Maybe we’ll just stay here
We arrived in Regina early, unaware that Saskatchewan doesn’t observe Daylight Saving Time. For me, the best thing Regina had to offer was our hotel. It was the sort you’d pay $200 a night for in Toronto, and after shaving and showering, my spirits were better than they’d been in weeks.
That night, I started to enjoy being on tour. I had a good time despite the isolation of the booth I’d made for myself, and my ability to discuss CDs I’d never heard was much improved. We also learned from the Sadies that many clubs will let you leave your equipment overnight, giving us a chance to procrastinate by waiting until morning to load the van. I found this a fantastic idea.
Before leaving the next morning to pick up the equipment, Brad went to a novelty shop and bought a balloon with a 36" diameter. We hit the balloon around in our hotel rooms, knocking lamps over and TVs across cabinets, acting the rowdiest we’d been since Toronto; we were trashing hotel rooms the way only people who are into novelty store shopping are capable of doing. (I say this under the assumption that other people into novelty store shopping also carefully straighten their rooms after a morning of havoc caused by a massive balloon.)
But the balloon met a sad end: We were loading our equipment when the wind caught it, carrying it into a barbed wire fence.
The drives were shorter and drier in Saskatchewan. We arrived in Saskatoon and immediately confused 10th Street with 10th Avenue, but we still found Amigo’s early enough to eat our free meals before worrying about unloading the van.
Amigo’s smelled much better than the venue in Regina, and we had two days accommodation at a local hotel. April 24 would be our first day without driving, and I was very excited at the prospect of a van-free afternoon.
The Sadies would set up their merch every night, so I only had to worry about scrounging five-dollar bills to make change for twenties. Vinyl was $18, but I only had two copies left to sell when we reached Saskatoon. I found two two-dollar coins, convinced I’d be able to sell the last of the vinyl that night.
Two of the first people I spoke with that night bought the last of the vinyl. One was a girl with a boy I assumed to be her boyfriend. She came back to talk to me several times before the end of the night, and I told Jeff that she topped my list of people I’d met on tour that I wished could live closer to me. Jeff later saw her kiss the boy she’d purchased the vinyl with and shared the bad news with me. Undeterred (though heartbroken in the way I can only be over someone I’ve never spoken to except in brief, yelled exchanges in a noisy bar), I worked up the nerve to approach her again, asking if she knew of any parks I could visit on my day off. She said she would take me to one if I called her the next day, so I found paper and a pen, and she gave me her phone number.
I didn’t look at the piece of paper until after she left. It said “Letch” and gave a seven-digit phone number (which I’m unused to with Toronto’s ten-digit numbers).
With another show in the same venue the next night, we left all of the equipment, shirts and CDs in Amigo’s and went back to the hotel. Cuff The Duke only had one room, so I settled in on the floor and slept.
The next day I woke up and showered and didn’t feel at all rushed. We tried to go for lunch, but the restaurants we visited were very busy. I gave up and left on my own to find a pay phone.
I was hesitant. It had been a long time since I’d called someone I knew so little about; I wasn’t even sure I was supposed to ask for Letch, and if it weren’t the only name I could ask for, I probably would’ve talked myself out of it.
She answered the phone. We talked for a few minutes before she gave me directions to her house, and I started walking. She was on the other side of the river, and I saw a park while going across the bridge, so the pretense of her helping me find a park was lost.
I saw her waiting outside her house when I turned onto her block. She let me check my email before we started walking.
By the time we’d reached a 7–11 to buy Slurpees, we knew quite a lot about each other, and she was hard at work assessing the source of the pent-up bitterness that I deny possessing. I didn’t feel shy around her or the need to go out of my way to impress her because I knew nothing could or would happen between us aside from our walk: Jeff and I had been right about the existence and identity of her boyfriend, and his existence was a relief because I would be far more frustrated to find someone I wanted to spend large amounts of time with and to have distance as the only limiting factor.
We walked around Saskatoon, and I liked the city more than any of the others I’d seen since leaving Toronto. Admittedly, the weather was beautiful, and I was getting to know someone new, so my judgment was biased. But I maintain that Saskatoon was a very nice place.
I eventually left Letch, promising to put her on the guest list for the show that night and hoping to see her then. I met up with Cuff The Duke at Amigo’s. They wanted to gossip about my day and to pretend that something had happened, but reality was much less lecherous than they wanted to pretend.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed my afternoon.
Letch was late to arrive to the show that night, and Jeff was at the door when she did. He said, “That’s the girl,” and waved her in; she told me later that it felt odd to be “the girl.”
She sat with me and my piles of CDs and t-shirts for most of the night. We did a reasonably good job of carrying on a conversation in spite of the noise. I felt increasingly melancholy as the night went on; Letch had told me earlier that day that she thought a girl might help to keep me balanced, to make me less neurotic. I started to believe her and to worry that I was failing at being pleased with the fact that she had a boyfriend (even if she did live two provinces away). When I was out of earshot, she told Paul that I seemed a very moody person.
Letch left before the Sadies finished their set, but Mike had noticed her earlier in the night and teased me for neglecting my duties.
I didn’t ask her to email me before she left, but I hoped she would. I slept on the same spot on the same hotel floor that night, and we left for Calgary the following afternoon.
I saw nothing of Calgary. We followed the Sadies’ van to the venue, and Travis tried to lose us with erratic lane changes and late signals. We arrived just in time to load in and set everything up without being too late to start on time. The show cost $20 at the door, and there was a local band playing after Cuff The Duke and before the Sadies. Neither band was terribly pleased: The Sadies don’t like to headline such expensive shows, and Cuff The Duke was unimpressed at having traveled across several provinces to play early in the night to a half-empty room.
Some of Wayne’s relatives were at the show and wanted to see the Sadies play, but they left after Cuff The Duke because the middle band was too abrasive to sit through.
Mike and Sean talked to me after the show: It turned out that they were booked to play two shows the next day, one in Edmonton during the afternoon and one in Red Deer at night. Since Cuff The Duke was only scheduled to do a radio show that night and their merch needs would be minimal, the Sadies hoped I would travel with them for the day. I agreed and transferred my belongings to their van.
I shared a hotel room with Critter, the Sadies’ vibraphone player (whose real name is Paul but who I will refer to as Critter to avoid confusion). I still wasn’t entirely sure about him, if he was being malicious or if his jokes were in good humour. We talked about me being straight edge, and he jokingly threatened to smoke pot in our room and to pour beer on me while I slept. Then he paused for a second, became serious, and asked, “But really — would you mind if I drank a beer in our room?” I thought this was more consideration than I deserved and couldn’t decide if he was trying to accommodate me or to find things to make fun of me for later. (“He wouldn’t even let me bring a beer into the room. It was unbelievable.”) I don’t think he was looking for more ammunition, though — I’d already given him plenty.
Paul went out for food after we checked in to the hotel; I went to bed listening to the wind blowing gusts of cold air into the room.
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antigreg : other content : the albatross did follow...
1. “The albatross did follow...”
2. Jeff's tour journal
3. Twenty-two pictures with captions
4. Tour schedule