The Six Hour Trip

I remember the night before I went to Canada. My family was packing their things for the trip in our duffle bags and my mom came in and said, “Hey, make sure to get your things ready and go to bed very early since the plane takes off at 3am.” We get our things ready and head to bed. I woke up to my mom shaking me and my cousin up. The time was 2:28am…. And it takes about an hour to get to the airport….Sooo, my family ran straight into my dad’s rented SUV and we threw our bags in the trunk and slammed the trunk lid. My cousin and I had to sit In the back, but I had a little bit of trouble getting into the backseat, but I managed. My brothers and sister got to sit in the middle and my mom and dad sat on the top.

During the trip, we started taking breaks for bathrooms and buying snacks since my brother and I started to get a little car sick. Anyway, after a few hours, we got to the gate and the guy in the little cubicle tried to make some small talk with my mom like, “How is your day” and “What are you here for” and stuff like that. After the conversation, my mom said how the guy was very cocky or something like that.

The Hotel

I remember how when we pulled up to the parking lot, I could see an IHOP connected to the building. I was excited that I could have their pancakes.

“Hey dad, can we get some IHOP?

“No, we are registering and I'm going to pay for that.”

After my dad registers, the people on the counter warn us to not put our key cards in the same pocket as our phones, since if we do, it will mess up the cards and it won’t work anymore. I looked at the candy bar section and saw a lot of foreign I've never seen anything before like caramilk, coffee crisp that looked like butterfingers, and a whole bunch of other bars I've never seen before.

My family got up to an elevator and we went to our separate rooms (I got to sleep with my parents). My parents and I went to our room and my mom whispered in my ear, “This hotel has a downstairs arcade and a huge pool. When I heard those words, I went fully ecstatic and I yelled “MOM!, we have to go see what they have downstairs!

“Okay, we can see only the arcade but we can’t go to the pool.” I didn’t really care about the pool. I only cared about the arcade. When we went downstairs to the arcade…. It was very small like a closet room small and there was a door leading to the pool my mom was talking about. There was one of those rigged crane machines, a driving simulator that looked like the game was made when the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was a hit which was like in the early 90s and a machine that sat in the back with a paper that said “OUT OF ORDER!”. The wow factor was that it had Pacman with 2 player mode, which was neat and a very retro western shooter that also had two players. I was honestly pretty disappointed by how small and limited the arcade was, but I still played the games except for the crange game since from my experience it is rigged and will eat your money away. The driving sim was pretty eh, but it did respond well, but there was no audio and it was pixelated so there is that and Pacman was pretty fun, very original and I was glad I was not playing a very botched, very reincarnated version of the game. The shooting game was fun, but it could be longer since it was a demo of a game. After a while of playing, I tried looking through the glass to see the pool, but the path went straight to the door and then turned left so I couldn’t see it. I went out of the room and my mom was waiting outside the door the whole time. We walked back upstairs and my mom told everyone in the other room, “Hey guys. We are going to go outside to take pictures by the lake.” My family and I went outside, took pictures and I noticed a podium near the lake. I read it and it was talking about facts of the lake which was nice and my sister wanted to walk to the city which I am a bit biased because idk why but my feet do not feel well when I walk on land I have never walked on like how during the Disney trip back in 2017 it was just my mom and I but for some reason it too also felt like I was lifting a box bricks so I complained about my feet hurting but I didn’t say anything so we start walking. After a while of walking to the city my feet started throbbing from the pain but I managed to hold it in and walked a few more miles to a sight I wish I could go back to.

A Glorious Sight To Be Seen

My jaw dropped to the ground when I saw the place of a teenager's dream. There was a place called Boston Pizza, that had a huge modern arcade, a humongous ferris wheel that had a scenery of the Niagara falls (Canadian side), they had a raceway track that had go karts that looked like it was designed to look like a Formula 1 race car. The pain felt numb as adrenaline kicked in. My brothers were amazed by how cool this looked and I pointed to the raceway and my cousin who is into cars flipped out and was so excited to try out the go karts he was like, “YO, WE HAVE TO GO TO THE RACEWAY! My dad took my brothers, my cousin and I to the line but it was packed which i was a little sad so we went back and into Boston Pizza and OH MY GOD was the food SO GOOD!

Anyway, as my dad ordered he gave my brothers money, he gave me a little extra and said, “You get extra my birthday boy! I went to the register to get my tokens and I went to all the games, racing games, shooting games, puzzles and platforming and the coolest one being Pacman, but the screen was powered by tiny lights and not a screen. I remember when we were done and we were finished with our pizza and wings (by the way: they are the bomb, very spicy, very nice) we headed to the raceway to see that the line was reduced so we put the gear on and headed toward the karts. When it was our turn we sat on your seats but me being tall had a bit of trouble but when I got settled it was amazing. The steering wheel was very stiff at the beginning but loosened up when I’m accelerating. The karts were very fast and sounded like the karts you hear from Mario Kart games, this kart had some serious quick turns and it was always so exciting to go through turns. But when it finished I finished from what I can remember about 5th place with my middle brother (4th) my cousin (6th). After we were done we headed toward the ferris wheel and waited for the line to get shorter and then I had to go to the bathroom.

I told my middle brother, “Hey, I'm going to the bathroom. Can you tell mom and dad that I'm in the bathroom and to wait for me?” That is all I asked. So I finished headed outside and everyone was gone. I looked around but found no one. Then I heard yelling, “ADANI!, ADANI! I turned to see my parents were yelling at me to go in the line as they were ALMOST BOARDING! I scooted myself across the line and banged my head on a metal pole in the process. I asked my parents why they didn’t wait for me because MY BROTHER DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO TELL MY PARENTS WHERE I WAS! I was mad and when we boarded I was still a little salty, but what made me more happy was when they sang me happy birthday and I could see Niagara Falls with a purple hue, going across the waterfall.