Andrew, Alex, Annie, and I took a road trip to Montreal. Armed only with my GPS and a veggie platter, we headed to the food capital of Canada without a plan or timetable.

Schwartz’s Hebrew Delicatessen

Our first stop was for lunch at Schwartz’s. It’s a tiny place, packed with with the heady aroma of seasoned smoked meat. Established in 1928, it’s a landmark in Montreal. I like to imagine that Moe’s Diner in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz was based on a place like this, or maybe that Leonard Cohen frequented in his youth, and I was sitting where he penned the lyrics for his songs.

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Andrew and Alex are going on a backpacking trip to Europe until the end of this month. They’ve requested a list of people interested in receiving information and details about their trip, so naturally I let them know that I’d like to have some documentation during their journey.

And while I understand their motivations for trying to have such an inter-personal correspondence, I don’t understand why it has to be because of a trip.

Isn’t everyday life interesting enough to talk about? Can’t one learn as much on the bus ride to work as being some place completely foreign? I never decided to make an extra blog or something for my trip to Hong Kong/China/Macau, even though it was still a somewhat life-changing event. To me, the month was another part of my schedule, something I had planned to do. It was as significant as anything else going on in my life, or maybe I should say, anything else going on in my life was as significant as that. I hope I never have to rely on travel to consider my life important enough to discuss with someone.

Perhaps, I feel like I still have so much to learn about everything else that I would gain as much just thinking in the shower as I would being exposed to new things. Every day can be exciting. Every second, there’s a chance to learn and grow. There are still so many things to figure out.

And I probably consider myself to be one of the biggest.

Got back from Tremblant today. A bunch of us rented a cabin for the weekend about ten minutes away from the mountain. I went snowboarding, or rather attempted to snowboard, on Saturday. There was a heavy fog at the top of the mountain and visibility was extremely limited, although the temperature hovered around a pleasant -5°C, a far cry from the -46°C from last year. I’ve definitely improved over the last time that I went, although I still can’t carve on the toe side. Every inch of my body is stiff now, from my neck to my ankles, but it was worth it.

We stopped by a little hill made for snow tubing on the way home. It only cost $17 to use the facilities for four hours, and there’s even a conveyor system to drag the inner tubes to the top so people don’t have to walk up, the ultimate in lazy recreation. The hill was divided into eight lanes, each with it’s own characteristic bumps and jumps, and we tried to link up our tubes in various configurations such as multi-person daisy chains and leg locked lines. Possibly the best bang for the buck ever.

Spent the weekend at Trolley’s house with Wheaties, Aaron, and Nick. The car ride took about three hours, squeezed into the back of his compact Jetta. I would have called shotgun but I doubt anyone would have respected it; Nick and Aaron had priority as the biggest guys. I made a playlist for the ride there, and it was good for the first half. The problem with such playlists is that they’re usually meant for summer in the open air, not night time winter rides. A lot of songs end up being inappropriate.

Trolley’s place is a 350 acre farm, on a long road that’s actually named after his family. Definitely a place with personality and an amazing view of the open countryside. Heat is turned up by throwing more logs in the furnace. His cat Femo is more vocal than Dolly and always cries for attention. She’ll quickly turn belly up if you scratch her the right way, and doesn’t like to wander more than an arms-length away.

The first party was at the cabin, which is a small hunting lodge a 10 minute walk away, also owned by the Trolley’s. That’s when I remembered that I’m really bad at parties with lots of drunk people. Drunk people who I don’t know scare me. A lot. I never know what the hell they’re going to do. At one point, two people put on boxing gloves and started beating the shit out of each other in this tiny cabin, which must be about 196 square feet. The second party was at the house, and much lower key. People started jumping into the hot tub and out the window then rolling around in the snow. I didn’t drink the first day (aside from a swig from a bottle of Fireball, which actually isn’t bad), but ended up buying some alcohol for the next.

One of the days was spent on a hill on some private property. We set up a jump to do some freestyle board riding, and broke out the modified GT Snowracers and toboggans.

A great time.

Finally, finally got back after a grueling day of traveling. It’s much faster (about six hours) to fly east home than it is to fly west to Hong Kong, something about wind currents. It feels weird to be leaving Hong Kong at 1:30 pm local time, and then arrive home at 2:30 pm local time.

Got caught at customs, although I feigned extreme ignorance, played it cool, and the customs guard let me off pretty easy. I still had to pay tax on the things I bought, although at a reduced rate, and got a warning. Actually, I still ended up sneaking a bunch of (non-illegal) things in anyway. Now I’m $200 wiser.

It’s a funny feeling to get “caught” at something like this. There’s no persecution, worst case is just a heavy fine. Yet being challenged about how honest I am just makes me feel bad anyway. I’ve always hated, hated, getting in trouble (or caught at least), even if the consequence is just a lecture. It’s completely opposite of John; he would just pay the fine, admit that he’s wrong, and think nothing of it. I think that I just can’t stand the idea of someone not liking me, whereas John has absolutely no problem with that.