. During COVID the pollution problems were a lot less because the neighboring countries that cause a lot of the pollution were not firing at full power. And his feeling was that that little run of a few years where the pollution wasn't as bad seemed like it kind of gave the government carte blanche to stop talking about it. You know to whatever degree they even were talking about it. And now everything is back to Foxville. But they're still like oh it's fine. No it's not really a problem. We don't have to talk about that anymore. And yeah it's just sad like the guy was like every day I think about it. I think about trying to emigrate somewhere else but it's not easy to do. It's not easy to just move to a different country. But he said that his wish for a pollution-free Korea, he wishes for that more than he even wishes for a unified Korea. You know the pollution, it is the biggest problem and not enough people are talking about it. So that made me feel a little better. About being a little bit of a dick about it is like yeah somebody's got to be a dick about it. You have to bring this up. It has to be talked about. It's crazy. But anyway the pollution was a bit of an issue. And then as far as weird stuff on my trip there is a typhoon coming up.

And there's going to be a typhoon that is going to cause some issues. But ultimately I went on this great big round the globe trip and everything went pretty well. And I just assumed like hiking four or five days a week. Surely that's where something could go wrong, right? I mean I got lost in the mountains multiple times. Who knows maybe I could tumble down the side of a cliff. Who knows what could happen? It seems like that would be the dangerous thing, right? The dangerous version of life sitting around in an Airbnb in Toronto. That's not the dangerous version. I'm back in my home country. I'm just sitting around. This is the easy version of life. And the irony is the worst thing that's happened to me on this whole trip happened to me last week in Toronto because I'm not doing anything. It happened by being sedentary. So I thought I'd bring this up just because it's so fucking weird and so unexpected. And I guess that's what this podcast is for, right? It's the idiosyncratic details. But yeah, getting back to Toronto, it's been great to see people but everybody has lives and jobs and families. And a lot of people I know have moved out of Toronto proper and it's hard to see people. So I've seen everybody once or twice, but most of the time it's just me, just me by myself. And instead of going out and exploring and walking around and hiking all the time, I've just been staying in because I don't know what to say about Toronto. Man, I lived here for years. I had great times here. I love all the people I know here, but it's just the most boring city ever. Like at least in my hometown, Frederickton, New Brunswick, there's like a big river. You can go walk across the walking bridge and then because it's in a riverbed, you can go like walk up the hill to Odell Park and like you can at least go somewhere. Montreal, you can walk all over the place. You know, I did episodes about Montreal. I love Montreal. Vancouver, it's got all kinds of cool nature stuff. Toronto just has actual nothing, just actual nothing. There's nothing to do as far as like going out on a hike and doing natural outdoor stuff. There's nothing to see.

There's just nothing. Where I am right now, it's like a park because there's these huge power lines that cut across the city and they need to just have these power lines cut in through. So they're like, oh well, if we're going to have the power lines, like we'll make some walking paths, I guess.

I guess that's something. And this is it. This is the only area where I can walk where I'm not surrounded by traffic. And like this is it. Even just the city, you know, like walking through Montreal, fun city to walk through. Walking through any city in Asia, you know, just so fun, so dense with 10:00 stuff, so much experience you can have. You can just walk for an hour, walk for two hours, soak it in, absorb it. Toronto, like I just, that just isn't a thing, you know, New York. I mean, I don't like New York, but New York is like entertaining to walk through. Toronto just has nothing. I don't know how else to fucking put it. There's fucking nothing here for my going outside, walk around, soak it in lifestyle. So I didn't. I've just been staying inside and sitting at my fucking desk.

And that's bad for me in general because I have this cyst in one of my fucking near one of my hips where if I sit too long, it starts building up pain. And I have scoliosis. So I get this curve in my back that is worse when I'm sitting and it makes one of my shoulders hurt. But that's what I've been doing for the last two months is just sitting around editing podcasts. And I've been sitting so much. I noticed this the other day. I mean, part of this is like the wintery weather, I guess, in the dry air or whatever. But I actually have like rough spots on my butt on both butt cheeks. There's like little rashes, I guess, that sort of scabbed over a little bit like very light rashes or very light scabbing. Like just rough rough areas on my butt. And I'm like, God damn it, I've been sitting for so long. I have wounds on my butt. But how I realize that is because I can't sit no more.

It just seems so dumb. It just seems so dumb that the worst thing that happened to me on this whole trip is not from a hike, is not from an adventure, is not from anything except sitting. But last week I was just sitting, just sitting at my computer. And then this pain like radiated from my neck. It was like I got shot by a tranquilizer dart or something just like this big radiating pain that was so crazy and so unlike anything I've ever fucking felt that even though I'm just sitting there by myself out loud, I said, what the fuck was that? But then it kind of dissipated and passed. But then I got a migraine like a really bad headache like behind the eye, you know, that type of feeling, which I used to get migraines as a kid, but that's really not an issue now as an adult.

I haven't experienced that in a long time. I don't really think I'm a migraine guy anymore. But I was from that. And I was like, well, that's all right. I'll sleep it off. And I woke up the next day and it was 0% better. It felt exactly the same if not worse. I feel like it's probably similar to like maybe if you have a concussion. Maybe that's how it feels. Like you just wake up and your head is just like, whoa, like something is very fucking wrong. And I started doing research and I don't have the medical name. I don't remember right now, but apparently this is quite a common thing, but I never heard of it. I didn't know this was a thing. If you pull something or injure yourself deep in your neck, there's no nerve endings in there. So the pain has to radiate to somewhere else to let you know that you're hurt. And it often goes to the head. And it's like, I guess stress can cause this a lot, which I'm not totally sure what stress I might be under. I think in my case, it's more just sitting with my 8% tilt in my stupid fucking hips that causes my little curved spine for two months, just sitting every day. Like I always sit with a chair turned to the side. So the back of the chair is on the right. So I can use the back of the chair to prop up my bad shoulder.

Like I'm just not supposed to be sitting. You know, they say sitting's bad for you, sitting's the new smoking. It really is for me. It fucks me up.

And I guess I just overdid it, so I'm quite sure that's really just what it was. I think I just pulled a muscle or tore something or I don't know, something bad happened just for me putting constant strain on my poor neck by sitting all the time. And those first couple of days were a nightmare. It hurts so bad, just as headache that will never go away. And yet that it just doesn't get better, starting to get very scary, very creepy. I wake up on day three and I'm still at full pain and I'm like, what is fucking happening? So as I researched it more and learned about the neck thing, I started massaging my neck, getting a neck roller. And it's just been very slowly getting better. And it does seem clear that that is what it is because whenever I work on the old neck and massage the old neck, it makes the headache go away. It's like a very distinct one-to-one. But it's just getting better at a snail's pace.

Man, it's been a full week now. And I'm still having just real bad ups and downs. It's better, but it's not better. And it's like, motherfucker, how is this a thing? How did going out and picking a random target and hiking up a mountain and doing all this crazy shit? How did none of that cause me a problem? Sitting on my ass in Toronto, fucked me up. Not just the worst thing that happened to me on this trip. One of the worst injuries I've ever had. Just crazy bad. I don't know how long I'm going to be rehabbing this thing, but I feel like it's going to be a long fucking time. So I switched to a little standing desk set up at home and that helps. But what helps the most is walking. Right now, I feel pretty good.

My body is just made to walk, you know, like when I get to Jeju in these upcoming episodes, there's a path on Jeju Island called the Ole Trail that goes all the way around the entire island. And let's just say a certain Canadian motherfucker in bits and pieces may or may not have walked all the way around the whole fucking island. The whole thing. It was awesome. I loved it. I love walking places. Walking is what I do. So that should be great, right? It's like, alright, the thing that makes my neck feel better. The thing that takes the most pressure off my neck is walking, standing helps, sitting is bad, but walking is the best. Walking is the time that I feel the best.

So that should be no problem, right? That's what I do. That's what I want to do in life. That's what I did the whole last year and a half is let's just walk around. Let's explore this city. Let's explore that city. Let's go to this mountain. Let's go to that mountain. Let's walk all over the place.

There should be no easier rehab in the world for me than walking. Except I'm in fucking Toronto. And this is the one place where this feels like an actual hard to do thing. This feels like a job. Instead of like, hey, bonus, you know, going out and walking. That's what I want to do. This is the place where it's like, where am I supposed to go? Where am I supposed to go? Where am I supposed to? I can't just go walking for two hours for three hours because there's nothing there. There's nowhere to go to. Like, what am I supposed to do? I'm lucky that this one area that I'm at right now even exists. If I was in a different part of town, I wouldn't even have this. I would just have streets and traffic everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, all the way to the edges of the city limits in every fucking direction except the lake.

So yeah, sorry that this is a downer episode, but I just wanted to bring this up because what the heck, you know, I mean, there's a lot of times during these travels that something unexpected happens or this isn't what I would have guessed or this seems counterintuitive. But yeah, never would have guessed this. The injury is going to happen when you get back home from inaction. The injury is going to happen from literally doing nothing.

And then the one thing that has been the major part of my life, this whole time, hiking around, the one thing that is now the best way to heal my injury is the one thing that is now hard to do because this place is just so fucking miserable.

Not to mention that. So yeah, it was nice when I first got back to Toronto in the snow everywhere, but the snow has recently melted. And man, oh man, garbage everywhere. Well, even here, just right now at this very moment, let's see what we got here. And this is not, you know, this isn't up in the city. It's way worse up there. This is just like the one random walking path around here.

Let's see what we got. Black garbage bag, big water bottle, twix wrapper, supreme whip max. I'm not sure what that is. Pepsi can Tim Horton's cup. What's this one?

Is this a beer? Anyway, you get the point. I could list off a hundred things just from where I'm standing. Plastic spoon.

It's kind of funny because I noticed that a bit in Japan, like the irony sometimes how there's no garbage cans in Japan and generally no garbage. But then sometimes a garbage can actually creates garbage. Ironically, like if there's no garbage can, people hold on to their garbage. But say there's a, or even just a place to put bottles from a drink machine, but it doesn't get cleared out regularly. That will overflow and people will start to just leave their bottles on the ground next to the garbage can where they wouldn't do that if there was no garbage can at all.

It kind of feels that way here where there's garbage cans everywhere, like all over the place. Tons of them. But once the snow melted, it's like, oh fuck, people have been throwing their garbage in these snow banks all winter. And now the garbage has come home to roost and it's fucking all over the place. There's this one building near where I'm staying where there's such an absurd amount of garbage in this one area that it had to have been that somebody was just tossing garbage out their fucking window during the winter.

And I mean because I'm just staying at a cheap Airbnb, you know, I got a friend who lives down by the lake shore. It's beautiful down there. Everyone's taking care of shit down there. I'm just kind of at the edge of town, row housing everywhere. Just, you know, nobody takes particular ownership of the communal areas. It's just always somebody else's problem. And like I can't, I cannot overemphasize how much garbage is everywhere, everywhere, garbage everywhere.

So anyway, that's a bit of a short little episode, but it is just fucking complaining, right? So that's fine. We can cut that off here. I don't need to go on about it, but I just thought I'd bring that up. Our little midway intermission. Back in Canada, things are going less than amazing. Oh, by the way, if anyone wants to know where I am though, Black Creek Recreational Trail is where I am right now.

The only thing that's like even close to here that is nice, because you have walked as far as I can walk in every direction. It's like, oh great, the Yorkdale Mall and the fucking huge, zillion lane highway. The endless, huge blocks of fucking boring as fuck box stores and just chain places and just like the endless car nightmare of Finch Avenue. And yeah, you know, there's dollops of Toronto, there's bits and pieces, there's random little parks here and there.

There's, you know, stuff by the water, Humber Bay, there's the beaches. There's stuff.

But you just throw a dart at a city in Asia and walk around wherever the dart lands and it'll be fucking cool. It'll be fun. It'll be neat. There'll be tons of cool shit to see. Right now I'm stuck in the land with no cool shit to see. And yeah, it's sustained one of the worst injuries of my life by doing fucking nothing.

Oh, here's some water. This must be the titular Black Creek.

Hey there, Black Creek. How you going?

Here to watch your Black Water flowing. Yeah, Black Creek is the right name for this thing.

But all right, again, thank you for listening. Thank you so much for joining me for these little random episodes. All these, especially this one, the most random of episodes.

Man, though I do feel so much better right now. Walking. I mean, that's a good thing, right? It's still so counterintuitive. Like you'd think when you're hurt, you should stay home. You should stay immobile. You should lie down. But man, lying down fucks me up. I wake up every morning feeling like shit, but I feel great right now. I've got to look at the upside. I've got to look at the positive. If there is anything that I want to do in life to rehab myself or to fix my injury, it's pretty fucking great that walking is the thing. Walking is what makes me feel better.

I should just be happy that that's the case. But yeah, walking around here is not easy. It is not easy. You really have to be dedicated to the very concept of walking to make that shit work in Toronto.

But all right, next episode heading to Jeju. Wonderful Jeju, beautiful Jeju, one of the coolest places that I've ever been. As far as like South Korea goes, I kind of think of Jeju as a somewhat of a different thing. You know, since it's off the mainland and it just has a bit of a different feeling. Because I was thinking like, is it Jeju Island or is it Busan? What's my favorite part of South Korea? I don't know. I don't want to choose. I don't want to pick. I'm going to just think of them as two different places. Busan was fucking awesome and Jeju is fucking awesome. They're both fucking awesome. So join me next episode for the beginning of the Jeju Island adventures, which spiral out into a much, much larger adventure than I expected that they would. Cheers to you, Toronto. Keep being you, whatever, whatever. I'm sure you're doing your best. You have shitball city. All right. Adios.