Doin’ It Right (aka We’re All Still Alive!)

There’s nothing quite like taking one week of after only working for one week. I think more people should try it. Holiday Monday led into an early morning flight to Vancouver to enjoy some graduation festivities, some see you someday’s and some limited sleep. Well, at least we were supposed to have an early morning flight. Turns out there was some sort of gas leak on our plane and we turned around after being in the air for just under an hour. After landing, there was another two hour wait before we were told what it was we would be able to do about it. Luckily, we managed to get on the first direct flight into Vancouver, and made it by mid-afternoon. I will say that the WestJet team handled everything fairly well, but the ten dollar lunch coupon for our troubles wasn’t quite enough – seeing as that only paid for half an appetizer and the grossly overpriced airport concessions. Otherwise, no complaints. Once we arrived it was a quick visit and off to bed as everyone had to be up and at the graduation ceremony for seven am. Yuck. The ceremony itself was tolerable – nice venue, good acoustics and fairly well paced – but the speakers were atrocious. The first speaker was short and sweet and consisted of a welcome and blessing from an elder of the Musqueam tribe on which the lands of the university were placed. The next speaker,  the university Chancellor, blathered on about her garden and not being able to grow beets, trying to tie in to something about renewal or the like, but with outside allusions to some book she was reading and Chris Hadfield’s recent return to Earth, she didn’t make much sense. I doubt her remarks would have received a very good grade. The Vice-Chancellor’s speech was a bit more linear and easier to follow and would have been great if his closing remarks didn’t include “…is really the bread and butter of this institution – or should I say, rice and noodles.” Albeit true, I still feel that’s a tad racist and probably doesn’t belong in a university graduation. Speaking of which, the honourary degree recipient, Lee Lakeman (whom I’m sure is very deserving for the work she does) threw down a completely jaw-dropping tirade against men and the institution. Again, this seemed to be a time and place sort of speech. If she had been addressing the annual Women and the Law dinner, some other organization of feminists, I’m sure that speech would have been extremely inspiring and moving, but at a convocation ceremony there is no need for young children to have to start asking their parents what ‘rape’ means (which several children in my immediate earshot started doing after the eighth or ninth time she used the word). However, some of the female students I asked about it said it was an amazing speech so I guess it really depends on your audience. The final speaker was a fellow student to the graduates and fellow Mexico survivor to me, who was by far and away the saviour of the podium. After listening to the three previous speakers the microphone needed a blast of youth and she did just that, eloquently concluding her speech with a Tom Waits anecdote about a wonderful and weird crooked tree. Kudos to her husband for introducing her to the glory of Tom Waits and kudos to her for hopefully introducing him to the rest of the audience. Then there was the degrees and a whole ton of applause and then it was time for pictures and free champaign.

No breakfast and eight glasses of champaign at eleven in the morning really doesn’t bode well for the remainder of one’s day. However, when it’s free, you take advantage of it. And we did. Then a group of us went off to lunch which featured a few bottles of wine on vocals and a glass of scotch on drums. Then there was a glass of post lunch wine followed by a glass of pre dinner wine. Then we made our way to Darby’s, which of course being Wednesday meant we were taking part in the final meeting of the Karaoke Klub. Jugs of beer were strewn about the table, which was struggling to hold the thirty-plus individuals trying to sit at it in between glorious renditions of such favourites as “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” “Africa,” and “The Graduation Song.” When someone decided to do “American Pie,” we all felt it necessary to not sit through eight minutes of it and went behind the building for our final alley beers. Good stuff. More singing and drinking and drinking and singing. Then there was a house party to go to that no one should have really gone to, and things happened, probably. I only presume this to be true as things are a little hazy. I do know one thing, that Honesty and Integrity prevailed as a reunited Cerveza Pong League formed and enjoyed a riveting match. The next morning was a struggle for us to get up and meet some friends for lunch. We made it though, and enjoyed Stephos and it’s large plates of Greek delights. Afterward there was some naps and then off to dinner at The Eatery for a friend’s birthday. Of all the things to happen, we happened to meet Cody Hodgson who was there with a friend on the way to Hawaii. This was a thrill for me as a Buffalo Sabres fan (I hope he re-signs!) and less for the Canucks fans at the table. Small talk finished, we consumed our Sushi and made it to our flight just as they were beginning to board. Seven hours later we were back in Toronto and exhausted.

One thing that made the flights all the more enjoyable for me was the new record from Daft Punk “Random Access Memories.” I had pre-orded it and luckily received the download code in time to buy it before we left for the airport at five am. Playing on repeat for each flight, I can easily and without a shred of doubt say this is the greatest record of all time. Being on man’s opinion I’m sure many would disagree, but this is my new favourite record, and I believe will really define the next generation of music. “Get Lucky” will be my summer anthem. “Giorgio by Moroder” will be my house cleaning music. “Within” and “Touch” will be there if I’m feeling down, and “Contact” will be there to pick me up. Cover to cover, from the first note to the final oscillator, this record has done nothing but put a smile on my face and put a groove in my neck. I’ve always believed that Disco is Alive. Go! Buy it right now! 🙂

Oregon With The Wind

Unless you pronounce it ‘Or-uh-gun’ in which case I’ll have to Oregon you down! (insert crickets or tubleweed: here). Regardless of which pun you think is better, the real thing to enjoy is the following few paragraphs summarizing our brief stint along the Oregon coast before busting into California.

Oregon, Baby, Gone

After descending the Astoria Column, we returned to the van and made our way back on the road. The goal for the end of the day was to make it as far into Oregon as possible before stopping for the night. Originally I thought we could have made it to the California border but stopping to buy a new camera and then stopping to use said camera really was a hindrance to my scheduling. I mean, it was only a logistical problem, there was no real issue with stopping so much – the scenery was too beautiful not to. Add in some blue skies and a warm August sun and we were happy to drive anywhere the road would take us. Florence is where the road eventually took us. After several little beach communities and seaside towns, state parks and lookout points, we made it just past the halfway point of Oregon. Unfortunately for us, our new camera had only enough battery life to get us through forty pictures before telling us its life was over. That’s a shame because we could have taken at least four-hundred. If we had the memory capacity I would have just hit ‘record’ and left it on the dash of the van. Breathtaking is only scratching at the surface. Awe-inspiring only hints at the magnitude of the beauty. My English degree failed me at the moment I tried to even comprehend what words to clamor together in some poor excuse for a sentence to describe what I was looking at. Even now, I have chills only trying to remember the serenity of nature, the blues of the sky and ocean, the greens of lush coniferous forests, the bright white of the beaches and binary blacks of the strange rock formations erupting intermittently from the water – everything one giant kaleidoscope of sensory bombardment. Needless to say, if there is ever a winning lottery ticket in my hand, I’m going to blow some of the winnings on doing that trip over again, but without worry about how much time I’m taking. Eventually the sight seeing started taking its toll and we began to run out of daylight. Of course, at this point the road began to get windier and more difficult to drive at a reasonable speed. So when we made it to Florence, we decided to call it a night and looked for a vacancy sign. Checking in at one of the major chains, we found a room to be fairly expensive and so we decided to discuss what our options were. Luckily, GFT and her superior sense of perception noticed a pamphlet in one of the lobbies we were in. In it were coupons and luckily enough we were able to manage to get a room for under sixty dollars. We drove a little deeper into town and pulled into the Lighthouse Inn, a quaint little motel with way too many pictures and books about lighthouses. I think they took the theme a little too far personally, but they also supplied us with hot water, a comfy bed and an inexpensive place to rest up, so I can’t really complain. Once morning rolled around, we gathered our things and took a little roll around town to get some wonderful homemade baked goods at a local coffee shop before hitting the road for our longest stretch of driving.

California Dreaming

Oregon continued to impress as we made our way down the remaining section of coast. Before too long we had eclipsed one-hundred pictures and hadn’t even made it to lunch. Lunch I need to mention because I made a specific pit stop at one of the great bastions of American fast food: Taco Bell. Once we made it to Brookings, the last city in Oregon before the California border, I looked up where Taco Bell was on our GPS. The reason I was so enthralled by a mediocre excuse for mainstream ‘Mexican’ food was for one reason and one reason only… the Doritos Locos Taco.

Oh. My. Good. God.

Excuse me? A taco made with Doritos? Sign me up. So after demolishing a few of those bad boys, with the smuggest of grins on my face, we decided to continue on with our quest. As we approached the border, I caught GFT scrambling out of the corner of my eye. Wondering what she was up to I tried to inquire, but was given various grunts instead of answers. Deciding to keep my eyes on the road, I left her to her devices and to do whatever she was doing without too much more thought. Then it clicked. The radio was playing some familiar song. As the van rolled past the ‘Welcome to California’ sign, she cranked the heavenly harmonies of the Beach Boys. Realizing it was her plan all along to have her iPod ready to blast The Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits as soon as we entered their home state, I could do nothing but laugh. Awesome.

In my first year of university I met a great guitar player who I eventually became friends with. Some of our readers will remember him from earlier stories as Bandmate, The, as he made three-quarters the trek across Canada with me. Anyway, while we were first bonding over each others iTunes playlists, with grand discussions of guitars and gear, musicians and albums, he brought up a story about a certain record we were listening to. He regaled me with a tale of heartbreak and loss, all overtop a soundtrack of Discosis by Bran Van 3000. For him, that particular record will always be about his break-up. Regardless of the context he hears it, regardless of the bliss he may be feeling at that particular moment, that record will always cause him to stop and reflect on the past. He told me there are many records like that for him. My dad had similar stories, but about the first time he heard certain records. He knows the exact time and place he first heard Electric Ladyland and Abbey Road. I’m pretty sure he even knows the brand of turntable and model of earphones he used to listen to each record. Music has that power over some people. I’m more familiar with the later, remembering a first listen for some of my all-time favourites: Danko Jones’ “Bounce” and BT’s “Never Come Back Down” were both music videos I caught on an afternoon watching MuchMusic – before the station degraded itself to the filth and poor excuse for “entertainment” it spews out now; and my number one favourite, and life changing record, Daft Punk’s ‘Discovery’ first graced my ear drums in my friend Nutt’s attic. I’m sure you can recall the first time you heard your favourite album too if you give it a try… Now though, I understand what he was talking about. Recently at work, “I Get Around” came on the radio and I was immediately back on Pacific Highway 101, surrounded almost to the point of claustrophobia by massive redwoods. Windows down, wind on my scalp, the sun dancing on my dashboard like natures strobe light as it fights to shine through the towering forests around me: fun, fun, fun. Until the day I die, The Beach Boys will define California for me. Good choice, dear.

Some big trees.

I’m sure sometime soon I’ll get around to writing down what happened up until San Francisco. If you want the gist for now, we basically just drove a lot (including through two trees!). So get excited for that one!! As per my last addendum, I have finished writing my story, but have to create a video still (ohhh, I bet the suspense is too hard to handle!) so please keep an eye on the happenings here as I will have that up within the next week or so. Then the real harassment will begin. I will be bothering everyone I know relentlessly until March 31…