Posts tagged with "vacation"

Greyhound To Her

Thumbnail: Greyhound decal
Thumbnail: Toronto city
Thumbnail: Bronwen on bed

They call it the red-eye for a rea­son, and although I’m expect­ing to sleep through most of the ride, I’m not pre­pared to wake up every half hour. The bus was sup­posed to be half-full, being 12:30 on a Friday morn­ing, but when I arrive at the sta­tion, the line stretch­es across the hall­way, dash­ing my hopes of a win­dow seat. The guy beside me watch­es movies on his lap­top, while the old man across the aisle works on an assort­ment of papers with the only light in the bus on. He sits alone, away from the win­dow, a big fuck you to any­one who may want a seat. It’s his light that keeps me up.

The grey­hound is sup­posed to stand for speed, named after the fastest breed of dog used in dog rac­ing, but for me it stands for free­dom. The cost is a stranger sit­ting next to you, a cou­ple hours of leg cramps, and a lit­tle over a hun­dred dol­lars.

The lay­over is an hour and a half. As I sit in the ter­mi­nal, I think of how close my par­ents are. I haven’t seen them since Christmas, and even though they’re an 45 minute dri­ve away, I won’t be see­ing them this time around.

This bus brings me to her.

Tremblant '06

Thumbnail: Winding road
Thumbnail: Cabin at night
Thumbnail: Aaron and Karen
Thumbnail: Poker game
Thumbnail: Phil's royal flush
Thumbnail: Old and new skis

Here I am, in a cab­in in the mid­dle of the woods, 160 km away for two short days and a night in Tremblent. Today, we drove the wind­ing roads lined with pine trees and set­tled in. By tomor­row morn­ing, the 10 beds and mat­tress­es are going to be filled with 16 peo­ple, all-round exhaust­ed, cram­ming in as much sleep as they can before the hills open.

In between, Aaron finds a Bubbles action fig­ure that looks just like Karen. Phil is dealt a roy­al flush, which we’ll prob­a­bly nev­er see again in our lives, dur­ing the sec­ond game of pok­er. For this, we drink, and I’m asked to make a print of the pho­to for every­one present to sign.

I’m not here to ski, or snow­board, or par­ty, I’m just here to observe. Nick gave me the use of his lens­es, includ­ing a 200mm prime L, but it was the 15mm fish-eye Sigma that I grew to love. How strange it is to be record­ing my mem­o­ries with some­one else’s glass.

This week­end it feels like I’m run­ning. I’m look­ing for some­thing, but I don’t know what it is or where to find it.

Weekend By Bus

Thumbnail: Greyhound station

Leaving by bus, in the rain and in the dark, is some­thing spe­cial.

The per­fect album to put on is Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós, with songs like Starálfur and Olsen Olsen, but espe­cial­ly Sven-G-Englar and Ný Batteri. Sounds are dis­tract­ing all around with the peo­ple talk­ing, the bat­ter­ing of rain­drops on the wind­shield, the thud-thump of the uneven high­way road, but they grad­u­al­ly fade to a lethar­gic pulse. The unrec­og­niz­able tim­bres of each dis­tin­guish­able instru­ment take over.

This is the moment. The exact pur­pose of the song. The notes are pure, amor­phous colours in the dark­ness, a dul­cet damper for the out­side world.

Soon the rhythm of the pass­ing city lights will become more and more sparse, and all that will be left in the win­dows are the reflec­tions of those with their over­head lights on, read­ing books or keep­ing eye-con­tact.

It’s been ten months since the last time you did this.

How has so much hap­pened since then?

Long Weekend, Longer Session

Jeff and Darren are over for the next three days. They came five hours from Toronto to hang out with me, before they begin work for the sum­mer. This makes me feel spe­cial.

I’ve tak­en the rest of the week off. I expect to be con­scious for a few hours between now and Sunday. Thank god for paid vaca­tion days.

Three more hours and it’d be an all-nighter.

Getting Dark, AFI, Etc.

It’s get­ting dark here, but the light has­n’t com­plete­ly left the day yet. The sky wax­es grey with the set­ting of the sun, and a gen­tle rain is mak­ing the pave­ment shine with the yel­low glow of the street lamps. The smell con­sumes me, and I’m back walk­ing the streets on an unrec­ol­lect­ed gloomy day.

I final­ly fin­ished off my hon­ours project, so I can rest a bit eas­i­er now. The one report is worth two cours­es itself. It end­ed up being around 22 pages, which isn’t too bad. The only thing that remains is my geo essay, and I only have about a half page left to write. I went to lunch with Aaron and Wheaties to cel­e­brate a com­plet­ed course at the Elephant and Castle. A great wait­ress served us, and offered a vari­a­tion on the Strongbow I was hav­ing, which was the addi­tion of some lime cor­dial, or some black cur­rant juice. We all got to try both with the Strongbow, and it was decid­ed that the lime was the bet­ter of the two. The remain­ing black cur­rant juice went into the beer, and Aaron told me that it was tasty.

200 more wins to an arch­mage icon.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the lat­est AFI album late­ly, and even though I did­n’t much care for it at first, I’m com­plete­ly addict­ed now. There’s some­thing about the har­monies in the vocals that make their sound so unique. I’m not quite used to Davey Havok’s voice though, as he sounds like a child to me. Quite uncon­ven­tion­al Currently, my favorite song is This Celluloid Dream.

A trip to the Dominican Republic may be work­ing out for the first week­end of May. Since it’s the begin­ning of the off-sea­son, the cost of the entire trip, drinks and meals includ­ed along with res­i­dence at a four-star hotel, will be around $900 for a week. Apparently this includes scu­ba div­ing, horse­back rid­ing, jet ski­ing, and a beach-side view. Currently, only Aaron, Cristina and I are com­plete­ly com­mit­ted to going, but we need an even num­ber of peo­ple so we’re try­ing to find one more per­son.

Artfag is cur­rent­ly a red­head. Ummmm…yah.

Jonathan tells me that the full-time job seems promis­ing, but he’s not mak­ing any guar­an­tees. It would main­ly con­sist of going around the city to var­i­ous com­mer­cial cus­tomers and trou­bleshoot­ing com­put­er prob­lems. The pay will start at around $15 which is not too bad, but not great for a grad­u­ate. He says that I’ll also need a car to be able to get to the loca­tions that need ser­vice, some­thing that I’ll con­sid­er more if I’m actu­al­ly able to get the job. He tells me that it’s a good foot-in-the-door for web pro­gram­ming posi­tions in the future. I am very grate­ful, and I’m not get­ting hopes up.