Day 1 - Western, Conestoga, Waterloo, Guelph

Hello friends! Today was the first official day of my road trip, and it was an adventure to say the least! I got up this morning and packed the car, and then waited around for my road trip patches to arrive. When I opened up the package, I was very happy with how they turned out. Seeing the patches made me realize that "Damn, this is actually happening...", and I was very excited. 

I left Windsor at about 11:30 am, and started making my way to London to visit my friend Elaine Cook at Western University. She took me around the Engineering buildings at Western, even showing me the new building that was expected to be done by end of May. It was purple and white, which is very suitable given Western's colour scheme. I got to see their Undergraduate Engineering Society (UES) Lounge, and a bunch of the murals that were painted around their buildings, which was pretty cool. I've noticed that on almost every campus I've seen so far (other than Waterloo), they have random pieces of art distributed throughout their campus, so I took some pictures with them as they came up. While walking through the Western Campus in my coveralls, I felt like I had infiltrated their campus, and when looking at the photos I took, it was very evident that I was an outsider. It was hilarious. The best part was when we visited The Spoke (Western's campus pub) as that is the home of Rick McGee, a fantastic guitar player and singer that has been visiting The Spoke every Wednesday since the 70's. While he obviously wasn't there when we stopped by, it was great to see where one of Western's biggest traditions takes place. We took a quite walk through the Ivey Business Building on the way to my car, and it's such a beautiful building, and it's very evident that this was not built for engineering students (we don't deserve nice things).

After leaving Western, I went to Conestoga College to visit my friend Ferencz Dominguez. He showed me their main Engineering building, and the facilities they have are amazing. Given that they have a very small Engineering program, they are able to have work spaces dedicated to each program. I got the see their Engineering Society (CES) office, which was very cozy to say the least. 

The next part of my trip was actually kind of embarrassing. I was driving from Conestoga to Waterloo, and I actually got lost driving back to my own school. I added an extra half hour onto my trip because I took the wrong turn and got on the highway going away from Waterloo. I didn't bother turning my GPS on because I was like "I know how to get to Waterloo, I've been here for over 4 years, why waste data?"... mistakes were made. When I finally got to Waterloo, I met up with some of my closest friends, and decided that since I was here, I might was well take pictures of places I don't have pictures of. I ended up taking 2 pictures; one next to the Engineering Teaching Sculpture next to E2, and the giant campus sign next to South Campus Hall. I also met up with one of my favourite Faculty Members, Mary Robinson, who graciously gave me a "goodie bag" for my trip, which included a bag full of chocolates, $100 Tim Horton's Gift Card, and $100 Petro Canada Gift Card, which honestly left me speechless. She is fantastic to say the least.

To continue on with the wide day that I was having, I then drove down to the University of Guelph. While walking down the street in my covies, I got a bunch of cars honking at me to show their support, and a lot of people waving and smiling when they see me, which was actually quite nice. I walked around and took some pictures with the random pieces of art on campus, and actually managed to take a picture with the Guelph Cannon (their school mascot), due to time constraints, I didn't get a chance to see too much of their campus, but what I saw of it was great. They have a lot of green space, and they even have a sign for a "horse crossing" (because Guelph I guess).

I had originally planned to go to McMaster today as well, but decided to call it a day and went out to dinner with my friend Marko Maric in Downtown Hamilton. We then walked to Ryan Lambert's Place, who was gracious enough to let me crash on his couch for the night. I will be visiting McMaster Campus tomorrow morning before I hit the GTA schools later in the day.

One thing I continued throughout the day is taking pictures with the school's logos, and filming a video of me tapping my ring on them. Hopefully by the end I'll be able to compile all of them together into one video. And thus ends one hell of a first day, with many more to come.

 Western: www.instagram.com/p/BiOHwXTlU_3
Conestoga+Waterloo: www.instagram.com/p/BiOIO2kF3Qp
Guelph: www.instagram.com/p/BiOJMv2lWfs

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