I awoke this morning in a Vancouver hotel with an absolute bastard of a hangover. Within an hour of my arrival to this city I decided that seeing as it was Saturday night, and the street was filled with drunks, I would just dump my stuff in my room and head straight out.
Getting here was a little drawn out. To get to Canada I took a train from California which took 35 hours, or thereabouts. I had been staying in Santa Monica, sleeping on the couch in the house Biffy Clyro are living in while they record their 6th studio album, which you'll have heard the title of if you read that sorry excuse for a music mag NME. I stayed there for just about 2 weeks, I was meant to be there for just one week but I missed a flight to Kentucky and decided just to hang about in Santa Monica a bit longer. When you find such paradise you should absolutely stay there as long as you possibly can. Not that I don't think Kentucky and it's Decadent & Depraved Derby would have been fun, but when I realised I wasn't going I found immediate solace in the fact that my friends were kind enough to let me continue living it up in such a beautiful place, two minutes from the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. (Outwith Ayr Shore of course)
I had booked a cab from the house to Union Street Station in LA, I had booked it for 8:45am. I ended up getting a little bit wrecked the night before, and when I woke up I must have still been suffering the effects as I misread the clock and panicked. So much so, in fact, that I threw the rest of my stuff into my bag and phoned the cab company to see where the car was. The woman on the end of the line was struggling to comprehend my hungover West of Scotland Drawl, which got me riled. She was asking what the cross street was, I asked if it sounded like I knew what I was talking about and then demanded that she "just send the damn cab to the damn address I gave (her) and don't worry about the street at the end of the road." It worked because within minutes the car was there.
It was only when I was half way to the station that I realised my mistake. I was an hour early. I was a little miffed as I planned to get a few things before I left. Namely booze. Now it would seem I was a slave to the bar prices on the train.
I got to Union Station, a beautiful 1930's building which was built in order to destroy forever the original LA Chinatown. Which isn't very nice but it is a beautiful building. I checked in, got rid of my big luggage and took a seat. As I took my seat I was approached by a well dressed elderly gent with a briefcase. He stood over me staring at me as if I had just shit in his cereal. "American Pig!" he shouted at the top of his lungs in thick Russian accent. I looked him in the eyes and told him "I'm no American. But I may be a pig." Thinking that it strode the line between good humour and a subtle "go fuck yourself old man." He turned o his heels and walked out the station.
I decided that the best course of action when staring down any long journey is to consume as much caffeine as possible so that the inevitable crash would knock me out for the first part of the journey. I got a Starbucks and was happy to find out that it is just as shitty in the US as it is everywhere else. I took it outside and lit up a cig, cue everyone in a 100 mile radius asking you for a cig, with no please or thank you. Thankfully most people in this country seem to believe you when you say, in English, "Sorry, I don't speak English."
I walked back into the lobby and looked for a seat, before I could find one I noticed a woman walking towards me dressed in only a sheet. It only became apparent as she got within a few feet of me that her vagina was on show for all to see, and what a vagina it was. It was like she has stuffed Jimi Hendrix up herself feet first. Massive bush. It's too early in the morning for that kind of horror show. Although the irony wasn't lost on me, it was the closest I'd been to any kind of vagina the whole time I'd been in California.
I took a swerve past the half naked homeless lady and sat down across from an old lady. She was hugely fat. So fat that she was testing the upper limits of her velour sweat suit. She was demolishing a gigantic bag of cheese puffs. She offered me one, the bottom half of her face and her right hand were bright orange from the cheese puffs. I said no thank you. About 5 minutes later, while day dreaming, I was startled back to reality by the ignorant scream of a whistle, I looked about expecting to see a cop chasing a bad guy, but it was the old lady sitting in the same place, blowing a whistle. When she had everyone's attention she started singing. Turns out that although she looked like a normal, kind old lady, she was fucking insane.
I couldn't wait to leave LA at that point. I gathered basic supplies and boarded the train.
I am man enough to admit that I hadn't really thought the whole thing through. But I never really do that anyway so it is quite easy for me to admit that. But the 35 hour thing really got me because, as with all things, you have to view it in some kind of context. 35 hours would pass in a heartbeat in Santa Monica, or in bed with some attractive partner etc. But on a slow moving train through 3 states, 35 hours dragged at times. Specifically on Saturday. On Friday though, I just decided to get drunk. I was happy to spend most of the money in my pocket to do so.
After a few strong vodka lemonades I ended up chatting to a pretty young lady, and after a few more drinks we were wandering the train looking for mischief. We eventually stumbled upon an arcade room, where we sat and drank, chatted and then started kissing. She tasted like beer. Good beer. She liked my accent and I liked the sweet taste of IPA on her lips.
That part of the journey passed too quickly and before I knew it she had got off the train an out of my life somewhere near Sacramento. I stumbled towards my seat and crashed out until an ungodly hour in the morning when the train shook me awake and off my seat.
The next day of the trip which would take me through Oregon and Washington before getting off in Seattle and getting on a bus into Vancouver, I had to deal with my decision to spend most of my money on booze the day before. I had enough to eat lunch or dinner, not both, and I had about 10 cigs left. It was going to be tight.
As we moved closer to Seattle I blasted Pearl Jam on my pod. The sense of relief that washed over me knowing that I would be getting off the train soon was almost too much to handle. It was a long slog, but the scenery and the like minded people you meet on such a journey made the whole thing worth it. I would recomend it to every single one of you. In my opinion there are few more beautiful places in the world as Scotland, but this came very, very close.
Eventually, after having to deal with potentially the world's dumbest cunt at the Canadian border, I was in Vancouver and in search of a hotel (nothing like leaving it to the last minute). Now it is late afternoon on Sunday and I am in a different hotel in an attempt to save a bit of money. I will probably just stay in tonight. Maybe I will go for one or two. But that's it.
I made it to Canada. Which is incredible to me because I genuinely didn't think I would leave California. I know I won't last the two months I have booked, but that was just a ball park number. This is an adventure and no adventure can be genuine if you know exactly what you're doing, or indeed if you pass up opportunity simply because you might run out of money. You either go all in, and risk busting out early, or you play safe and coast along, bored, for as long as you can hold on, but never increasing your odds. The latter is not an option. Not when the sense of adventure is telling you "fuck it, go all in, worry about it in the morning."
Lots of Love from Canada, eh!
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