Finally made it to Whirlyball, a local office-teambuilding-event mainstay that I had somehow never done. It’s basically lacrosse in bumper cars. However bad I am at sports in general is multiplied when I have to do many of them simultaneously.

Rounded out our hosting duties with a few more lovely stops at Momotaro, Lazy Bird, and Lonesome Rose. Open offer: we will use your presence as an excuse to execute an ad-hoc progressive dinner.

No sooner than our guests left for the airport, I was right behind. Off to Toronto again for a few days of work.

My team continued its proud tradition talking about a bunch of interesting places we could check out for dinner, and then ending up at another Kinton Ramen, which seem to be every 500 feet downtown.

This visit’s new taste experience: Amaro-flavored seltzer. Review: 👍👍.

Both trips through YYZ this year have included hours of delays. Even when I was booking flights, most of the options had a historic on-time performance somewhere around 30%. As a result, I’ve gotten very familiar with the F gates: the liminal space between U.S. Customs Preclearance and your plane. The America Jr. Autonomous Zone, if you like.

It’s a cool idea – clear customs where you are and arrive back in the U.S. as if you were on a domestic flight – though it does create a ton of edge cases that I can’t find any real answers to. You pass through customs and the associated opportunity to make a declaration before you arrive in the holding pen with nothing to do but browse the duty free shops. What happens if you go wild and just careen past your allowance of tax-free maple syrup? There’s nobody left to declare to!

As best I can tell, the limiting factor is just “what you can carry” since your checked bags are already on the way. I leave it to a greater criminal mastermind to evolve the concept.