April 18–21, 2003 — I want to go back to sleep

April 18, 2003 — Moving

I gave notice to my landlord in March, paying for that month and using the deposit I’d made for last month’s rent to pay for my room until May 1. By then, I would be in Victoria, BC, so my room would have to be empty when I left on April 19. I waited until the day before to start packing. Because April 18 was Good Friday, though, no stores were open, and I wasn’t able to get any cardboard boxes. I put my faith in the strength and versatility of garbage bags, and I hoped Johnston would be a patient driver.

It took three trips — one to my grandmother’s house and two to Jeff and Amy’s house — to empty my room. Jeff was critical of my moving technique, but I don’t think there was much I could have improved without more boxes. When we were done, it was almost impossible to move in Jeff’s room, and the back door to the kitchen was blocked by a pile of garbage bags with a desk underneath. I cannot remember my belongings ever being in such disarray. “It’s just stuff,” Jeff yelled...

I went to 29 Highview Crescent for a final night, giving Johnston my keys and asking him to return them to our landlord. (The last time I saw her, she was in our kitchen drinking from one of our glasses. I was too stunned to say anything aside from, “I am leaving on Friday.” I will not miss her, her constant guilt trips or the surveillance she forced us to live under.)

I wanted the anxiety I’d felt for weeks to fade as soon as I’d finished moving, but I went to sleep still feeling panicked.

April 19, 2003 — Sudbury

We loaded the van and declared it SARS-free on Saturday morning. After removing the back bench to make room for equipment, we were left with five seat belts for the five of us. Because only Wayne and Brad could drive, they took the front seats while Jeff, Paul and I rotated between seats on the middle bench.

The drive to Sudbury took four hours. It rained for most of the day, and the change in humidity made my head hurt. By 2:30 am, Cuff The Duke still hadn’t finished their set, and I had been awake for 20 hours. I felt sick enough to consider taking a bus home and declaring it all a mistake. The adrenaline I’d built up over four or five stressful weeks was gone, and I’d little left to keep me going.

Brad took over merch when their set was over. I went downstairs and failed at forcing myself to throw up. I picked a bed in the club’s basement, our accommodations for the night, and passed out.

April 20, 2003 — Thunder Bay

We woke up at 7:00 am to leave at 8:00 am. Thunder Bay is 12 hours from Sudbury, and it rained the entire trip. I watched the windshield wipers for hours, sometimes looking beyond the windshield in search of moose. We were in moose country, but we didn’t see a single one. Every two or three hours we would stop for gas or food (the van only has one working gas tank, so we have to refill it very often); I made a point of going to the washroom at every opportunity so that I’d never be the one to force an unscheduled stop.

When we arrived in Thunder Bay, there were no surprises: Easter Sunday is not the liveliest day to be in Thunder Bay, and the weather probably didn’t help. Total income was $35 from the door and $93 from merch; around 15 people attended (including staff). We had to pull out the contract to convince the promoter that we had been promised a place to stay, and we ended up with two hotel rooms on the outskirts of town.

We went to sleep excited at the prospect of a shower in the morning, a healthy amount of sleep that night and a shorter drive the next day.

April 21, 2003 — Winnipeg

The van has many dubious features that long drives are making us very familiar with. Highlights include windows and doors that leak, a front window that goes down easily but takes 10 minutes of fumbling with buttons to put back up and a constant rumbling in the engine that may or may not be getting louder. The trough is another highlight.

The trough is the step for the van’s side door, the one beside the middle bench. With the door closed, the step creates a trough-like trench. Instead of bringing a garbage bag into the van, we “trough” garbage, a process that often involves debris flying over or at me. I am almost used to it.

Aside from the trough, Brad’s SkyScan Atomic Clock is the van’s most talked-about feature. It is a massive clock propped below the stereo that is supposed to update automatically from a satellite.

We were intensely excited at the prospect of the clock updating when we changed timezones on the way to Winnipeg. We tried to decide what the clock would do to indicate that it had updated. Jeff suggested that helicopter blades might come out of the clock, allowing it to fly out of the van as a new clock set to the correct time flew in. When we entered Central Standard Time and nothing happened, we theorized that it was because the windows were closed, stopping the clock from beginning its return flight to SkyScan headquarters.

I eventually set it to CST by hand. Brad was visibly disappointed in his clock.

Somewhere between Toronto and Thunder Bay, Brad bought some cheap fireworks called Hummeroos.

Then, somewhere between Thunder Bay and Winnipeg we pulled over to relieve ourselves on the side of the road (which is illegal, as we soon learned). While stopped, Brad threw chunks of wood into a puddle, Jeff smoked some pot and we lit a Hummeroo.

I was getting my camera from the back of the van when an unmarked Ontario Provincial Police cruiser pulled up behind me. Everyone else was in the van. The police officer asked me about the firecracker, about what we had been lighting, but it didn’t occur to me that we might have more significant problems than the Hummeroo until Wayne rolled down the van’s window and I heard the officer ask, “Why does it smell like pot in here?”

No one was charged, but Jeff’s pot was confiscated and our names are in an OPP database. Apparently this won’t be a problem when we cross the border, apparently no one aside from the OPP will have access to this information, but I am wary: In the eyes of the law, I am not straight edge anymore.

We arrived in Winnipeg and everything was closed. I wanted to find a copy of the Globe and Mail because my dad’s article on Cuff The Duke was supposed to be in Report on Business that day. I found a newspaper box shortly before finding I didn’t have any change. (When I returned to the club for change, I found Wayne reading the article and was saved a dollar.)

The small amount of Winnipeg that I saw made little impression on me; the downtown reminded me a bit of Buffalo’s, though without the fear of violent crime that being in Buffalo instills in me.

We met the Sadies inside the club. Introductions were made (with my usual emphasis on the fact that I’m not in the band). Sean, the Sadies’ bass player, seemed excited at the prospect of having me sell shirts and CDs for them on the trip to Vancouver. I was given a crash course in album names and t-shirt colour options.

The opening band was very good. From the moment they began setting up their equipment, I was enamoured with the two female guitar players; the pent up energy of more than 30 hours in a van over three days was beginning to show. I spent the rest of the night trying not to leer.

When the Sadies started playing, I knew it would not wear on me to hear them play ten nights in a row. They are very talented musicians, and listening to them made me wish I could dedicate myself more wholeheartedly to something. The Sadies range from eight to 14 years older than me, so I have a few more years to find something I’m good at.

Back in my merch booth, I had to be able to fake a working knowledge of a band I’d never heard before that night, and my face went blank whenever faced with questions like, “Which CD has the most instrumentals on it?” or, “Which CD has the song with the line, ‘<insert vague lyric from third verse of obscure song here>’ on it?”

But I guess I managed.

Mike, the Sadies’ drummer, gave me some of the Sadies’ merch income for the night, and it was much more than I’d expected. Then we went to an after-hours bar where the lights were off to hide the fact that drinks were still being served. For one dollar we could attempt to throw a rubber chicken into a bucket across the room. This was called the chicken toss, and when someone managed to get the chicken into the bucket, they would win $10 from the bar and all of the money everyone else had spent trying to get the chicken into the bucket.

As the only sober competitors, Brad and I felt we had an advantage. After spending five or six dollars each, though, neither of us was able to get the chicken into the bucket. One of the drunkest people in the bar finally succeeded, and my faith in the advantages of sobriety was shaken to its very core.

After the chicken toss, Dallas taught us how to survive a day in a Missouri prison, and I wondered if I would one day have a story that could match one of his.

Without accommodations for the night, Wayne had asked during Cuff The Duke’s set if someone would be willing to put us up. A boy named Kevin said we could sleep in his living room, and we arrived at 4:00 am. There were four couches for the four of us (Paul had found alternate accommodations for the night) and flyers and handbills for hardcore shows covering the walls. I felt at home.

I didn’t sleep very well or for a very long time, and we left for Regina the next morning under-slept and without showering.