Margaritaville

As I rode my bike home after work today, I came around the corner at Ontario Place, only to be met by a traffic jam of cars, buses, taxis, limousines, and a crowd of people walking. The parking lots were overflowing, and the cars just kept coming in off of Lakeshore Blvd. It took several minutes to navigate through the people and vehicles.

I noticed people had set up tents, tables and chairs throughout the parking lots, and were drinking and barbequeing. These people must have been there for hours, braving the thunder storms and heavy showers. It had stopped raining, but the sky was still dark, the ground wet, and the lake was covered in fog. You could smell the rain, the heat, the humidity, the worms on the ground.

Further around the corner, I could see Lakeshore Blvd. again, and the traffic was backed up for miles. People were sitting in lawn chairs with drinks that looked like pina coladas or margaritas, and I soon found out that they were most likely margaritas. A few drunk guys, bare chested, were calling out to cars driving by on Lakeshore, for the women to bare their breasts. I don't think that they had any takers.

I was definitely curious to find out who was playing at the Amphitheatre this night, so I asked these bare chested drunks. They said "Jimmy Buffett". It all made sense now. People in their 40's and 50's, acting like teenagers, drinking in the parking lot, waiting to see their youth again.

As I rode the rest of the way home, the lakeside park was deserted, because of the threatening rain, and it was nice to be left in solitude. The grass looked refreshed from the rain, and the trees hung low with the weight of the much needed water on their leaves. The fog over the lake left an eerily calm feeling to the backdrop of the rushour traffic just behind me.

DB