May 4th. Seattle, WA – Vancouver, BC. 4541 km.

Monday morning. We woke up and found a nice little note Marie had left us. We left the flour we’d bought as a gift to the bakers and said goodbye to Cookie and each other. Ellen was going to go back to Portland and would go to Canada later on. Gabe came by and we drove the few hours across the border to Canada. And no, we had never had a fire arm in the car.

We arrived in Vancouver and walked around before we met up with our hosts, Evan and Spencer. The buses said Sorry, there was nice street art and very clever garbage bins.

May 5th. Vancouver, BC. 4541 km.

We started the day with eating Zouvlaki for brunch. Not at Sweet Revenge, though. It was closed. I will avenge them.

Tourists. You gotta love ‘em. The bus driver was really cool and was a bit disappointed when I paid too much for the bus fare. On the bus back home at night we rode for free. I love Canadian bus drivers!

Vancouver has a really pretty harbour and skyline.

Told ya.

And airplanes that land on lakes. I wanna go in one of those, weee (that’s what you say when you’re having fun – you refer to yourself and some other people)!

They’ve got ducks. I like.

And black squirrels! We walked around in this nice big park I’ve forgotten the name of.

And bigger ducks, a.k.a. swans!

More people than I like ducks. These people do. The ducks’ opinion of them was influenced.

We ate at this place where people put up currency on the wall. Some Swedes from Umeå had put a Selma on the wall.

After visiting the art gallery and seen Cockfighter at the local Cinemateque (they had snacks after the film, get inspired SFI) we got all artsy ourselves and took a nice photographing walk.

It was a beautiful night.

Gabe took these great shots with a long exposure time and then Spencer picked us up in his van that made a lot of noise.

May 6th. Vancouver, BC – Calgary, AB. 5523 km.

We start the long drive for someone with nothing to think about by having another Horton’s bagel after saying good-bye to our boys in Vancouver.

Where we at, Gabe? -Lilloet. -Oh.

Apparently this view use to be on a Canadian bill. I can see why.

I’m finishing my coffee. This isn’t a first amendment issue.

Smörgåsbord!

Screamers are back!

Salmon Arm! My favourite village name.

I wonder if Johan S is practising his “semi-trajler” accent in California these days (damn it, he’s in Australia now)…

Banff was beautiful, but covered in snow. That means no go for a hike with a twisted ankle. We kept on truckin’ and slept at a motel in Calgary.

May 7th. Calgary, AB – Winnipeg, MA. 6857 km.

I could drive forever is a good song by Smog. We just drove and drove and late at night met up with Nicole and became her first surfers. She was super excited and had a really old cat. She also had some hamsters, and one of them died. Sad day, yo. Small Deaths are the Saddest, says Múm, I don’t know about that.

May 8th, Winnipeg, MA. 6857 km.

We drove around in Nicole’s targa, looking for “Erotic Bakery”, I am very sad to say we never found it.

It’s Ringo!

Probably the world’s oldest cat.

May 9th, Winnipeg, MA – Sault Ste. Marie, ON. 8241 km.

We took off in the snow (!) and had Tim Horton’s for breakfast (we were hooked on that special caffeine or whatever), lunch at a Finnish restaurant in the middle of nowhere (thanks Lonely Planet!). Felt like being in a canteen. Strange, but good food.

We stopped at a lake where Drifters normally stop too…

Especially Gabe was amused by the Night Danger. We arrive late at a Jodi’s house, she was an aerial student, so were most of her flat-mates, two of them came in all dressed up, apparently they had tried to get into a wedding they weren’t invited to, sneaky! We had some noodles and went off to bed, did you hear me?, I wrote bed, Jodi was kind enough to let us surf her bed and she took the couch. She insisted on it. Very kind soul.

May 10th, Sault Ste. Marie – Toronto, ON. 8919 km.

We overslept and had to leave in a hurry, barely said a word to our kind host, yeah yeah, sometimes you have to be a moocher, ey? We wanted to catch a gig with Dan Deacon (who I saw in Barcelona a couple of weeks after this and he was fun, making dance contests in the audience and whatnot!), but it sold out and we ended up with Dan, our host, at the last day of a Documentary festival that was going on. We saw a film called 65 red roses, about a girl who got a terrible disease but found friends with the same sickness online. Pretty good.

May 11th, Toronto, ON. 8919 km.

We started the day with walking up to Casa Loma, Henry Mill Pellatt’s castle. Unfortunately that’s where my camera died, so we’d had so suffice with just Gabe’s afterwards, so the rest of the pictures is by him, but I borrowed it occasionally.

After a pineapple break we went to Chinatown and Kensington Market, which was closed and we strolled around, found a bar where a sign said “what people remember is the shit on the walls” and there was a lot of stuff on their walls, we continue to another bar where a tired old gubbrock-band was playing.

May 12th, Toronto, ON – Montreal, QC. 9719 km.

Have you ever been to Niagara falls? I have seen water, it’s water, that’s all. We weren’t super stoked about Niagara, Gabe had seen them before but it wasn’t that much of a detour so we went down there and checked out the water for half an hour and kept on truckin’.

We had lunch in Kingston and arrived in Montreal at night and went out and got ourselves a batch of Poutine (which is French fries with gravy that has big pieces of cheese in it), probably the fattest thing I’ve ever eaten. I have. Once. This is the picture to prove it. I won’t again. I can’t prove that. We met our hosts, Roxy and Julia, the latter had really good music taste. The thing with beer in the States and Canada is not as good though, in my humble opinion. We tried some and considered riding an electric bull. I have lost a lot of sleep because we didn’t ride that bull.

May 13th, Montreal, QC. 9719 km.

We started the day with a HUGE breakfast, I’ve never had so much for breakfast, it included everything, I mean, everything, bacon, eggs, toast, yoghurt and whatnot. Mmm. Then we climbed Mont Royal, which you might have guess is what Montreal is named after. I made a detour.

We liked the city a lot, my favorite Canadian city actually.

But I wouldn’t eat or drink here!

Modern art is rubbish. However, I did find a street-art book where somebody in Stockholm had put up swings around the city. I like that.

We met up with our hosts and went for an art opening and strolled around and had some free wine before we stopped by a cake shop and had the biggest pieces of cake I’ve ever seen. Dual-Layered Carrot Cake, damn it! I want that, NOW! In stead we had pale ale bla bla near the so-called “Bar” (-Honey, I’m heading down to the “bar”). The girls were surprised to hear that I’ve never been to a strip club and we almost took my strip-virginity. Almost, instead we had noodles with peanut butter. Lo-fi.

May 14th, Montreal, QC – Sharon, MA. 10227 km.

We started with REAL maple syrup pancakes at Beauty’s. Delicious, then we drove as fast as we could into the US and Boston. When we were outside Boston we did a 360 on the highway. We drove a fourth of the equator and when we were 40 km from our destination we almost crashed. Luckily no cars were around us so we got away scot-free. We reached our destination, Gabe’s parents house in Sharon, outside Boston. Gabe’s sister had a Sunn O))) t-shirt. They’re one of the weirdest bands I’ve seen live, I watched some of their gig at Primavera, it was like a cymbal stroke then another five seconds later. Kinda dull.

May 15th, Sharon, MA – Boston, MA. 10267 km.

We drove into town and saw the Shepard Fairey exhibition (he’s the guy behind OBEY and the Obama’s campaign). It was really good in my opinion, Gabe didn’t like it at all. He drove me to the train station and we said adieu. I was gonna couch surf with some girls, but they kinda made the impression that they thought it was a hassle having to host me (don’t know why they agreed in the first place) so I walked around for a few hours and took a Chinatown bus back to New York. Checked if Vickie was at the hut, she was not. She had quit that gig, but I did see her a couple of times before I went to Barcelona and Primavera. Here comes a few random shot from my cell phone camera the last week in New York. Enjoy.

Me and Russ was at a rooftop party, you could see both Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, top-notch.

Ben’s restaurant had the best signs. Apparently Natalie Portman was a customer too. Sweet.

A new kind of advertising?

Finally!

Me and Johan went to this great restaurant where you bought meat by the pound, it use to be an automechanic workshop. Cool atmosphere, but damn it, we should’ve gone to Peter Luger after all, ey?

This reminds me of that Banksy spoof on Paris Hilton (Scroll down passed the Mitch Hedberg quotes).

I went shopping with Vickie. We saw a man not obeying the rules!