Dear Toronto,

I feel like I never write home anymore and it's because there's too little to go around and at the same time too much: did you hear me gasp as I stepped into the ocean this morning at 11:11, barely able to assimilate the empty shoreline, the early-spring sun, the happiness of life?

A second failed trip to the DMV isn't failure because I kinda don't believe in that anymore. There are just events; there are points on a line where you start out driving your car in the sunshine listening to the same three songs for forty minutes over and over, realize you forgot your passport, and find yourself standing in the middle of Astroland abandoned. I'd say I was happier than I have ever been except I kind of feel that way every day.

Peeling paint, rusty fences, sand in my shoes, hot dog stands and shooting galleries shuttered, a cat living in a skee-ball game. I feel like every day is an endless string of tiny miracles, and the way the light shines on things here just blows me away. I can be awake three hours and see enough amazing things and be brimming with enough love to overflow weeks: it is no small wonder I am too tired to do my taxes or listen to voicemail. I love and miss you all. When I come let's just go to the beach, okay?

[Logan Square]
"I thought you were supposed to be my wingman?"
(friend pauses)
"But this bar smells like a toilet."

[Bucktown]
"She's multitalented. I mean besides the being married part."

[East Village]
"Do you remember that girl who was passed out on the couch at the bridal shower? That was her. She has an eating disorder."

I first met Michigan City when I was two. I do not remember this. I remember early pictures of me in a pink winter jacket breaking icicles off of the weird white wrought-iron furniture inherited with the house. I remember my parents deciding their new Chicago-person-weekend-place was suitable to cross-country skiing. I remember throwing up Burger Chef in the car when I was pretty small and there was still Burger Chef. I remember eating at Mr. Steak and Golden Bear and visiting the TV repair store numerous times and staring at the vacuum tubes.

Weekends were spent here every weekend and summers too, long drives along burnoffs and oil tanks and wastewater treatment, past the beaux arts train station in Gary, past roadside motels (were there tourists?) like Al & Sally's, like the now bombed-out looking one at the junction of US 12 and US 20 and the toll road about which I once overheard someone on the South Shore Line look at out the window and say, "What is this, fucking Beirut?"

I didn't appreciate it then and how could I; I was a kid and all my friends were having birthday parties with each other on the weekends, later they were going downtown to Water Tower Place or Marshall Field's to harass salesladies into giving them perfume samples or something. I felt I was missing out. I was being dropped off in a beachside town with a confused identity (it, not me, but maybe that too) and driven to the library on weekends to buy 10-cent used copies of Reader's Digest and check out Trixie Belden books and sit in yellow-lacquered-blue-carpeted-inside egg chairs and read and read until the time had passed. (Later, when I was older and allowed to be both more independent and more trashy, I would just get dropped off at the mall on the way into town and buy a copy of Soap Opera Digest and a cookie from the Mrs. Fields' knockoff in the food court, but soon my interest in complete garbage must've turned to boys, or sports, or something.)

There used to be a big grocery store out on 20 called Bernacchi's, it was more like a ramshackle giant tented farmer's market than the corporate Jewel Foods (still abandoned) in town and I clearly remember the meat maps; every now and then my mom and I would go and I'd be handed an enormous cookie at the checkout counter, something I in my childhood thought was a magical prize associated specifically with making it through that huge grocery store. I thought it was from the grocery store as a gift. This possibly explains my misguided view of the world's generosity to this day.

Other free things procured in town were lollipops, anytime I was dragged along to the liquor store. This was a feature of booze shops in Chicago as well, but they were especially forthcoming with the Spangler's Dum-Dums lollipops at both the Michigan City Liquors store (next to where my mom and I once saw a guy get hit by a car) and at the later-established, more upscale (for Indiana) King Richard's. Seriously, if you bring your kid into the liquor store with you they get a free lollipop. Nice positive associations, you weird drug pusher storekeepers you.

Until the late '80s Michigan City's pleasures were limited (to my knowledge) strictly to Marquette Mall and the beach. Marquette Mall is now a dead mall, and the beach is as wonderful as ever. Coastal people occasionally engage in debate over whether the Great Lakes really have legitimate beaches. They can go shove it — my beach is the best one I've ever been to and there's no nasty saltwater either.

At some point the semi-lost-soul-Hoosier/part-time-Chicagoan town decided a bit of economic stimulation was needed, so they accepted a bid for one of the country's first outlet malls to be built over by the NIPSCO plant (not a "nuke-ular" plant, though it looks the same as one) and the Jaymar Ruby Sans-a-Belt slacks factory. The outlet mall boasted startling new brand names the likes of which 46360 had never seen before, like Benneton. City folk made Michigan City more of a destination and the mall back by the highway started to fail. Soon the novelty gift store, the creepy hidden video arcade, the Claire's Boutiques, B. Dalton, and the corn dog stand would all be gone. Today the anchor stores are still there (Sears, Carson Pirie-Scott, and JC Penney's) but the bulk of Marquette Mall is abandoned save for an oversized Hallmark shop, a 365-days-a-year Christmas store, and a couple of cell phone stands. I tried to buy shoelaces there this past weekend, just to see if I could, and despite the two or three extant shoe stores, I had to go across the parking lot to Walgreen's. Walgreens used to be inside the mall but moved outside to a detached space more convenient to passing car traffic, and only a few steps across the road from the liquor store that used to be Pizza Hut and also sells drum equipment.

I had my first swim lessons and my first positive day camp experiences at the Michigan City YMCA down on Coolspring. I was in Polliwogs or Guppies or Silverfish or whatever and have been, as a result of this place, a swimmer my whole life. I also had a gymnastics class here where the instructor, no doubt fourteen though I'm sure I thought she was ancient, was so mad at me once she insisted smoke would come out of her ears. I was terrified. I had a swim at the Michigan City Y just last year and I don't think the locker room had been updated or even cleaned since I was a Polliwog. The pool was fairly disgusting too. Yesterday they had their YMCA charter revoked.

It was in high school, aided by the acquisition of a driver's license and also a growing pinball habit, that I started exploring the town in earnest. I found the bad neighborhoods of Michigan City — sketchy video arcades on Michigan Avenue and abandoned gas stations out on the west side of town, all kinds of places I had never seen while shuttling with my parents from the old McDonald's to the place you could rent VHS tapes and the VCRs to watch them on (or, hey, laserdiscs!) in the back of the stereo store by K-Mart. The General Cinemas 1-6 was also a popular spot for me, except for the time I got dropped off there without money and was too scared to cross the busy intersection of US 421 and US 20 to get to the mall and kill the next 90 minutes til my parents came back to pick me up.

In more recent years the city took another stab at economic development by deciding to allow a casino. A casino! According to state law this had to be an offshore enterprise, meaning, a boat, meaning, they were going to have to build a ship in Trail Creek. A casino riverboat was built, nothing seaworthy, but it can sail out a few feet away from the dock once every hour and stay legal with the feds. I went out to it once, played maybe one slot machine, and ran back ashore before I was trapped in the creek for an hour.

The casino is so "successful" that it has displaced many of the poorer people's homes and allowed for the creation of a four-story parking garage, something I never thought we'd need in Michigan City. They have also expanded the riverboat by building a larger structure around the existing boat, kind of like when you fix your pool by pouring another layer of concrete inside it. More and more unexplained and hideous construction happens on it all the time.

A million other things happened and disappeared here too: Fried's Cat Shelter, whose name became more than ironic when the entire thing was destroyed by fire, the Franklin Pharmacy whose animated neon mortar-and-pestle are now echoed bizarrely in the modern logo of the newly erected Walgreens across the street, the crazy-arc architecture of Al's Grocery Store that became Frank's Nursery and Crafts that became Goodwill that became, I think, abandoned, the hobbit-renovated brick brewery on 8th street that nature has nearly fully reclaimed, the strip mall that came and went at Lake Shore Drive and Lake, the Hot'n'Now burger drive-thru that is now a delicious low-rent Mexican joint.

Wherefore art thou, weird old timey Michigan City? Not to worry, the world's most angularly modern library is still thriving, the creepy observation tower still looms atop the depressing zoo, the dunes still roll even in the shadows of teetering apartment developments, and yes, most importantly, the electric trains from Chicago still go right down the middle of the street.

A couple years ago friends of mine started moving towards Michigan City, which completely confused me and changed the landscape from one of isolation and escape (and, occasionally, being trapped) to one into which my adult life, my social and musical world, had leaked bizarrely over. Really? You guys live up the road a piece and stop at the new Meijer by the highway on your way into town? And Joe — who has salvaged telltale yellow castoff shelves from that hypermodern library I spent most of my youth in, and stocked them with actual good books and magazines I doubt anyone else in the entire town is in possession of — he and those shelves now inexplicably lives just a short winter's wander from my parents' place, a much cozier place to end up on, say, New Year's or many other other eves, rather than in the big city. (You can walk down the main street of our neighborhood if you like, or you can also walk home via the beach. If you have never had a friend whose house you could walk home from in the middle of the night via the beach, let me tell you — you are really missing out.)

I can't imagine what will happen to this place, this strange commercial failure with sand in its shoes, revitalized and pillaged both by the serpentine stream of Illinois license plates that imbue it with cash and deplete it of long-term character. The changing commercial landscape is novelty and America both: it falls apart in ways that maybe it should, but that are also saddening in that now-every-viable-business-is-an-IHOP-by-the-interstate kind of way. (Tres Indiana.) And yes, I'm a nostalgic fool, but wouldn't you be if you grew up in fractional summers by the hot wind blowing in the dune grass, just down the beach from monkey island?

man on platform: "this train isn't going to smith-ninth*, is it?"

liz: "i don't think so"

man on platform: "okay, thanks." [pause] "you're pregnant?"

liz: "uh, no."

man on platform: "oh. because your coat."

liz [silently curses new flared-waist coat]: "no."

man on platform: "oh."

liz: "that's why you never ask women if they are pregnant. because if you're wrong it's kind of insulting."

man on platform: "oh well i thought because of your coat, you were pregnant."

[pause]

man on platform: "well maybe someday."

*it was

Maybe it's weird to be starstruck by Will Rigby but i haven't had that much fun watching someone play drums in a long time. My first dB's records were cassettes purchased from Second-Hand Tunes on 53rd St. in Chicago; I started with Repercussion and worked my way backwards one record, having already figured out that "Spy in the House of Love", heard seemingly nightly on WXRT, the local Adult Album Alternative-format station, was really just a confusing entree into two of the most perfect records I would know. The tapes were used, and I think they were chrome — full of treble and hiss, in a way well-suited to the range Peter Holsapple could then hit. That pyramid and ball graphic on the cover of Repercussion still vexes me to this day.

So imagine my surprise when 16-some-odd years later, having never really been, you know, old enough to see them play, I am standing in Maxwell's in Hoboken at a Yo La Tengo Hanukkah show wondering why people are not pressed up against the stage like sardines, getting ribs cracked by the crush, the club management needing to call in beefy security guys to control the fracas, etc.

Their loss — I'm up close for a mini-set of handsful of things I wanted to hear, combining years of memorization with the confusing reality of looking at people play in person for the first time. That Holsapple wasn't mop-topped but rather shaved-and-moustache-and-earringed shook my ability to cognitively dissociate for awhile, but then I realized that I was really there to watch Will Rigby drum, and that for all the perfect songwriting and strange guitar and pleasures of watching Chris Stamey screw up his face in a scowl whenever he played something wrong — it was the strange mixture of grace and assault and skill and goofiness going on behind the guitars that I couldn't get over. I feel like such a dumbass for just now realizing, as I said to a friend that it's was never actually a choice of Holsapple versus Stamey, but that Rigby was the star all along.
My friend replied, "duh."

And the thing about the dB's is that for all their pop's almost-innocence it's still a little strange (frenzied and directed, elementary and yet cryptic) and the way they go about things — like the need to make "Amplifier" jazzy-jammy —is in so many ways not the thing I would predict. It is not always where I hope it will land, but in some ways it's that odd precarity that makes hitting the mark so blinding. They can play the guitar on "Neverland" better now than on the record! Who knew!

The sixteen-year-old me would not have expected any of my life to have happened the way it did between now and then, but she also would've been pretty happy to know that in 2007 I'd be shoving a dB's setlist in my back pocket and demanding to shake Will Rigby's hand. You never know what the world will bring.

( more pix here )

i am in new york city and it is wonderful. i eat too much pizza because i forget to eat in the morning and then walk around all day and drink coffee and realize i didn't have any lunch or dinner. you can take your pizza on the train though, and ride around with it.

i am seeing amazing people who make me feel gladly received and cared about and like they want to have fun with me. many of them i have known for years and years and years, and the others are people who i want to know for years. i miss the home people terribly but i feel so lucky for this welcome.

in the eight days i have been here i have slept in queens brooklyn brooklyn, among cats and dogs and near bagels and indian buffets and streets i have watched change for a dozen years and places i have been kissed. i am settled down for a little while now in jackson heights, where the streets are glittery and i am home at mark and elena's long enough to water my smuggled-in houseplant and buy my own yogurt. when one is in the midst of total flux and an endless series of huge decisions, a little of your own yogurt goes a long way.

the trains here are space-age modern, not all of them, but the constantly morphing strip-map on the N train will blow your mind unless you hate it like my friend kyle. the moving sidewalks at the court square subway station make me reminiscent of a toronto that once was — do you remember the guy who read the poem at pontiac quarterly about the death of spadina station's moving sidewalk? all poetry should be like that.

(the opposite of the space trains are those adjustable-depth platforms at 59th street. seriously, like all that is magical in new york, i hope i never stop being amazed by them.)

i am learning a lot about the BQE. it is terrible. potholes try to launch you into cement barricades; the cars drive both too fast and too slow, and it is more rogue road than interstate highway. but anticity though cars may be, driving along the east river and blinking dumbfoundedly at the view is hard to beat. "i get all this?" i keep thinking. "i get to live here?"

and i come home now to the figuring-out of queens: these street numbers make no fucking sense at all, so it is instinct, homing, remembering these christmas lights or that railway overpass, and wandering happily from unusual place to unusual place, mysteriously ending up in a food fair supermarket at 11pm talking to your west-coast-best-friend about how getting over someone who is dead has its secretly easy parts, the ones that have to do with suddenness and change and clean slate and writing your own ending, and, hopefully, your new beginning.

in new york city they talk more than they do in toronto: not just blowhardism, but people are willing to approach you. with oliver i discussed the issue of my magical hat. case in point: i have a hat right now that is very beautiful. people love it. in new york city both friends and strangers exclaim at the hat, whether across a crowded cafe or just holding the door open for some lady in a bank machine lobby. we decided that this is the difference between cities:

new york person: "I like your hat!"
toronto person: [avoids eye contact, whispers to friend after person walks past, "she has a nice hat"]
san francisco person: [thinks about the hat, then goes home and writes blog post about seeing a nice hat, where no one who wears the nice hat will ever see it]

i do still wish new york were in canada, but the strange comfort of being around people as outgoing (intrusive?) and warm (too intimate?) and chatty (annoying?) as myself is so wildly comforting and familiar that it surprises me how far away i'd gotten from that climate. i was in some ways so out of my element and i didn't even know. i don't blame all of canada, or even give all of new york city credit, but there's something about being able to look people in the eye and tell them it's a beautiful day without them getting completely vibed out that makes you feel like you're home.

i will write again soon.
love
liz

Nighttime rain makes even Yonge Street pretty as you're driving off in the distance, or rather, making a slow exit in sluggish Toronto traffic after piles of goodbyes and erratic tears (who cries at their mechanic's?) and days and days of not sleeping enough OR packing enough because you are in total, total denial about the magnitude of all you are leaving.

I've focused so much on who am going away from rather than where, but there was no denying that, even though it is the right thing for me to leave, it felt totally absurd and strange to be walking home from College Street (so easy, so close!) for the last last time, to be bending off of Eastern Avenue to Richmond Street tonight, getting gas at a station I have never been to ever, and creeping up on the Gardiner just after deflecting a window-tapping panhandler. (Aw, Toronto — in some ways you're just like the day I met you.)

I have seen my city (it will always be a place that is mine) change so much in the last nine years, in ways I can barely enumerate and in any case would bore most people who aren't also in love with it. But what I can point to the most is a way of looking at Toronto, a way of looking at anyone's city, that has shifted. Rather than seeing a city as a structure in which people live and work and party, I think so many Torontonians (and it's not just a function of getting older, it's not just a function of me knowing particular people) have realized their city is theirs to claim, chart, explore, play in, create, mythologize, and boast about. When I moved to the city in 1998 everyone was totally weird about it. "But you could live in the US!" they'd say. "You moved...here?"

I don't doubt that almost all of those people feel differently right now. From nine years ago to now, it became cool to like Toronto. It didn't used to be, back when everyone raised outside the city resented it for its (even still modest Canadian) national dominance, and everyone who grew up there just whined that they were sick of it. I felt it immediately to be a great North American city — one I moved to with only a handful of visits under my belt — and tons of my friends from the States did too, telling me over and over again what a great place it was I had chosen to to live. Yet it was eleven months before I met an actual Canadian in Toronto who understood why I would have chosen to abandon my Yankee rights to live in this place. He too loved Toronto and got it like no one else I had, or indeed, would ever meet. I ended up marrying him.

It is important for me to call out some specific people who shaped my experience in and affection for an amazing city that it pains me to leave tonight.

Don Pyle, who adopted me as a pen pal sometime after I started sending letters, cookies, to Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet in 1992, was the first of them. I arrived in Toronto to a legacy of his stories and anecdotes and snippets of people he'd known forever — driving around in his Volvo was like getting the inside scoop on every musician and storefront and charming thing in the city. He knows four million thousand people and when I first moved to town he even took me to his mother's for Easter dinner in the Junction, marshmallow bunnies standing up on top of pineapple upside-down cake and all. I can point very clearly to a conversation in Ann Arbor when I was living there at the end of my school career and hosted Phono Comb for the night: Don, Beverley and Reid talked me though my fantasy of wanting to move to their city, and during explanations of everything from the weird behaviour of grocery stores to the magic of the Toronto Islands, I realized I was pretty much convinced. It was a pivotal moment and one that was echoed and affirmed in every inspiring and awesome conversation with him I have ever had. (This sounds like we are no longer going to have brunches where he points out things like how EMBASSY cleaners was turned into KEMBASS with a K and a black plastic square and some chutzpah, but they'll just be less frequent and when he tells me incredible things about Toronto I'll just be more sad that we don't share it in quite the same way anymore.)

Jeff Chapman, aka Ninjalicious, who I married and to whom my understanding of to what depths one can truly love a city is credited, came along just as I was finding my own footing. And suddenly I was over top and underneath an amazing city, a place that to Jeff, who skirted around its edges for years in Pickering, romanced and adored in what seemed like every possible spot one could physically penetrate. Through Infiltration, I read his adventures — that you could sneak up and walk through Union Station's stunning glass galleries, that you could crawl underneath the city through storm drains and map it in your own amazing psychological, three-dimmesional way. I read his seditious and inspiring words for a year before bothering to get in touch to try to make friends, and boy was I not disappointed.

When Jeff died it was much more complicated to love Toronto: I felt like he had shown me so much of it in such an unusual way that he had in some sense painfully inscribed each walk and fountain and stairwell for me. He used to tell me that one of the best things about urban exploration was that you felt you had such a special bond with the buildings you'd seen the secrets of; that you learned about your city in a way that made it so much more truly yours. I resented him for showing me something so beautiful and then abandoning me to enjoy it without him alongside, but that didn't make Toronto any less grand.

But through the course of those nine years I lived there, things had shifted, not just through Jeff's kind of influence but that of other people who had made it cool to like the place you live, rather than hip to complain about how everything sucks all the time like in most cities. We loved Toronto together and suddenly there were weird art projects and subway parties and public space initiatives that didn't seem just political or just fun but part of a way of seeing Toronto as malleable and loveable, as a place whose history and stature could be woven into our crazy dreams.

I found myself walking (not nearly enough, in the end) with a loosely organized bunch who attempted to interpret and proscribe what the city meant to them through wandering. The first time I went, the guy in the fancy scarf didn't quite have me convinced that the walks were more than just people strolling through ravines and subdivisions talking about Guided by Voices or freelance writing or whatever — but two years later I know I had only scratched the surface, have only scratched the surface, of the ways Shawn Micallef wants people to love Toronto. To re-consider Toronto at a difficult (personal) time through thinking about public space, psychogeography, and simply letting the city tell itself to you in all its many ways, was something I needed dearly. Shawn — whether on a late-night boondoggle drive to Garbage Mountain in Etobicoke or any of dozens of mass text-message harangues to meet him at the beach — continually nourished and pushed at me to take the city's gifts more seriously, both by surrounding oneself in its stories and by simply not being passive in responding to them. I could not have had a better tour guide to constantly remind me how good we had it, and though I am moving to another city I feel deeply for, Shawn, I have not turned my back on loving Toronto and I will not let you down.

I think what I learned to love most about Toronto in the end wasn't just that it was charming and liveable and full of culture and pointy Victorian houses and vaulted glitter-lined expressways and secret waterfronts, but that it is of a scale that feels like you can fully apprehend it. It's a great city with the benefit of being such a humane size (and condition) that you can feel real ownership of it as a citizen — I remarked to my friend recently that the town is so small that I know the guy who makes the recorded announcements on the subway platform. But it's really not population size as much as it is attitude and availability; whether you're writing an amazing historical novel born from a love affair with the city archives or simply watching streets metamorphosize, it's possible to feel not just belonging to Toronto but like it belongs to you. I only hope I can carve out a section of overwhelming New York to feel this proprietary about, this proud, this awed on such an intimate scale, as I have with Toronto. But if perspective is the right place to start, then I think I have had amazing people help teach me to remember what I already know about the greatness of the urban landscape. I have a new place to make mine, and even if 8,000,000 people have already shoved in line ahead of me, I think I might know a few tricks to do it right.

Running into Chris (20th St)
World Trade Center made of staples
Phone call on Fulton Street, Saturday morning
Running into Fred (G train platform), and then running into Davey with Fred (donut store)
Post-Sonic Youth pizza at Anna Maria's (2nd annual)
Kyle and Ed on shift together at Cafe Grumpy
Carrie Atwood!!
Swimming at Coney Island
Running into Robert (Union Square)
The paper hats on the Russian girls at Net Cost

Oh, and you know. Everything else.

(A version of this was given as a speech at a Hospice Toronto event in June; they're good, give them money. It's a little straightforward and heavy, so if you really like reading about coffee and rock and roll music just be patient for a week or two. I struggled with putting this up, actually, but some had asked to see it, and though it's a bit squeamish to be so revealing and earnest, I thought a lot about how much braver it is to just talk about shit like this than it is to pretend it doesn't happen. Also, a really funny chain-smoking guy approached me after I read this and said something like, "You know, that was great, you really nailed it, but you made me feel like crap, so screw you." Which I thought was pretty awesome. )

As a writer, I suspect I spend a higher than average amount of time trying to—let's be honest—control memory. I can write about my memories to fix them clearly, and to make them into things I like. By using words to shape and color, to navigate and avoid, I can try my very best to make permanent the finest points and turn the lighting down on things that I do not like to dwell on. But one thing I've learned from the experience of loss is that the act of remembering does not often bend so easily to our will, and that, like the worst—and best—moments of life itself, memories crop up when we do not want them at all, or worse, at those times we feel we need them most, they may fail to come.

Though all seasons can be nostalgic, summer for me is loaded with childhood outings and the essence of cross-country roadtrips, long walks, and the adventure and potential of nights that never seem to end. But for the past two years the feeling of summer has also been loaded with the bittersweetness of gradual loss: summer is now also the season in which my husband Jeff, at 31 years old, passed away on a warm August night. That the weather that day was perfect was so strange to me, but an inseperable part of understanding how the good and bad in this world—those cycles that are magical and natural and unavoidable—will always coexist. That summer he died had been an amazing one for us: we spent months travelling and goofing off and simply being with each other, with friends, trying to appreciate all we had, by which I mean—all we had left. But despite the cloud of illness, we made the most of our time those months. And as his days became clearly shortened, remembering everything correctly became all I could think about.

I started to write things down: everything he said, the way I felt, those moments of change and fear within the hospital walls. My desire to record everything was obvious: it was a way of holding on, of staying attached to what little I had left of Jeff, and it was also a way of trying to stay attached to reality, to my own storyline. I knew this would be among the most trying and dizzying times in my life, and I somehow believed that if I didn't write things down and try to fix those memories in words for later, I might just never recover some of them at all.

I kept a laptop in the hospital while I stayed with Jeff those last days, and recorded things that doctors said as well as things that Jeff said—which towards the end of his disease process were hilariously bizarre. He said crazy things—literally crazy—that despite the sadness of their circumstance brought me great delight. "What would you like me to bring you for dinner?" I'd ask him, knowing his distaste for hospital food. "Oh," he'd pause for a moment. "A whale?"

Now how could I ever want to forget something as funny as that?

Yet the other things I wrote down at that period were more difficult. How scared I was of the days to come. The things that doctors said that angered me, that I couldn't deal with hearing yet. The things he said while in great pain. And yet all of them were important to me as part of this world I wanted to remember—it was mine, after all. Mine and his.

But in the months after Jeff died, indeed, in the years, I was surprised at how memory failed to work for me, despite my best efforts to write and remember and cherish. Almost immediately I began to feel so distant from the sweetest memories I had gone back to again and again from my years with him—they were murky when I wanted them to be clear, or there were times when I tried to go back to those good memories and then rejected them once I realized they were going to be too painful. The act of remembering had become more difficult than I had ever anticipated. Wasn't it something within my own control? Weren't the memories mine, still in there deep down, things I needed to acknowledge as what made me who I am? Why couldn't I enjoy them on my own terms, anyway?

I tried hard in those early months to remember things how and when I wanted to, and during that time I mixed the worlds of healing and remembering together. If only I could get my mental story straight, I kept thinking, I would be healing in the way that I wanted. If only I could call up the memories that gave me solace, I could be with them and feel comforted by them. Weren't we lucky, anyway? Wasn't it better to have loved?

But my thoughts worked just the same for memories I didn't want to have: If only I could walk down the street and not be hurt by the memories of being on that same street with him, I could feel like the city and my life were my own again. If only I could experience the nice things in life without them being so bittersweet, I could begin to rebuild.

But rebuilding and remembering are different, of course. Often for us to begin to rebuild after a loss, our ability to remember is shut down. Biologically. On purpose, to help us make it through the days and nights, though we may not realize it at the time. Those deep in grief may not even be able to remember their phone numbers for awhile—and it can be a horrible feeling to think that along with the loss you've suffered of a loved one, you can't even call up their memory clearly. I spent a lot of time thinking about whether I was too sad, or sad enough, or remembering too much, or too little. And in all of these moments was a key misunderstanding: I thought that remembering was something I should control.

And though remembering is indeed an act, the times it has served me best are when it has been a passive one. When I have let it direct itself. It was when I finally learned to stop searching so hard, and judging the outcome of those searches, that the process of remembering became a peaceful one. Remembering does keep us attached to the past, but one need not force it or constrain it—and believe me, as a writer, that's a tough thing to admit. Because that same biological process that tries to shield us from what we cannot handle in one moment is there on our side in the next moment. Those memories we're searching for aren't lost, nor the sensation behind them. They fill our every movement and direct our paths in the future, whether they are in our conscious mind or not. In that way, remembering is a bigger thing than I had ever expected: these memories of our loved ones, indeed of life, do constitute us. They are what helps us rebuild. But they may come to us on their own schedule, and impossible as it is to believe, it's the biggest step of all to know and trust that it will happen.

So for those who see remembering as a process they have not yet mastered, as an action that is painful or sneaks up on them, or as an unfolding mystery: you're all right. Remembering is a thing that is dark and sinewy and not easy, and like anything else in this world, doesn't always work quite how you want it to. But that it works mysteriously is just as much a blessing as the memories themselves: sometimes in years or weeks or even days after the hardest times of life, a memory will emerge that you once deemed too painful to spend time with, and it will seem amazing and special and like a gift. You'll walk down a street you had been long avoiding, visit a friend in the hospital you never wanted to set foot in again, or simply pause in a moment and be overcome with remembering in a way that, once painful, has now become sweet. Most of you know this already, of course. But no matter how well I'm aware of its magic, remembering always surprises me a little. Its tricks sneak up when I least expect them, adding shades of colour to the present, and reminding me of all that I am in those mysterious little moments when I wasn't expecting to feel. Memory left to its own devices is backward-looking and forward-giving, and completely outside of our control—and exactly what feeling life is for.

5 Canadian provinces + 1 United State + 1 coffee tourist chick = one terribly caffiened-up travelogue. Those who hate coffee, please skip this... or perhaps consider taking up coffee. It puts you in a good mood, you get more done, and it's cheaper than meth.

By way of preface, I should explain a quick thing or two to the non-coffee-psycho public about what the real pleasure is of coffee tourism. It's not just actually about drinking awesome coffee. Or being addicted to a mood-elevating substance. Or making friends. Or feeling the community of total geekdom. Though—really—those would be enough. The best thing I've found about these mini-adventures (and I've said it before) is the paths they encourage you to take through a foreign town, that arbitrary goal you're looking to achieve which takes you round and about and into neighbourhoods that have complementary and curious businesses, past sunny streets and peaceful rivers and hidden parks with miniature trains. Like my friends who look for good skate spots whenever they're in a new town, the seemingly random quest to do what you like to do anyway in a new environment inevitably leads to some better, deeper connection with the town you're passing through. Plus all that community and new friends and tasty coffee stuff I mentioned? Yeah. Okay. That's pretty great too.

So. Something was wrong with me when I planned a trip to Vancouver to tag along on tour with Awesome Color, and it took me several hours to realize, "Hey! If I go to Vancouver...I could probably drink some coffee while I'm there!" I'm not sure what I was even thinking—I could go to Vancouver just to drink coffee. I started collecting tips from my ex-Vancouver barista pals in Toronto (the outspoken dwelltimer Nick Brown, and ex-Elysian man of mystery Matt Lee) and began composing emails. "Dear Lindsay Parker," I wrote, "Think you could show me around?"

So it turns out it takes about 8 hours door to door from Mercury Organic Espresso Bar in Toronto to the Elysian Room in Vancouver, via subway, three buses, and WestJet. I'd seen pictures of the Elysian Room before, and while it's not much to look at, it's neighbourhoody and tranquil—and drinking your espresso in full view of the mountains (well, over top of the BMW dealership...) is pretty impressive to a flatlander like myself. I inconspicuously enjoyed my first macchiato as I perked back up from the long journey, and when I went back to the counter to ask for something off the Clover, something I asked about the Ethiopian gave me away.

"You're here to meet up with Lindsay, aren't you?"

Ah, so it was going to be that kind of trip.

[The Elysian Room]
For all the reputation of the Pacific Northwest and all the anticipation I'd stored up, it was easy to come to the same conclusion all my pre-trip advisors had when they counseled me: really? Elysian is the only place you need to go in Vancouver. If you're downtown, the Artigianos can get you by—but if you want a seriously amazing coffee (and, yes, a view of the car dealership) served by knowledgeable, awesome people well into the evening: you're going to want to stop searching. 49th Parallel on the Synesso, a handsome menu of three rotating single origins to try on the Clover, friendly if guarded baristas who you can talk into comparing a Clover cup of Aricha Selection Seven with a french press... what more could you want really? In my multiple trips to Elysian I met super people—hi Matt! hi Alastair!—and mysteriously ran into someone I'd already met in Toronto (hi Les!) and drank an endless string of perfect macchiatos. Will I get in trouble if I say that the Aricha warn't all that? (it was when Matt Lee brought it into Toronto and we had it on the Solo...but it came off the Clover kinda flat, which is a shame for an expensive, theoretically amazing coffee that no one can stop babbling about because it partook of the miracle of air travel rather than a slow, stalemaking boat, but I digress.) The perfect coffee at the perfect quiet waypoint in a lovely city (that I hadn't been to for 21 years, my god). Thanks dudes!

[Caffe Artigiano]
After outing me at the Elysian Room, Lindsay Parker—coffee queen of YVR—led me on a delightful stroll into downtown. We were going to check out the Hornby Street Artigiano—the one worth going to, apparently, or, well, supposedly, depending on how your drink comes out, I guess. Spacious and adult-looking. A big chalkboard describing a a Cup of Excellence Colombian one might wish to sample of the Clover. And, is that a FIVE-group LaMarzocco? Too bad I couldn't get a good shot of espresso though.

Lindsay and I had a real nice walk along the waterfront, however—before returning to Elysian and making a plan for some touring about the next morning.

"Meet up at 6:30 at the corner of Broadway and Commercial?" she asked—and anyone who knows me will realize that's a completely psychotic proposition. But y'know what? Jet lag was on my side and I knew I was going to be up—plus, that'd give us more time to play around Lindsay's work—so why the hell not?

I was there on time, and we headed straight to...

[Prado]
So white! So clean! So Euro! And yet, so strange that they thought the Ethiopian was a really "dark roast" and that they were so apprehensive to use the (beautiful, on loan from 49th Parallel) pourover station. I didn't try an espresso. I wouldn't mind hanging out here for an afternoon, but I'm not yet sure about what I would drink. Rumours on the street were that the baristas are inconsistent, but the snacks were sure good... something about the room reminded me a little bit of my home cafe, Mercury, if only it were really clean and white and run by friendly dykes.

[Continental]
First thing the barista says to Lindsay as we get to the counter is, "So, are you slumming it today, or what?" Once she'd been recognized it got a little subtly weird for everybody—my macchiato was pretty bitter, but everyone just really wanted to be nice here. The coffee bar itself looks like an espresso machine! And apparently they roast. Worth another try, but I won't go out of my way next time.

We skipped JJ Bean and whoever else on "The Drive" because it seemed about time to get to the money shot(s)—a little tour of Lindsay's work, 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters, what's that you say? The best roaster in Canada? Mmm, let's hop the SkyTrain to Burnaby, shall we?

[49th Parallel Coffee Roasters]
Roasteries may not sound like much to look at ('cept for when those beans go shooting vertically up the vacuum tubes) but if you get off on big machinery and good smells, it's always totally fun to go check out the birthplace of a delicious coffee. Okay, not the birthplace really. Maybe the finishing school. (Though I guess that bad metaphor conjures up the idea of a coffee bean balancing a book on its head...) I dug checking out all the different equipment because I am a nerd, and because I am an even bigger nerd, I was really happy to see all the boxes ready to get shipped to Cafe Grumpy in Manhattan. (Hi guys!)

Lots of fun toys here: owner Vince Piccolo was busy playing around on a new lever machine they had in—busy enough that I didn't get to see anybody try out the Mistral. We had some shots of Epic (too fresh! oops, that's what you get inside the roastery...) and then Mike came in to tell us that a roast was about to drop.

49th's big red Renegade roaster is pretty fun to watch—and after a little bean-swirlng action, Lindsay and I returned to the coffee-drinking room to cup some Kenya AA Kihenia and something else that, for the love of god, tasted like pine and dirt, but I forget what it was, off of the Clover. The Kenya AA was super-lemony—delicious! And this is what I took home and drank on the porch for the next week after my return. Thanks so much for the petit tour and fun morning, Lindsay, Vince and Mike!

The next day would be my last in Vancouver, so on my way over to the Elysian Room from my friends' house (hi new friends Mike and Andrea!) I intentionally took a route past...

[Wicked Cafe]
Oops, how did I almost not go to this place? Admittedly (and this is weird to say since I am a Chicago girl and am always thrilled to drink Intelligentsia coffee at home) I found the prospect of visiting a random Intelly cafe in the Pacific Northwest a little underwhelming. Until I went in and got kind of into it—and then I placed my order with the friendly-looking tattooed dude behind the counter.

Liz: "Could I have a cappuccino please?"
Barista: "Sure"
Liz (while pulling out camera): "And um, would it be possible to have that with Kid O?"
Barista: Are you that girl from Toronto?

Arthur Wynne, world fancypants barista/mixologist, totally caught me out! We talked about the Toronto scene for a bit (oh, you were just emailing my dear friend Amber this morning about her plans for the latte art competition back home? okay...) and I watched him try to pour six or seven *inverse* rosettas...and come pretty close. Arthur took his lunch break to sit with me and jaw, and was one of the most gracious and friendly and knowledgeable people I'd encounter (a distinction tough to make on a tour of warm and enthusiastic coffee people). Upon hearing that my rock-and-roll-tagalong travels would take me through the Canadian Prairies, Arthur not only had recommendations for me—he immediately got on the phone and started making me coffee dates! Amazing.

Sadly, my jaunt through Calgary would be ill-timed to make a planned meeting at Phil & Sebastian, despite trying to get Sebastian on the phone just before they closed up at the Calgary Farmer's Market for the day... apparently the guys are rocking Hines coffee on a LaMarzocco and Clovering other delights. Too bad Calgary sucked so much otherwise, this probably would have elevated my opinion! Next time (if there is one)...

Edmonton, though, was another story... we rolled into town on Saturday night, me, sleepy from a hotel floor in the middle of Nowhere, Alberta... but I was supposed to check out Three Bananas coffee. Would it be open so late in some random town? Oh yes, yes it would.

[Three Bananas]
Right downtown, this startlingly good Intelly-based shop (oh, hello!) sits inexplicably as the near-centrepiece of a civic square—it's open late weekend nights as the square fills up for free movies in the summer (when I was there, there was even a bouncy castle out there for kids...) and is nothing but sunlight and windows and pretty blue tile. Delicious (if not earth-moving) coffee, and a super-kind owner (hi Geoff!) and staff (hi Clemens!) comprise the beginning of a cutting-edge coffee scene in, yep, Edmonton. (Matt Lee tells me he was instrumental in suggesting they take the wooden boards off the front of their cherry red LaMarzocco, too...good call, buddy. People *like* to see sexy equipment!) They also had food, and wireless, good couches, and... well, the only bad thing was that they weren't open til 11am on Sunday so I could go get three more coffees. See you again, Three Bananas!

Onward to provinces west where I would stumble into the Ukrainian espresso legacy of Saskatoon!

First stop:
[Museo Coffee + Espresso]
I was trying to figure this one out in advance—fancy coffee—in an art gallery?—open til 6pm on a Sunday—in Saskatoon? Yep. Totally. I called around 4:30 (maybe I thought it was 5:30—the time zone changes somewhere around here and everyone I was travelling with was confused) and asked when the shop would be closing up for the night. Unlike at Phil & Sebastian, where I was told it was not worth showing up at 4:50 when they planned to tear down at 5, I was cheerily told by Museo: "Oh, we'll be open until six... or later... we're usually around for awhile. Just come by." And come by I did, partly by city bus and partly by pleasant riverwalk, through the park and museum land of strangely nice Saskatoon. Inside the Mendel Art Gallery (pay what you can) is this little cafe, then: clean, fancy, subtle, and solid, and who's that behind the controls? Our man Jimmy O., of online muckraking fame and well-coiffed hair—enthusiastic, personable and happy to show an otherwise innocent Torontonian the best of his trade, that is, many shots of Epic espresso, some gold-filter pourover single origin jazz, and weirdly—he even talked me into an Americano. By 7:00 Saskatchewan time (or was it 6?!) I was flying high. A really handsome little setup this is, and though it's embarrassing to me that the art gallery was an afterthought, I saw some amazing exhibits on my way away from the great coffee debauch of Saskatoon. A really good visit that transcended more than one preconceived notion. See you at the Nationals, Jimmy?

Second stop:
[Caffe Sola]
Right downtown (basically behind our hotel, or was it behind the bus station?), Caffe Sola—a former Jimmy O. venture—looked promising enough. But my coffee—sorta bad, and apparently roasted in the Yukon (what?)—was only memorable for its, you know. Proximity to the bus station. Hmmm....

I missed drinking coffee in Winnipeg completely. Though according to many, I did not miss a thing at all. There was a place called the Pastry Castle that I encountered just after dinner—I believe they had tent cards with pix of latte art from their supplier, Fratelli Coffee. I'm guessing the Britpop band of the same name is better... onto the American detour.

Suddenly I wasn't in Canada anymore! I was in Minnesota! Could it be true that there was amazing coffee in St. Paul, if only I could coerce my friend Emily into driving us there? It was true! Oh great day! We first rolled up to...

[Kopplin's Coffee]
Oh, man. I did very little research on this place—and totally missed the Barista Magazine profile on it in the April/May issue too—but when I saw the sandwich board outside enticing people to come drink off the Clover (there's a Clover in St. Paul!?) and the placard inside advertising this week's special feature—49th Parallel Epic Espresso (hi!)—I had a feeling I might be in the right place in this town. After some small talk with a super-shy barista (she warmed up after I told her how damn good her ristretto was...) I was intercepted by Andrew Kopplin, the owner, totally younger than me, but way more serious, and extra-friendly, dedicated, and eager to talk about everything he wants his shop to be. This place was great: the regular espresso is from excellent local roaster Paradise Roasters, and the vibe throughout this store was an unpretentious but steadfast commitment to making coffee exciting and excellent. I wish I'd had time to come back here a bunch more! But we had to head over and check out friendly competitor...

[Black Sheep Coffee Cafe]
Black Sheep Coffee Cafe ain't your small-scale hipster dive—there are lots of sheep here, it looks like you could really bring dozens of mothers and breastfeed openly—but they have fantastic coffee (Paradise Roasters, why didn't I bring home any of your coffee?) and it's the home of sixth-place US Barista Championship winner Peter Middlecamp. Now, he wasn't there, but his signature drink was...Jake was gracious enough to prepare one for me. And while I gotta say my spoon-taste of the basil-infused whipped cream was very good: I didn't really want it mixed with the caramel, espresso, and star anise that made up the intriguing little con panna Peter took to competition. Could be my irrational anti-caramel bias though. Don't ask me. I'm not qualified... Black Sheep was a great hang, though, especially what with the torrential downpours going on outside and the superior tuna melt. Sweet and unpretentious in just that perfect midwestern way—ah, feels like home.

In between all these journeys I got to spend a week at home drinking coffee where I drink it the most: well, actually these days that's my front porch. But my usual hang, as I've mentioned once or two hundred times before, is Mercury Organic Espresso Bar. They play loud good music and the baristas will flirt with you and the store is too hot in the summer and it is nowhere, anywhere near my house. But most importantly the espresso is the best in Toronto and everyone there is as excited about coffee as much, but almost exclusively more than, anyone else in the city. They will make me a gibraltar without too much attitude and when I look like I have slumped over my computer in a stupor another drink will materialize. If I bring back interesting coffee from anywhere, we will cup it on the Eva Solo right away, and when there is something wacky or interesting in the grinder (or when there is a new grinder, heck) everyone is eager to geek and share. I miss you guys when I'm travelling, and there ain't nothin like that first familiar cappuccino when I get home from a journey, and that taste of Dark City on my upper lip late at night.

That said, I got restless feet! Let's get back on the road with the band and go see what's happening in Montreal!

[Caffe Art Java]
Caffe Art Java has been the only modern specialty coffee cafe in splendid Montreal for some time—and though their website inexplicably doesn't mention this, they have a second store in addition to their original plateau location. I visited both while in town—and while the wifi, location(s), and competent coffee are certainly welcome in town, I have a hard time getting it up for the Gimme! roasts these days, and the service is so confusing at these shops (where do I order? who do I pay? where is my coffee!?!) that it's tough to feel like this could become anyone's regular coffee spot. They're going for more Euro-bistro anyway (that, and the eye-candy-doorcrasher appeal of latte art.) It's a welcome part of the city's gastro-beverage landscape, yet we can probably move our quest for good espresso in Montreal down to the old city, as guess who was poised to open the week I was in town but...

[Veritas Cafe Sante]
Sometimes you're doing your pre-travel coffee research (okay, well sometimes *I* am anyway) and you find out that where there was no cafe before, a cafe is just moments from opening in the city you are travelling to! Chowhound and Coffee Geek both revealed exciting news that a new joint—serving 49th Parallel (world domination yet, Vince?)—was just about to throw open its doors. So um... I emailed ahead and asked if they'd be open yet by the day I was in town. And though they weren't yet ready—they were willing to let me come hang out anyway (thanks, Sam, Charles, Anthony!) It's a lovely, fresh li'l spot at St-Laurent and Notre Dame: poised to serve healthy food (I guess the Montreal bistro model holds firm) in a crisp red-white-modern environment (I guess the Montreal Eurostyle model holds firm—oh, okay, they have some real nice green/brown natural-style vibes goin' on too), this place looks like it's going to be really great. Anthony—who, I learn almost immediately, is incestuously cross-pollinated with the Vancouver/Toronto coffee scene by not only being ex-Artigiano but by his romantic ties to a certain Dwelltimer's sister—was generous with time and coffee and chatter, and made drink upon drink of lingery-syrupy Epic shots, mmm, tell me again why I can't have this in Toronto? Montrealers, definitely make a point of making this your coffee local. Hopefully Veritas wlll do great.

And though I turned around and headed back to everyday life after Quebec, I don't doubt there are more awesome uncharted cafes kicking around the permafrost of this Dominion of Canada. I know for sure I missed something good at Phil & Sebastian in Calgary (perhaps one day—a real storefront?), and that damn place Victoria everyone raved about whose name I've forgotten. The Maritimes are another story completely, though while typing this I actually overheard someone talking about opening up a new specialty shop in Halifax—so. I dunno, guys—roadtrip?

. . .
Coupla links:
[More pix of everything]
[Woefully not-up-to-date but potentially amazing Espresso Map]
[Your best bet for travel research]

The afternoon of the Toronto show starts a bit forebodingly: I'm having coffee with Amber when I realize it might be good to bring the band some sandwiches. There's no food near the venue tonight—but I'm next to Arabesque, an awesome Middle Eastern cafe. We head in there and I order six sandwiches but before I leave, the biggest spring storm I've seen in ages rolls right over top of us: suddenly the lights are flickering, making it hard for the owners to spread hummus and baba ganoush, and suddenly I'm outside helping shag wicker chairs from the outdoor part of the cafe as they threaten to blow into College Street. I come home completely soaked. Screw this. I'm taking a cab to the venue... (did I mention I'm carrying an electric griddle in a duffle bag?)

...the cab, apparently, of Toronto's "fastest driver from point A to point B", a.k.a. the Grey Lion, a.k.a. a near-crazed guy who talks nonstop (when he isn't singing me the alphabet), and is excited we're going to the Phoenix because that's a rock club and he really likes rock and roll music, though not as much as Soca, because he's in a Soca band (of course) and then he starts singing that. As he runs the second or third red light, he exclaims "The city is losing a lot of revenue not charging me for all these infractions!" and cackles away. I feel like I'm on an adventure in bizarro land, only I'm actually in my own city this time.

The plan tonight is to make pancakes live onstage with Awesome Color. I'm not sure where or why we hatched this plan—Minneapolis I think. It's not uncommon for Awesome Color to have guest stars onstage with them, but since I'm not musical at all we decided to play to my strengths I guess and just have me make breakfast.

I haul my gear into the Phoenix, Awesome Color aren't here yet so I say hi to competing tour-blogger and fellow Can't Stop the Bleeding contributor David. He asks me how I got backstage and I say I still have my laminate from the week before. He pauses. "That's not supposed to work."

My planning isn't perfect but the Phoenix pancake party goes over pleasantly: I should've warmed up the griddle earlier, and possibly also brought another jar of pure maple syrup—but overall a few dozen audience members got a fresh blueberry pancake. Besides a huge number of random dudes (ladies don't really seem to attend Dinosaur concerts) I remember giving pancakes to J and David, and my friends Matthew and Zenia who were in the front row, and Pete, and Kieran, Adrian, random members of Uncut, and, finally, to Peter and Fernando, old friends in from Rochester and Northampton respectively who rolled into town mid-set—Fernando as a surprise. Michael noticed his old roommate in the crowd immediately, but played it cool. Michael plays it cool like that.

(Someone would later tell me that a security guard at the back of the Phoenix was overheard to say:
"I heard a girl up there is making pancakes on the stage. Never seen that before. And I've seen a lot of things.")

My pal Matthew, the lifetime Dinosaur fan standing in the front row, also happens to run the best cafe in Toronto, so in the morning it wasn't too hard to talk the band into a pre-Montreal coffee jaunt. Mercury Organic Espresso Bar is a "rock and roll" coffee shop—Matt's in a band himself and is always stoked to have touring musicians come in. This beats stopping at a random Tim Horton's for breakfast any day.

We decided to convoy up to Montreal with Fernando in the Awesome Color minivan and Peter and I in his Miata. The skies couldn't have been clearer and more perfect, the temperature was in that sweet spot, and the top was down. The drive to Montreal is between five and a half and six hours, but much like driving through South Dakota, at least every sign for any possible tourist attraction (or road work) is funny.

12:00: Allison texts me from the Awesome Color van after we pass a tourist sign with two tempting options.
"Do we want to visit the Nuclear Info Centre or Pingle's Fun Farm? Hmmm"

12:45: We stop at a Sunoco in Cobourg. I've only been back on tour for an hour and a half and I purchase a tube of Pringles and a donut. Maybe I should reconsider this idea of going on tour with Magik Markers in the fall. Or go on Herbalife or something in the meantime. (Do they still have Herbalife?)

The weather continues to be perfect and sunny and Peter and I are listening to R. Kelly.

2:15: Should we stop at Maize Quest, or Mrs. McGarrigle's Mustard Hut?

As we pass through the town of Dorion, an incredible swirl of cottonwood issues forth from the sky. It's like driving into a snowstorm, or watching one of those space-warp screensavers.

5:10 Almost in Montreal now. We're still convoying with Awesome Color, who are in front of us, with the windows cracked a little. We still have the top down. I turn to Peter and ask, "Did you just smell pot?" He didn't, but I'm pretty sure. I text message Allison, "You dudes burnin' one up there?" but there is no reply. When we all arrive at the club half an hour later she's laughing. "Nice text. You could smell that?"

Montreal is suffering through Grand Prix this weekend which means there are wacky Euro dudes everywhere and loud Ferraris and Lamborghinis, and St-Laurent is partially closed off so that racecar fanatics can party in the street. Peter is excited to see some sweet rides but he's probably still coasting on the glow of seeing a Lancaster bomber fly across us on the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto. ("That's what we used to bomb the shit out of Germany" — Peter Hughes) Now, it's happened to me more than once—maybe more than twice—with Peter where we'll be hanging out and he'll first hear, then see, some crazy rare warplane go overhead, identify it, and then tell me something like "That's the only one in North America!" or better, "That's the only one in North America and it lives in such and such city and I've flown in it." What are the odds of a plane that there's only one of on the continent flying over the guy who knows what it is in some random city at the right time? Coincidences like that happen to me plenty I guess, but not from THE SKIES.

Dinner is Vietnamese subs from Cao Thang, a place my foodiste friend Mark recommended. A bunch of us grab these coriander-filled delights and try to eat them in a super sketchy lurker park and then give up and run back to the club before someone punches us out.

Backstage, epic pen-pals Peter and Lou are catching up while Awesome Color soundcheck and suddenly Lou says—"Is that J?"—and we all go upstairs to see J jamming alongside Derek. Murph is playing drums set up behind Allison. Lou wanders over to his bass and suddenly Awesome Color are a double-power-trio; it sounds incredible, and my ears hurt after taking a bunch of pictures way too close. This is gonna be great—possibly even better than the Ween show around the corner.

The show is one of the best I've seen on the tour and the room (boxy, rubbery, and somewhat intimate) sounds surprisingly excellent. Awesome Color finish their set with the Lou/Murph/J super double trio infusion, and it's fucking great. Dinosaur's set kinda rages. I kept waiting for them to play something I wasn't that interested in so I could go to the bathroom, but the hits just kept on coming—best version of "Forget the Swan" I'd heard across Canada, and everything else excellent too. Derek and Allison stood sidestage preparing to run out and stagedive at the very end, but as Derek put it, "I was about to go during Mountain Man but I didn't realize it was only two and a half minutes long. And then it was over." Ah well, next tour.

And outside, in the capital of Lurkerville, Quebec, the bands took their leave for the rest of the tour—Dinosaur off to syrupy Vermont, Awesome Color to Boston and then home, and my new Toronto pals Uncut back to the YYZ. With awkward handshakes and waves for some, and hugs for other new friends, I was sad to see it wrap up, too. But I was tired. I had a sunburn. And I was ready for the 24-hour poutine place and to head back to Ariel and Sibylle's and watch their cat and dog have sissy-fights. Which, by 4am, I had accomplished—a perfect night to end the perfect trans-Canadian boondoggle? Absolutely. A prochaine, guys.