Nova Scotia to Revy (solo on the road)
I was home just long enough to see family, catch up with old goons and meet a pretty girl. I have no idea how I swung it but one night I was striking out at the Seahorse and the next night I was at a Dalhousie Tigers hockey game, gabbing away about hamburgers and Ashley McIaasic. Her name was Sheila and she was a smoke show from Cape Breton Island. It’s darn lucky she didn’t like me, or I’d have had to convince her to move her life to BC, or worse, convince myself to stay in Nova Scotia. Fortunately I blew it with Sheila. This at least ensured that the drive from Halifax to Revelstoke would be mostly text-while-driving free.
The hangover and Maritime Ache’ that comes with every day spent in Nova Scotia is equal to two days spent out of Nova Scotia. All the same, on a brutality wet day in November I packed the Honda and for the third time in as many months, began a trip across Canada.
The plan was slightly different this time: instead of burdening myself with that cursed geography known as “Northern Ontario”, I opted to go south. In Windsor I would hop the border into Detroit. From there I’d point er west.
On November 25th 2013 I left Nova Scotia.
On day one…well 16 hours after I left Halifax I pulled into a friends place in Kingston Ontario. I had done better time in longer trips but it was a good start. In Kingston I had barely enough time to hug and dick slap one of my childhood best friends. We basically did systematic run down of where our lives were at that point, when we could expect to see each other next (months later in Vegas), and then a pat on the back and to bed we went. Mark’s a snatch hair away from being a licensed surgeon. His time is unmeasurably more indepensible than mine, yet he had waited up for me for countless hours as I failed to make it to Kingston at my expected time. Those are friends you go to war for.
The next “day” or 18 hours I believe it was, I arrived in Estavan Saskatchewan. I had blown clear across central Canada in one banged out arsehole of a solo driving mission. In Estavan it was late and I was tempted, actually tried to, sleep in my car but the greasy fucking fumes and the bright cock-sucker oil money lights were burning into my subconscious. At 2am I pony’d up for one greasy fucking motel room in Estavan Saskachewan.
At 8am I was up and shit-banging my way across the prairies. Guzzling orange juice coffee and every song Joel Plaskett ever wrote I bounced through the Rocky Mountains and Liquor Valley (Canmore, Banff Alberta)
On November 28th 2013 I arrived in Revelstoke British Columbia.
Home Sweet Home.
