February 25–March 3, 2003 — Gone Toobin’

I stayed in Toronto an extra day to finish programming a web site. A poor reason to spend less time with my family, but the money was good.

On Wednesday, I stumbled to the bus station. For the first time in months I left for Ottawa mostly healthy and without an ear infection. Not wanting to break with more than one tradition, I bought two bags of Combos for the trip. I finished the second bag as the bus was leaving Scarborough, an hour or so into the trip. Without Combos to keep me conscious, I slept most of the way home.

I arrived unsure of whether or not Jeff, Wayne, Paul and Brad would be staying at my house on Thursday and Friday nights. I was worried about not having a way to get to their shows (Cuff The Duke was playing two nights in Ottawa with Sam Roberts) if I didn’t have them to drive me. I also wondered whether my parents would be able to drop me off to meet up with them before they left for Kingston since I had planned to steal a drive home with them.

Jeff’s roommate called on Wednesday night to tell me that Jeff and company would be staying with me in Richmond after all. Confident that I now had a drive to and from the shows, I set out to find places for four people to sleep. (To be fair, my mom did the vast majority of the work — I am a lazy son.)

The Ottawa shows were interesting enough. We spent a lot of time across from the women’s washroom in a supply closet that doubled as a band room. I drank a lot of complementary water and wondered why a bar needed so many cans of grapefruit juice. There was talk of doing shots of Tabasco sauce, but no one went through with it.

After the first show, the van was towed because it had been parked in a snow-removal zone. My jacket was in the van, so I stayed in the club trying to stay warm while everyone else searched for the van. (Standard procedure in snow-removal zones is to ticket the vehicle and then tow it within a two-block radius of its original location.)

Brad found the van and we were in our beds by 3:45 am.

The next day we went skating on the Rideau Canal. Paul rented skates, and I wore a pair my mom found for me that were a size too small; Jeff and Brad brought their own. Aside from Jeff, we all complained of pains in our feet and legs for the remainder of the trip. It was a beautiful day to be outside, though.

After skating, another night at Barrymore’s. The crowd was older and less energetic than on Thursday. I was happy when we were finally able to begin loading the van.

We spent most of the next day in Richmond. My dad took us out for breakfast and later put on a Chet Baker documentary that we watched until it was time to leave.

The drive to Kingston didn’t seem to take very long. The first residents of Kingston we noticed were prepubescent boys dressed like gangsters. They saw us laughing at their outfits and went into spasms of gang symbols; Wayne flashed the West Side symbol back, and we kept driving.

The club hadn’t opened when we arrived, so we went to an arcade. We played Toobin’ and Pac-Man and didn’t really know what to do with our prize tickets from the Skee-Ball machines.

The show in Kingston went very well, though we left later than we’d’ve liked. It was snowing as we started towards Toronto, and the snow became heavier the closer we were to home. Because it was 4:00 am on a Sunday morning, the roads weren’t being cleared as actively as they might otherwise have been, and driving was very dangerous. Ahead of us for much of the trip was a driver who kept turning off his lights, making him invisible for a few seconds and keeping us on edge.

By the time we made it to Toronto, it was after 7:00 am and sleep was a secondary concern: I was happy to be leaving the van in one piece. I set my alarm for 3:00 pm and went to sleep.

I followed my vacation with a 6:00 pm-to-2:30 am inventory shift on Sunday night and a nine-hour shift on Monday. I referred to it as my 17–in-26: 17 hours of work in a 26 hour span (not including time spent in transit).

Inventory was tolerable. I was teamed with someone from the interior design department, and we counted candles. She was very nice and gave me licorice. By the end of the night, though, I was a bit sick of candles and licorice.

I managed to convince someone to drive me home (since the buses had stopped running), and I slept for a few hours before returning to IKEA for my next shift.

I was delirious and sick by the end of my shift on Monday. On the plus side, though, I managed to fit an entire workweek into 26 hours, giving me the next four days to myself.

Four days for sleeping and staring at walls and trying to feel better.