Scorched Summer: 8/6 Day in Ontario Part 1

I’ve really been dragging my feet in terms of putting this trip into words, because in some respect it felt like a momentous experience despite being compressed into a couple of short days, and making it happen was a culmination of a few goals I had been working toward for what seems like almost a decade. Up to this point, most drifting I had done in the past was fairly close to home, and I drove the car to and from the events, with tools and spares and whatever poor soul was willing to ride along with me all crammed into the RX-7. I’ve driven the 3 hours to and from Panthera several times, and though I’ve trailered the car to a couple events in Canada previously, it was always with a borrowed truck and a rented trailer.

Now, after 7 or 8 years of driving the car to the track and hoping it stays together well enough to get me home, I finally have my own trailer and tow vehicle. A big part of my love for drifting is the opportunity to drive at a variety of locations, and to meet a lot of great people from different communities along the way, and a reliable tow setup is a major leg up in that respect. Not only can you drive the track all day with no worries that a failed fuel pump or broken axle could leave you stranded 100s of miles from home, but your friends are exponentially more willing to come along on the trip if the vehicle they spend half a day riding in has some creature comforts; ie no ringing in your ears after an hour on the interstate, no melting the soles of your shoes because the floor has no insulation to shield from exhaust heat, no driving in the rain with the windows down because in your infinite wisdom you jettisoned the a/c system to save ~ 20 pounds that you can most definitely feel during acceleration.. priorities.

As is my nature regarding any large purchase, I had been feeling guilty about what I had spent on the trailer, and I wasn’t sure whether I’d get enough use out of it to justify the cost. In the spring, I used a fairly local event as a quick test run, and about 5 minutes into the drive home after the event, all that guilt basically fell away. I was able to drive the car hard all day and run the tires down to the cords without concern, I had more room for tools and spares, and at the end of the day, when it was 90 degrees in the sun and I was fully exhausted, I drove home with air conditioning and a stereo I could actually hear. With a successful short trip knocked out, I was keen to travel further and drive somewhere new.

A few years ago, my friend Guillaume from Quebec had encouraged me to come up to Toronto and drive with the guys from Drift Jam, at a kart track called Gamebridge north of the city. That event was a great experience; the track was tight and technical, the community was fun and welcoming (in my experiences driving in Canada this is always the case) and the event just had a joyful vibe, with music blasting in the pits and an announcer on the tower calling out drivers and cars to make it more fun for spectators. It really felt like someone scooped up a jumping house party and dropped it on a race track. Drift Jam had since expanded in terms of tracks available to them, and when I saw that they were doing events at Toronto Motorsports Park, which looked like a fast track with a lot of opportunities to work on exciting entries, I made plans to head for Ontario in August, for their 8/6 day event. Daxton, as ever my perennial wingman, agreed to come along, so the day before the event I ditched work at noon and headed north, where he fell in behind my trailer in his hybrid Lexus. (I still don’t know why he opted to drive separately, but I was glad for the company either way).

At about 300 miles, this would be the furthest trip I had done so far with my truck pulling the car, but once we were north of Pittsburgh the drive became mostly flat ground, and it was fairly easy going all the way to the border. On a whim, I had brought a pair of two-way radios to talk to Daxton during the drive, which would’ve been ideal when we crossed the border as my cell service was non-existent and I could no longer navigate. Unfortunately, I had inadvertently turned on some strobe light on my radio and killed the battery before we made the border. I had to let Daxton lead the way from there, and we communicated via flashing headlights and flailing of limbs.

We got to TMP by early evening, and though there was only one other drift car on site, the place was otherwise bustling with activity. An open lapping session was taking place on the road course, and at this point it became very obvious that Canada doesn’t share the same vigor for litigation that makes doing anything fun in the states such an ordeal. On track, a handful 90’s Civics and cheap track rats were sharing space with a new GT350 and a 911 GT3,(I think that’s what it was, but all the Porsche owners I’ve ever met were trying so desperately hard to purchase a personality that I never learned much about their cars.) and only about half the participants were wearing helmets, while most had friends riding shotgun.

The driver skill levels were as varied as the cars on track, and the difference in speed between the fastest and the slowest was stark, but the track staff seemed unconcerned and there were no major catastrophes, just a bunch of people thoroughly enjoying themselves. Meanwhile, on the drag strip I hadn’t even noticed when we pulled in, monster v8 cars were laying down 9 second passes, fast enough to justify the parachutes deployed after the finish line. Apparently this was just another Friday night in Cayuga.

After staking out a section of the pits where we would camp for the night, Daxton and I backtracked to nearby Dunville in his car to try and find dinner. Dunville was a pretty quiet town, and after striking out a couple times, I was beginning to lose hope that we’d find an open restaurant even though it was not yet 8 o clock. We found luck with a place on the river called Queens Merritt Room and grabbed seats at the bar near some locals. Before we had a chance to order a beer, a bat who had found its way in via holes in the brick walls cruised over our heads in a loop around the room. I thought this was pretty unusual, but the locals barely raised an eyebrow, and the bartender’s solution to our new guest was to just close the pocket doors halfway across the room so that he couldn’t bother the bar patrons. Canadian hospitality is a generosity extended to both man and beast.

For unknown reasons, Daxton has always had a knack for stumbling across interesting people in our travels, and this trip would be no exception. After asking our neighbor at the bar for a beer recommendation, he struck up a conversation, and when the stranger learned that we were American, we made fast friends. He was maybe mid-40s, but had spent his earlier years traveling American southwest. He made a living for several years riding broncos, and chasing rodeos from Texas to Arizona and up to Colorado, sleeping mostly in his truck or when it was too hot, underneath it - a real deal cowboy. We swapped stories of our own travels, and I definitely felt that we were kindred spirits at least in terms of the shared interest in finding out what’s around the next bend in the road. The feeling must have been mutual, because by the time he was finished buying us rounds of Rickard’s Red I was glad it would be Daxton who drove us back to the track.

Somewhere along the way, our new friend (I think his name was Brent but unfortunately between the Rickards and my dreadful aptitude for remembering names I can’t say for sure) left the rodeo circuit, and these days he was making a living cooking barbecue for weddings and special occasions, sometimes cooking for days or weeks ahead of time to serve 100s of people. It sounded like arduous but rewarding work, and up until recently was a joint venture with his wife, whom he had just lost to some illness. He said that lately in his mourning he had been realizing all the thousands of little things that she did every day that he had previously overlooked, and though the grief was written clearly on his face, he seemed also to be instilled with a new wisdom and appreciation that there are few things more valuable than a good woman willing to stand next to you and face the day.

Just as I was feeling a wave of empathy for what must be an insurmountable loss, he dropped a hopeful hint on our bartender about perhaps keeping him company for the evening, so maybe it’s true what they say about one door closing and another opening.. or at least maybe a big part of resilience is being able to look for those fleeting bright spots through the haze and the gloom, and to appreciate a break in the clouds, however brief it might be.

By now I was reluctant to leave, it was new territory to be sharing beers with a cowboy, and at this point some of the staff were really amused that we’d travel to another country and stop in their sleepy town just to drive on a racetrack they’d never bothered to visit. I think Brent (maybe) would’ve kept the drafts coming till the lights came on, but I was already at my limit if I was going to drive worth a damn the next day, so we shook hands and exchanged farewells before heading back to the track. By now, lots of other drivers had arrived and were setting up camp, and while Daxton sorted out his tent I walked around in the dark, checking out cars, talking to drivers and trying to figure out whether I recognized anyone from Gamebridge. I hadn’t brought a tent, and was planning to sleep across the back seat of the truck despite the seat being about a foot shorter than I am. Luckily, there was a nice constant breeze, and between the cool air and the draft beer in my blood stream, I passed out quickly, with a rolled up hoodie as a pillow and my ankles out the window like a hobo cartoon.