Tour Diary pt. 2

Well, well, well. We meet here again.

I'm currently sitting in the "Havana Club" lounge aboard the ferry from North Sydney, Nova Scotia to Cornerbrook, Newfoundland. I see families playing Uno, old men reading in leather chairs, and I'm pretty sure Dan and Darce are drinking the beers they brought on board somewhere on the deck.

This is the part where I bring you up to speed.

The "tour" itself has been pretty entertaining so far. Due to some miscommunications (I'll call it that, for fun) we've been shorted a couple shows. Although unfortunate, we've found ways to occupy ourselves.

After realizing we had a little more free time than expected, we made our way to Prince Edward Island. Aside from the somewhat dreary weather, PEI is pretty much exactly how I remembered it as a child. Super rolly hills, lush beyond imagination, boats everywhere, and lighthouses galore. The one thing I didn't remember was the red soil? That was pretty cool. It was a very similar color to the Australian outback's red sand.

Our first night there was spent outside of Charlottetown. Very simple campground. We played dice, drank beer, and then went skateboarding. I'm so glad we brought that thing. There's nothing better than giving a few good pushes on the old skate after a day of driving. Darce and I played S.K.A.T.E. for an hour. I'm almost certain there was no winner, as we are both super rusty from almost no practice since high school. He still has his kickflips, I still have my pop-shuvs, and that will always be the case. The next morning we made for Cavendish.

The town of Cavendish, although nice-looking, is a tourist pitfall. The streets are lined with mini-putt, glow in the dark mini-putt, ice cream shops, burlap sack slides, and shotty wooden roller coasters. Sure sounds nice from a distance, but not the easiest place to live in unless you're staying at a B&B.

After departing the next morning, we headed back to Charlottetown. We'd heard our friend from back home Patterson was playing with her band Greenbelt Collective at Ampersand downtown that afternoon. We met up, realized they weren't playing until later that evening, and then ate fish & chips. Dan raves about that fish, although the batter wasn't thick enough for me. To each his own fish I guess.
We decided to head back for New Brunswick, and why? To catch the free Canada Day concert in St. Johns, headed by no other than primo-Can-Rock-all-Star Joel Plaskett. That was a great show. It'd been a good couple years since I'd seen his show, so it was nice to see what new tricks he's been up to. The show surely didn't disappoint. The only downside was when I got hit in the chest by a flying beer bottle, which later broke at my feet. Which was later stepped on by some dumb lush, which lead to, Blood! Blood!


If my memory serves me, we headed to Sackville, New Brunswick after that. We showed up to Unkle Larry's Hall and they'd never heard of Hue. Fantastic. What did we do after that? Take full advantage of their nine dollar pitchers of couarse. Later that evening we took a cab from our trailer park (which is quite ghetto in concept) back to Larry's, fueled up, and made our way to Main St. to party with the Greenbelt bunch. Pretty fun night. Seeing as they are an 8-piece band, their "night off" consisted of a bunch of solo sets from most of the members. Interesting stuff. Highlight definitely goes to the wonderfully cute Katie Coran for her endearing solo material.
Most of their band was on mushrooms, so the dialogue between them was mostly hilarious, if not interesting at least.

The whole night felt like a Canadian tour party adventure. The kitchen was full of junky old instruments for the playing. Bottles of whisky and pipes of smoke rolled around the room like mosquitos, except far less pesky. Bodies passed out everywhere. Somebody playing MLB. People hanging out in vans doodling in notebooks, and local heroes coming and going all night. Fun stuff. We threw down an ultra-quick and ultra-shhh set (it was late) towards the end of the night. Hopefully we'll get the video that was recorded that night eventually.

I think I'll just skip to my next favorite part of the trip.

Two nights ago we stayed at this family trailer park. Well, they're all family, but this one was packed with people. After more tour bad news, we decided it was beer time.
We began playing frisbee in the park located in the centre of trailer-ville. After about two hours of drinking and hardcore frisbee-trickery (some ridiculous shit went down that day) it began to rain. We were later joined by a bunch of kids.

Initially it was Rory (aka Ror-bot, Roro, Boy-Ro), who was awesome. Just one of those really honest and open kids with no boundaries. His "high-school" friends got him really into rap, so he beat boxed and we free-styled. How rad is that? On top of that, he looked exactly like the kid from Two and a Half Men. Later, more kids showed up and we had a full-scale game of 500 on our hands. The three of us were all in the bag, so watching these kids fetch our frisbee and balls was almost too much to handle. So funny. The even funnier thing is that Dan was amongst them during the catching process. Darce and I would sit back, throw things, and all these kids + Dan would chase after them. I'm not sure if you had to be there, but that is so, so funny to me. We all played again later that night and got yelled at by people trying to sleep. Oh well.

Now, I'm not sure how well this next part is going to go over, but I'll write it out anyway. Dan and I thought it would be a good idea to swim naked in the ocean. Seeing as we were already intoxicated, we convinced Darce to do the same.
I've always kind of looked for that perfect "drunk" image. You know what I mean? Something that just screams "Wow, those guys are drunk,". And I think I found it.

I looked around. I was sitting, completely naked, in the trailer smoking a cigarette. I look over, and Darcy is playing the guitar, completely naked. I then look to the other side and there's Dan, completely naked, wondering when the hot dogs are going to be finished. That, my friends, is what drunk looks like.
I think I'll end this post right about here. You'll hear more stories in Newfoundland.