Between the lines in the road
A recap of the situation: Our van broke down outside of Golden and was towed to Canmore; on day one in Canmore, Wayne was told that they needed to order a part to complete the repairs. On day two, the part arrived, but when they began working on the van, they found that they needed a second part. On day three, the second part arrived, but they didn’t start work on the van until late afternoon, and Wayne and Brad weren’t able to leave Canmore until 5:00 pm.
Paul, Jeff and I continued our normal routine of showering with antibacterial hand soap, washing whatever clothes we could, and watching hours of MuchMusic. I felt like I was back at 29 Highview Crescent, looking around and thinking, “Soon I will never see these walls again,” and trying to make myself smile at the thought.
When Wayne and Brad finally arrived with the van, it was 7:00 pm on Wednesday, May 7. We had to be in Toronto by 8:00 pm on Friday, May 9. Also, we would lose two hours changing time zones, and we would have to cross the border twice because Cuff The Duke’s work visas were waiting at the Pembina, North Dakota, border crossing.
The map we looked at predicted a driving time of 39 hours from Calgary to Toronto. I tried to concentrate on the fact that it might be years before I had to see Calgary again. We left.
No one really slept. The first night, I started hallucinating; signs looked like buildings and inanimate objects ran onto the highway. I stayed awake, and when the sun started to come up, I stopped feeling tired for a few hours.
We made it to Winnipeg after driving all night. Pembina is just south of Winnipeg. We stopped for food, and I had a bagel. If I had known we wouldn’t stop for food except at gas stations for the rest of the trip, I might’ve had more to eat.
At the border, we were directed into a bay to have our van searched. Everyone else was picking up work visas, so I was assigned the task of helping the border guards unload the van while a drug dog stared at me. I joked with the border guards, the thought of cavity searches never far from my mind. Once the van was unloaded, they sent me inside to wait while the drug dog toured the van.
Inside, I was given a B-2 work visa that I hadn’t asked for. We took it without asking questions and returned to the van to find our luggage back inside and the dog gone. We were allowed to enter the US. Everything went very smoothly.
Back on the Canadian side of the border, I tried to convince a customs officer to give me a form saying we’d registered our CDs and t-shirts with him before entering the US. Still riding high from my B-2 work visa, I had a conversation I barely understood that ended with him relenting and saying, “Well, I could give you an E15,” to which I replied, “That sounds great.”
It turns out an E15 is a piece of paper that the customs officer stamps and signs to indicate that someone is exporting goods that are in transit to Ontario. I just wanted to have something official to show the customs officer at the other side, so this was enough to satisfy me.
We crossed into the US a second time and they waved us through.
We elected to drive down to Chicago and then up through Detroit to Windsor and then Toronto. Every gas station we stopped at in the US had Combos, and I was living on a diet of Combos, Twizzlers and water. We were listening to Jeff’s David Cross CD, and there is a joke about obese Americans sitting around watching television while eating Combos and Twizzlers; I felt home.
We drove through another night, and we caught up with a storm outside of Chicago. When we reached Chicago, the rain became torrential, far heavier than any rainstorm I’d ever seen. The van started to stall, and Wayne eased it up an exit. We barely made it off the interstate before the van died again. It was 3:30 am and we were stuck in Chicago. Without saying very much, we decided to wait out the storm and hope that the van would start again when the rain stopped.
It continued raining and the van continued to leak. Water splashed in through the closed windows, and all of us were wet. The van was parked on an angle; Jeff slid down the bench while Paul pushed back up trying to reclaim his normal amount of space. I was trapped in the middle, unable to sleep while in constant contact with Jeff and Paul, wondering how long we would be trapped in Chicago.
As the rain poured down and everyone slept, I stared through the windshield. I wanted so desperately to be back in Toronto, for the ordeal to have ended, for the driving to be over. I knew there would be no one to greet me in Toronto aside from Amy (who would really be there to greet Jeff), but none of that mattered. I needed to be home. I needed to be dry, and in a bed that I could get used to the feel of, beneath a ceiling I could learn the patterns of, with music I hadn’t become bored of. The tour had ended for me in Calgary, my heart was back in Toronto, and the rest of me ached to catch up.
The rain eventually slowed. It took considerable prodding from Jeff before Wayne would consider starting the van, and considerably more prodding to get him to start it a second time after it stalled out the first time. It stalled several more times, but each time it ran a little longer, and after a few trips around the block to warm up the engine, we returned to the interstate.
Several hours passed, and we were in Michigan when Brad told us the van would no longer switch into its top gear. We couldn’t drive much faster than the minimum speed posted for the interstate, so we pulled into a gas station to let the van cool and to check the transmission fluid. Since the transmission had been rebuilt two weeks before we left Toronto, it was still under warranty, and we called the garage. They gave us the address of a transmission shop in Jackson, Michigan.
On the way to Jackson, we lost another gear, and we were driving no faster than 65 km/h on a major US interstate. Transport trucks were passing at high speeds and honking.
When we arrived in Jackson, the mechanic noted that our transmission fluid smelled like burning and indicated that this was indeed a bad thing. He looked into it a bit more and decided that the van’s transmission would need considerable work and would not be ready until Wednesday.
This took a minute to sink in. “We can’t stay here until Wednesday,” Wayne said. We were taking things one step at a time, and it seemed important to eliminate this option. We decided to rent a van.
Calling every rental company in Jackson, we found that it was impossible for someone younger than 25 to rent a van. Nothing would change their minds on this, and several companies wouldn’t even consider renting us a car.
Running out of options, we decided to rent two cars and take as much equipment and luggage as we could. When Wayne called a rental company to fill them in on our plan, the girl on the other end of the phone spoke with her manager and offered to rent us a four-door pickup truck. A bit shocked, Wayne accepted. The truck arrived 30 minutes later; we loaded our luggage and almost all of the equipment into the back of the truck and went to buy a tarp.
We crossed the Canadian border crammed into a pickup truck with a tarp covering the mountains of equipment and luggage in the back. The customs officer looked at our passports, told Wayne he’d forgotten to sign his, and waved us through. We were back in Canada, back on a 400–series highway, and on schedule for that night’s show.
Despite everything that had happened, and despite how cramped it was for Paul, Jeff and me during our seven hours in the back seat of a pickup truck, we played with Brad’s novelty glasses to pass the time and looked forward to pulling up to Lee’s Palace in a Dodge Ram pickup.
When we started to see exits for Toronto streets, when I knew that no matter what happened I could take public transportation to my house, the anxiety of being a passenger in a breakdown-prone van for 47 sleepless hours began to lift.
We arrived and unloaded the pickup truck. We went for food, our first real food since Winnipeg. I walked to my new house and showered with real soap and real shampoo for the first time since Vancouver.
Cuff The Duke opened for Royal City and played very well under the circumstances. Afterward, Jeff told me that all he could remember was walking on stage at the beginning of their set and leaving the stage at the end.
I stayed behind the merch table, refusing to abandon my post for the last show of the tour. When Royal City finished playing and the audience left, I packed up my supply of t-shirts, CDs and pins, walked to the truck and took my belongings out. Then I walked home.
I went back to work today. I remembered all of my passwords and how to do almost everything I needed to do. I hated being back, and I decided to reduce my hours to as few as I would need to survive.
Scheduled until after the last customer left the store, I was late to arrive home. When I saw Jeff, he told me that Brad had quit the band, but I was too exhausted for the news to sink in. I went to bed.
I woke up a few hours later, sorry for reasons I didn’t remember. I could hear Jeff in one of the empty rooms upstairs, playing guitar and singing.
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