SOLO DRIVEN ADVENTURE HUNGRY – EASTERN AMERICAN ANOLOG ADVENTURE CULTURE TOUR – PART 2
A girl, her truck and their adventures © Monaya MaGaurn 2021
TORONTO, Ontario
![11-2-7-21_SARGEANDME_EASTCOASTTOUR_1_SEGEMENT_1_35 Asian Woman in Black Helmet Seated in Austin Healey with Sunglasses, door side. Meet Nhu the worlds only female Porsche classic certified mechanic](https://i0.wp.com/mynameismonaya.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/11-2-7-21_SARGEANDME_EASTCOASTTOUR_1_SEGEMENT_1_35-scaled.jpg?resize=1165%2C874&ssl=1)
Jack Kurac writes about his friends from a perspective of complete adoration. There is a reason Toronto was at the beginning and not the end of the trip. Nhu has the word Juxtapose tattooed on her arm. She resides in the small part of my spirit that has balance. It is constantly moving to adjust – but like water, it flows between family, work, and passion. I have no idea what Nhu sees in me. But I will always look at her as this juxtaposition between light and dark, soft and hard, fast and slow. Always moving with the ability to create the balance needed for each situation.
It was two hours later when Nhu called. She was off work. I told her where I thought I was and that I would firm up an ETA once I got to Barrie. The weather had been great all day – sunny and warm. The sun was going down, and was starting to rain. It made its way to crystalized caramel status. That in-between grainy gross feeling slush. I was procrastinating. Anxiety ridden about the tires, about meeting new people, about having no communication from my phone, about being in a new place. In search of wifi, I stopped at a laundromat. I thought about home and my little laundromat back in Minnesota. How far I was from that, how long it would take to walk there.
Filling up on donuts, coffee, Instagram, hotel reservations, maps, and all things wifi, Sarge and I took off for Toronto. For at least an hour, we traveled dark rural two lanes under construction. Stopping at a light on a wire intersection, I was asking myself my there needed to be a light when I heard it. The sound of a Ferrari Enzo is unforgettable. And yes, it will shake a Landrover Defender 110 when it flies by. A lime green Porche 911 followed it. It was like seeing lightning and hearing thunder. It was a magic introduction to Toronto car culture.
I have to ask myself why people get excited about certain events… Like the super bowl. At the same time, people ask me why I would drive thousands of miles to encounter someone in reality that I met online. Well, the Super Bowl brings like-minded humans together… it’s sort of like that. The amount of time you spend with these people, like-minded people, can be very little and have a profound effect on the rest of your reality. I will travel the world to meet humans I connect with on many levels. This is how I could drive 1,000 miles and make my first stop, a woman I had never met in person but had spoken to many times. Nhu and I connected over cars, obviously, but we found kindred souls.
In the spring of 2021, I found a photo from Nhu on the explore feed on Instagram. I liked a photo and began following her account after seeing one of her Woman Crush Wednesday stories. It wasn’t much later she was helping spring clean her work facility (Pfaff Tuning), and she found some Landrover parts she needed to do away with. She posted them on her story and asked if anyone wanted them. I responded, and a few weeks later, a package from Ontario was delivered to the wrong address in my building. “Who orders Landrover parts from Canada?” one of my tenets asked loud enough for me to hear. “Ooo me!!!” and danced away with my package. Nhu shares the excitement I have for life.
When I showed up at the complex in the dark, I parked Sarge in the guest parking and ran at least two laps trying to find Nhu’s house. Suburbs are difficult; everything seems to look the same…I slowed down for a moment and saw the sign in the window. The neighborhood watch protects this community with Uma in the yellow Kill Bill suit holding her Honzu sword. I turned to the paneled glass door panting and catching my breath, ‘BOO!’ Nhu was standing there and started screaming as she noticed I had a camera in my hand. “Come in, Come in – Koah and I are watching….” We shot the shit about the drive and made a plan for the days I would be in town. Tires, weird shit, and cookies – we were going to make A LOT of Movember Cookies.
Checking in late, I wandered down the hotel hall to the room, the faint smell of chlorine in the air. “I thought I asked not to be by the pool….” I told that voice to shut up while waving the RFID repeatedly. “Ahh jeez, I guess it works out.” The same voice said. A room swap later and four floors up a wing away from the pool, I settled in. All the camera gear came out, all the food went into the fridge; I started the shower and peeled a tangerine. Three tangerines later and the water was still ice cold. It was two am, and I decided I rode in a truck, not an airplane; I smelled like diesel. I was okay with that. Lights out.
Covid has made travel extra weird. Not necessarily the protocols surrounding it but the confusion it adds to life. I had to enter a phone number to get food for breakfast. Does this only work at hotel breakfast lines, or can I go to my local steak house, and the same thing will happen? Insert personal data, and a stack of pancakes comes out. “You will have to eat in your room if we can’t scan your vaccine card into our database.” I nodded. Loading up with pancakes, juice, a bagel, eggs, bacon, and yogurt, I took off for my room. My brunch lasted a solid hour, ending with a very long hot shower. Finally. While on a roll, I decided to do that thing that nomads do. Laptop in the bag, I was on a coffee mission. Okay, maybe downtown was busier than expected at midday on a Thursday. Setting my sites on Union Station, the laps began. It would be two laps before I was pulled over.
“Ma’am, you know you are not supposed to turn right there.”
“Yes, sir. I’m looking for a parking lot, and I spotted something.”
“Where did this thing come from?”
“Like today, last week, last year? Originally?”
“Where did it come from Originally? And Where did you come from this week?”
I started into my Sarge Spechell…
“He came from the Lakes district of Great Britain….” Ending with, “We came from Minnesota across the upper peninsula of Michigan.”
“Parking? Without a garage? Follow me.”
Law enforcement
has a crush on Sarge.
![SARGE AND ME: Eastern Tour 2021 – Part 2 – Toronto SARGE AND ME: Eastern Tour 2021 – Part 2 – Toronto](https://i0.wp.com/monayamae.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Mynameismonaya_SargeandMe_EasternAmericaTour_Toronto_2022_Downtown_Toronto_WaterFrontParking-scaled.jpg?resize=1165%2C1508)
He drove down about a block and waved me into a parking lot on the water.
“You can park here as long as you like. Have fun on your trip and limit the number of turns on no turns?”
The parking was more than stellar. I wasn’t just looking for coffee, now hunting. Union Station was under construction. This made the already long walk longer. was very long to Pilot Coffee Roasters next to a pastry shop. WORTH IT. If you have never been to Toronto, you may visit one of these Dutch Pastry Houses unsuspectingly, thinking they make all the pastry in the store behind a magic door somewhere. As a pastry chef, I had to look behind the curtain. I was rather impressed with Dutch Pastry House. They have multiple locations and one very large facility. Making laminated dough at volumes beyond your wildest dreams, a person could eat croissants forever at Dutch Pastry House. As a human that at one point could create over 1000 handmade croissants in two days, looking at 8 stores filled with 10+ laminated pastries, my mind nearly exploded. I tried to gather information on their process, but I will have to go back for that.
After devouring many crunchy layers, two cortados, and lots of Instagram, I set out looking for visitor gifts. Visitor gifts, little things you pick up at random shops to later give humans who host you. For some uncanny reason, I have the ability to find exactly what my future stops will need / want/love. Being from Minnesota, you are naturally drawn to flannel or wool, so it’s not surprising I walked into a barbershop with loads of plaid and old things in their windows. I was trying to buy something for an eccentric group of men I would be visiting later on my trip. I looked at so many things, everyone saying – hmm, they have that. One of the guys asked me what I was looking for. I replied – “Something beyond Original.”
“You need Doc’s”
“Doc’s?”
“Doc’s Leathers, I’ve never been there, but I heard they have this room upstairs filled with what you are looking for. You know, the weird, rare, unpurchaseable stuff.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes, really, go there. They have what you are looking for.”
I thanked the barbers and left to do a google search.
Google Doc’s Leather – seriously?…. Or click here.
- Nhu Nguyen with Helmet on In Austin Healy
In the meantime, Nhu called and said some boys would help us with the tires. I began to make my way over to Pfaff tuning…but I was mildly confused about Porches Pfaff or Pfaff…By the time I had made it through traffic, which Toronto traffic is awful, I was late and nearly out of gas. At this point, Nhu was lighting me up. I remember the feeling of letting my friend down and having no way to fix it immediately. My brain kicked its ass, “Show up. Breathe, turn left, wait for three more miles, and turn again. You won’t run out of gas; if you do, it will make for a great story.” Pfaff welcomed with open arms, including Nhu. Sarge was mildly out of place next to all the Porsches, Ferraris, and other exotics. Someone said – while Sarge is in Toronto, he is exotic within the exotics. There is nothing like him here. He is one of a kind.
As a chef, I have cooked in some unbelievable facilities. Multistory buildings with separated kitchens for a specific culture’s culinary techniques, massive refrigerators for fish breakdown, and my favorite room I have ever been in – a climate-controlled chocolate room with tempering machines. Bringing Sarge into Pfaff was sort of like this but for cars. It was like looking through a walk-in fridge with caviar, truffles, and Wague, only to turn and carry these items into the kitchen with the vacuum packer, smoking gun, and Rational Combi ovens. With all the tools and technology under this former Porsche dealership’s roof…Pfaff does not have the weights that go on Sarge’s wheels. They have a Pagani in the lobby and mustaches…they had mustaches. Back to that later.
Nhu showed me all of Pfaff, culminating with the basement. This would be one of the best car collections I will ever see. Less obscure down there and pure performance. Laborgenis, Ferraris, Porsche, Mercedez, and Mclarens. The highlight for Nhu and me is MK1 golf with less than 100 miles. Little known fact, I’m a super sucker for a rabbit; you say R32, I’m going to ask to drive. Nhu’s mom picked us up sandwiches, and we headed over there. These tires, oh my, the other set was already so scrubbed I didn’t notice the resistance. I think I might have used three gallons of gas this time to get to Nhu’s house, about a ten-mile drive. I would have hated being behind me, the smell of burnt rubber and no burnouts in sight.
Nhu has one of the most impressive appetites I have ever seen. This sandwich her mom got us was an enormous piece of delicious breaded steak. I took half mine home with an eye roll from Nhu. (She is probably reading this, and she doesn’t know that I finished every morsel of that sandwich at dawn the next day and went back to sleep.) After all, it was going to be a full day. I drove over to Nhu’s after waking up. We had coffee, ordered some pizzas for the Pfaff guys who helped with tires, and drove to Doc’s Leather.
The neighborhood where Doc’s is located is like any other city’s art and garden district. Somewhere between funky, cool, smart, and going up in price, this neighborhood of a city always has something interesting to offer. This case would be no different. Doc’s has motorcycle leathers, helmets, and gloves with knick-knacks in the front window. It has a carved wooden sign that doesn’t lead to anything extra rare or interesting. You would just walk by this place, never thinking you should check it out unless you were looking for – leathers. The first floor is a utility, to say the least, housing lots of fun Japanese and international moto gear. Notice a staircase going upwards as you walk toward the back. I climbed up there slowly, turning the corner into a room full of analog culture.
You start to put together a story about who this Doc character is as you glance at rows of glass cases filled with stuff. When writing this, I hesitated there. Stuff. I can’t list it off because it would be thirty inventoried pages, and never mind the stories attached to each item. When you look closer, you find obscure and sometimes, depending on who you are, offensive as hell things. I’ll mention taxidermy, lapidary, light bondage pieces, and some human teeth if that’s what you’re into. Doc was not in the store that day, and I am grateful. We walked away from this place with big eyes looking at giant crystals and small preserved animals. What I found on Google later would have stopped me from going to this store. And that will be a lesson here.
When I finally got around to using Google for a more extensive search, I discovered that our mysterious character had a reason to be mysterious. He has some extreme values. In all directions. The character I put together now had a face. All of it reminded me of one of my x’s. He was extremely eccentric, offensive, and knowledgeable. His collection was reasonably organized, but I still saw this as a hoarding tendency. I don’t encounter many humans that I will say “Small Doses,” but this guy. Look at his stuff, and no matter which direction you come from, this dude will offend you. I like that. That being said, I don’t want to hang out with that.
I bought a greeting card with a cover of Larid Hamilton lying on a rock at the beach naked. No, not a crystal or stuffed squirrel. I enjoyed visiting there. It’s one of the only extremely eccentric places I have said enough about. I won’t go on nor do I know if I will ever go back. The first stop on this adventure was Nhu for a reason. Somehow, most of the stuff I was familiar with was right there in front of me. And now, it was time for the pastry production portion of the adventure to begin. We stopped for Pho and headed to the bulk bakery store! This was the first time I had walked into a mall since the beginning of the pandemic. A Canadian mall, no less.
The next morning Nhu, her son Kua, and I went to brunch. It was an interesting dichotomy crossing the border after the mask mandate was lifted in America. It felt so normal to take a mask on and off. We sat down, and I remember thinking, this is the most people we have been around since I crossed the border. It was packed. We enjoyed breakfast, and I kind of thought ahead to the following days. I was going to be hanging out by myself again. Soak it up. After breakfast, Nhu and I went to Pfaff to check the fuse for the tail lights. Yep, it just kept popping, so we had a short somewhere. I was going to continue rocking those hazards at night. Time to get Sarge’s shoes all fitted happily.
We left Pfaff and went to a shop Nhu worked at in her early career. It was fun to see how it started for Nhu and how far she has taken this amazing journey. We put Sarge on the alignment rack. I went up with him. I couldn’t see the screen, but the gasps from down below told me – there was a huge error in my alignment. Sarge was aligned for a Range Rover. I noticed that something was wrong the entire way. But when you have the truck aligned the day you leave, you don’t think it’s that. First, you check your track bar, tire pressure, balance, and any other thing you think might shove you around. I was bummed out, but there wasn’t much to do about it, and I was grateful Nhu had gotten new tires and made sure they were fitted properly.
When we did this alignment, we pulled the stirring wheel off to set it. Don’t ever do this if you don’t have to. Ever. It is still off to this day. I’m going to work on it before another trip. Until then, well, it’s just annoying.
We finished up and got Nhu home. She had a date. We said our goodbyes, and I saw the kid in Nhu for the first time. She wanted to keep hanging out. It warms my heart to think of her face in those last moments. I returned to the hotel and showered because the water would get cold after 7 pm. By day three, we figured out the water heater was on a timer and a hot shower in this room was only available during certain hours. Insert laugh-out-loud emoji here. I went to bed early that night with everything in the room packed up. My last thought was – what am I going to do with those goddamn spare tires in the back of Sarge.
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My aunt gets excited about the quilting store. This is the only analogy I can make about how nerdy I am about a store for people who cook. I don’t care if it’s a commercial wear house, a William Sanoma, or a bulk bin in Canada. I am so excited to see all the stuff I don’t need, that I’m not going to make anything with, that is completely fascinating, and of course, get what I came for. We came for chocolate chips, right? I have no idea; as I said, I was fascinated while Nhu collected ingredients. I have no idea what happened to time, but all of a sudden, it was dark outside, Nhu had the cookies put together, and we were drinking Moscow mules and watching episodes of Layover. It got late. We talked about travel and how it stops aging until you stop traveling.
Analog Culture does not have tire dash lights.
n the morning, I woke up knowing the entire day would be a long battle with small challenges. I went downstairs for the first episode: the frigid water inn. The front desk man was not super helpful at first, but when I said I didn’t even want it for free – he asked what would make me happy. I said 30% off; he said how about 50%. We high-fived and immediately sanitized our hands. I got a card from this hotel and a few shout-outs on social media. So if you are ever in the Mississauga area, stay at the Holiday Inn Express. They are helpful.
I grabbed a luggage cart and loaded it up. I got everything on the cart and jumped on Elvira the Trek. I have no idea how but somehow, I rode a bike through the lobby with one arm on the luggage cart pulling and didn’t die. I loaded everything up. Lifting each of those damn Maxxis Razors MTs onto the hood and then climb up there to try not to ass end over the tea kettle as I put them on the rack. I did it. I grabbed the only tie-downs I had brought and jumped back up there. It was then when this guy, out of nowhere, said – “Hey, do you think that’s going to hold that down? I’ve got some at my house a block away.” This dude looked like Jack Black, and we got to talking. He was a film grip in LA and had tons of tie-downs at his house. He left for a while and returned with a 20 ft long, endless strap and a bunch more.
It would be maybe four days before someone this guy worked with slid into my DMS and asked questions about importing a Defender to Toronto. I looked through his feed and saw a photo. “You know this guy?” I asked – “why” he responded, and I told him how he helped me. “Oh, you know Tony, that sounds exactly like him; wow, you have met some great people in Toronto.”
I secured Sarge’s old tires and left for the exotics car show. On Friday night, when we made the cookies, Nhu’s friend Zook came over and asked if I would like to go to a Toronto Exotics car show. “Will there be old cars?” – I asked. When I got to the warehouse, I circled the block, looking for a parking spot, only to find Zook in a fur coat flagging me down on the corner to park next to the Brabus. I pulled up and jumped out. “Exotic means one of one; Sarge is one of one Monaya.” Zook razzed me. As we walked away, a group of dudes walked past the Brabus… “Where did this thing come from?” I could overhear.
We grabbed some coffee and started shit-talking. When was the last time you saw a real 365? Zook is a fantastic date and anyone offered should go anywhere he asks. Ps, this dude knows his cars. We walked by basically a brandless spec car… “what’s that?” “Oh, that? It’s a prototype. There is only one. It has solar panels on the top. Think better version of the Telsa roadster.” It looks like a viper while you are extremely intoxicated…leaving you feeling even more intoxicated. Like, what did I just see over there? Did you see that too?
We made our way through all the cars and custom cycles and even walked past a Model T on a lift. Somehow I was going to make it to Niagra Falls and Burlington tonight. I boogied, and Zook sent me the first video I have ever seen of myself driving Sarge. It was weird how things seemed to fall into place more on the fly than when you planned.
Sarge and Me
Sarge and Me is a project years in the making with Monaya’s first Defender experience in 2010. Later teaming up with Bishop and Rook in 2018. A celebration of analog culture legacy, independence, and eccentricity, Sarge and Me is going on the road. Follow along @mynameismonaya