So far so good.
Our tour of the east coast has, so far, gone without a hitch. Actually, it's had many hitches. Trailer hitches! Terrible joke.
After a slightly rocky start involving break lights, Canadian Tire, and a mechanic named Marc, we were on the road. Darcy and I have been driving like true champions. Par example: We drove from Kingston, Ontario to St. George, New Brunswick in one day. Considering that we're pulling a trailer as heavy as our own van, it took us a considerably longer time than expected. 20 hours straight to be exact.
Once finished, it really was worth it. We worked in roughly five hour-long shifts behind the wheel. For those of you who know at least minimal Canadian geography, we also drove through Quebec. We planned on stopping in Montreal for some lunch, but the two hours it took just to squeeze through the rush hour traffic scared us pretty straight. Maybe on the way back. Quebec was awesome though. We stopped in some smaller towns to nab some food and gas. This also meant that we had to squeeze every ounce of the French language out of our heads. Yet, to be totally honest, I really love that about foreign territory (both literally and figuratively).
It's really quite a thrill to challenge yourself in such scenarios. We went to Subway for dinner that night. Before we arrived, I mustered up as many phrases, subjunctives, verbs, questions, and items in my head as possible. The girl working spoke very little English, so I did my best to accommodate her. Let's just say I ended up with a douze-inch jambon sub, sur neuf-grain pain, avec concombres, fromage, tomates, olives, sel et poivre. Life is funny like that.
After that, we drove all night. I don't recall if I wrote anything about driving all night last summer on the way to Vancouver, but I really dislike it for many reasons. For starters, it really fucks with your sleep pattern. On top of that, if the back seat of your van is filled with coolers and merchandise boxes, you're in for an awful nap. I didn't sleep a wink because I'm over 6' tall boy crammed into a 3' compartment. Outside of the sleep, you have to worry about hitting animals. Seeing as we were driving through the marshes and woods, we were in prime deer and moose territory. Warning signs litter the highway for hours.
The only thing harder than looking out for animals all night is the actual staying awake part. If my memory serves me, I began my portion of driving around 2:30 AM. As we stopped to refill our tank, I stared coldly into my least favorite section of any convenience store: the energy drinks. For those of you who know me, even badly, know that I steer away from energy drinks to save my heart from beating out of control. But alas, I needed something to keep me from dreaming behind the wheel. I settled on Monster mostly for traditions-sake. BK and I drank that last summer on our only one-nighter through north Ontario, so I drank that for my brosky. Let's just say it worked.
We cut our way through the fog and rolled into St. George around 6:30 in the morning. We rolled up to some parking lot and (tried to) sleep.
Several hours later we set up camp in the most ghetto trailer park I'd ever seen, which is just fine. Water and hydro is all we really need. Once set up, we showed up for soundcheck at Paul's Wharf. We honestly didn't expect much from this show. St. George is a super small town, full of weird people that just sit on street corners. The venue was pretty much what we expected: ski-lodge interior, a big Jager banner, a semi-hot bartender (the kind that drunk old perv-bots find beddable), video lottery machines, a dusty old patio, one really drunk guy, and a menu filled with fried shit. The place maybe sees a dozen different guys on a daily basis, because the ones who do show up just get drunk and pump quarters all day.
Aside from first impressions, the show went fantastic. Lots of people showed up, payed the cover, and enjoyed the show. Morton our sound man provided us with excellent monitors. Many stuck around for both of our sets, and even bought some albums. Between our two sets I smoked some cheeb with the locals, which proved for a very interesting second set. Let's just say the first 15 minutes were spent over-dubbing the various club tracks that were playing. We made a substantial amount of loot to boot, because we apparently took in all of the money at the door.
Kim, the wonderful organizer and bartender, was so hospitable in every way. She hooked us up with a bunch of contacts along the way, gave us free coffee with breakfast this morning, and let us in on the free Joel Plaskett show in St. Johns on Canada Day.
Like I said. So far so good. More to come, I just need more battery life.
