This past weekend I tried to be young again. I opted to do an “all-nighter” by staying up all night and driving in and around the downtown core seeing if I could take any nice photos. I actually thought I would be fine doing this. In particular, I was interested in getting some empty streetscape scenes as those scenes are always rather interesting to look at.
Seeing as this weekend was also the first weekend of the Toronto International Film Festival, I thought I would maybe even be able to see a few things that you normally wouldn’t see on a given night. And to make things even more interesting, the Gardiner Expressway was closed off for the night, which I thought would add a nice touch to getting some more interesting photos.
So I leave my home around 10pm on a Saturday night and pick up my friend who was also crazy enough to accompany me on this venture. We were coming from the west so we made some stops along the waterfront.
Things were going well, even at 3 in the morning. But it wasn’t until about 4-4:30 that the tiredness started to kick in. Fortunately, right around that time, we stopped by a Tim Horton’s and grabbed some coffee, which surprisingly kept me awake for a good while. Coffee usually doesn’t have much of an effect on me so I was rather surprised that I was up and about with energy during that time.
It was about 5am when I pulled out of the Esso parking lot and made a left turn at the intersection. I was happily driving along when I see up ahead of me a police officer waving me to stop on the side. What’s this? I know I didn’t do anything wrong so I was curious as to what the officer was going to say.
Officer: “Do you realize it’s illegal to make a U-turn at that intersection?”
Me: “Oh. Ok. But I didn’t make a U-turn at that intersection.”
Officer: “You didn’t? I could have sworn you made a U-turn at that intersection.”
Me: “No, I just came out of that Esso station and made a left turn at that intersection.”
Officer: “Oh. Ok then. Can I still see your license, registration and insurance card then. If I see all of those, then I won’t write you a ticket.”
Me: “Ok, hold on.”
I knew the latter two were somewhere in my glove compartment so I looked. All I found were expired insurance cards… some dating back to 1999! Wow, I thought. I never knew I kept it from back then. I scrounged around and found my registration; a sigh of relief there. Then after looking for some time, I almost though to myself, “did I ever get an updated insurance card?”
By that time the officer went back to his cruiser and he had told me to come show him my card when I found it. I took one last look in the glove compartment, taking apart everything I had in there. And finally, hanging loose by itself I saw a folded paper which was the perfect size for an insurance card. I opened it up and I was filled with glee as I saw that pink coloured paper with an un-expired date on it. Yes! Now he’ll have to work a little more to issue another ticket for the night.
I knew at that point that all this officer was trying to do was stop any car that came by that road, and check to see if we all had our required documents. There were 2 cars in front of me, each trying to find the same pieces of paper. It was ridiculous I tell you.
Although as ridiculous as this was, I couldn’t get angry at him. I couldn’t even be bothered with him actually, because the first time I looked at him and he looked at me and spoke those words, I laughed in my head.
This guy was a spitting image of Daman Wayans doing one of his many impressions! The officer was dark, tall, and bald. And the way he spoke was quite slow, and extremely comical as he had some sort of humurous tone to his voice. It almost seemed like he was acting to be a police officer and I was been filmed in one of those candid camera shows.
I couldn’t really take him seriously and because of that, him stopping me didn’t bother me as much as it would have otherwise. Afterall, he did waste a precious 20 minutes of my photo taking opportunity!
And those minutes were precious since at about 5:30ish, the first sign of rain came down on us. And from then, it never stopped. It was a little disappointing though since the rain meant we would no longer see a nice sunrise. It kept raining to the point where we couldn’t get out of the car and take any more photos. So that’s where our adventure ended.
I stuck around downtown, went to Fran’s Diner at around 7am, ate a hearty breakfast, and then made my way home. I didn’t know it but I was so very tired, even after I took a shower at around 11:30am. I slept from 12-4 and told myself I can’t sleep any more, otherwise I won’t be able to sleep later that night.
So all-in-all, I had a pretty good time that night, taking photos, being stopped by the police, and driving aimlessly around town.
And to think, Nuite Blanche is coming up on September 29th. I guess you could say this was just a practice session for that night!
