Car XxX Blog

Toronto has a love/hate relationship with the name of the area just on the east side of the downtown core (starts at Coxwell Avenue) of the city - even their website shows "The Beach/Beaches". Whatever you call it, the area starts at the sandy foot of Lake Ontario and continues north. The favourite part for many is the long and wide stretches of beach full of sun worshipers, swimmers and volleyball teams in the heat of summer. This place is so much fun that even the bell telephones are happy (although it could be one of those new fangled emoticons  and not really a sentient telephone who appears to be happy).

The Canadian Wind Energy Association sponsors the October 2nd, 2010 edition of WindFest which is  Toronto's Waterfront Kite Festival held at Ashbridges Bay. I haven't seen a hot air balloon festival yet but I am hoping that this kite festival comes pretty close. As they say "WindFest is a chance to celebrate autumn, wind power and the breathtaking are of kite flying, on Toronto's largest beach". It's a little cool today so you might want to leave your bathing thong at home.
The kites take to the sky from 11am to 4pm. They also had kids having parachute races.

It didn't look like any organized beach volleyball games were going on in Ashbridges Bay, just a large amount of pickup games. From what I heard on a nice sunny, Sunday the beaches would normally be full of volleyball tournaments but the long weekend has a lot of people out of town. The games were coed and were a lot of fun to watch.



Most of the players really got into the games and the action was intense at times. Dives into the sand to return the ball or high jumping spikes and blocks as each team fought for supremacy.



Looking at row after row of multi-coloured nets shows how much people like to play volleyball on this beach.



The uniform of choice was bathing suits including this combo thong suit.




HOPE VOLLEYBALL

Billed as Toronto's largest one day Charity Volleyball Tournament the 22nd annual Hope Volleyball Tournament will be held on Saturday, June 12 on Centre Island in the Toronto Islands. If you want to play you need to register on-line by May 31. Individuals can even sign up and be placed on a team.

HOPE stands for Helping Other People Everywhere and the tournament gets about 6,000 players competing in the event.