Montreal, Canada

Caroline Wise, Gayle Combe-Gordon, Ian Gordon, and John Wise in Grimsby, Ontario, Canada

Others might not call this vacation. Four hours of sleep is hardly restful and relaxing, but we’re committed and know that we’ll have plenty of time to sleep in when we are home next week. Anyway, we had an appointment to meet Ian and Gayle Gordon this early a.m. Thankfully, Ian dragged his wife Gayle, who we’ve not met yet, out of bed hours before we woke so they could make the long haul from the London, Ontario, area to the roadside truck stop restaurant where we were meeting. The Fifth Wheel is not much more than a couple of miles from our motel – lucky us. Across the dining room, I spot Ian. Fifteen years between seeing him and the only real difference I can easily find: he’s got a lot of gray hair; don’t most of us by this time. We are introduced to Gayle, who is all smiles and seems as comfortable with us as if we had been lifelong friends. It’s hard to compress what could be spoken of into two brief hours, but with a long drive ahead of us today, that’s all we’ll get here at the Fifth Wheel.

We learned of how these two met. A young girl digs hot bike messenger, but upon the bike guy returning from Germany, the long curly hair had been shorn slightly, diminishing his ravaging beauty slightly. Gayle takes him anyway. Since his return to Canada, Ian has written a first draft of “The Secrets of Being an International Bike Messenger God.” He threatens to tap me for publishing help; I press him to drag the dusty manuscript out of storage and let me have it for a once over so he can start moving forward on becoming a published writer. I’m left with the impression the art of welding and an obsession with cars stand between him and his inner nerd. Before we knew it, the time had flown by; we couldn’t really fall into just hanging out. Nothing like a couple of thousand miles between people to stop old friends from dropping in and keeping the relationship alive. Our departure was bittersweet. We followed them up the highway for some miles, truly sad that the morning sped by in a flash. I wondered if they, too, were wishing we could just turn west and follow them to London instead of the right turn we were about to take that would bring us to Montreal.

Caroline Wise in front of highway sign number 7 - the Trans Canada Highway

With Ian and Gayle out of site, we are now heading northeast of Toronto to connect with Road Number 7, the Trans Canada Highway. Fingers are crossed that the weather report was as wrong as it is in the desert. Back home, a 40% chance of rain means no chance of rain. Like all big cities, the traffic is heading into the downtown area in the morning, not out of it; we miss out on the parking lot on the other side of the road. It seems to have taken a long time to get fully around Toronto and find our way to the 7, but we are now finally in the countryside and away from the congestion.

Caroline Wise digging a rainbow in Canada

The colors of all are fading; we are late in the season. Patches of autumn foliage pop up here and there, but large stands of trees have given up their leaves as branches ready themselves for the first snow. Much of the drive is under a gray sky, with the rain keeping to itself high overhead. Around mid-day, hunger pangs remind us that we have a bag full of delights from Cathy. Time to christen the cutting board, break bread, carve the cheese, pour the mustard, and start to enjoy our in-car catered feast. Our gratitude produces this rainbow – we are happy.

A break in the clouds off the Trans Cananda Highway

We continue our drive eastward. For moments here and there, the sky finds a way around the clouds to tease us with hints of its beauty. We don’t much mind the overcast, it’s a nice reminder that seasons change. Back home in the desert, we left temperatures that were still in the 90s – the transition from summer to not-summer was in full swing. Our drive is a long one and we’ve been up and traveling quite some time by now.

Entering Montreal in Canada

Finally, Montreal. This is the first of two of our major stops on this vacation. Traffic is heavier than I might have thought; after all, we are entering the city when everyone else should be getting off work and leaving town. The signs are now all in French; bilingual traffic info is well behind us. Sitting in a stop-and-go parking lot called a freeway (as opposed to a fluidly moving highway), something that should not be seen can be seen far too clearly. Montreal’s roads are falling apart. No little cracks or rust; we’re seeing chunks of girders and support columns have fallen off. Rebar is exposed, and one is left wondering, how often do slabs of highway overpasses fall off into traffic below? We escape the potential death trap of the road leading into Montreal and are soon trying to negotiate one-way streets to our hotel.

A shop front in Montreal, Canada

Tonight we’ll sleep at Hotel Quartier Latin, you guessed it, in the Latin Quarter. It’s the cheapest place in downtown Montreal (we only paid $67 for the night), and the room was great. Almost more important than the room was the question, where do we park in this congested area? The answer: at the public library underground garage – great! Back around some one-way streets and soon we are trying to read French to the best of our ability in order to be certain we are parking in the right area of the garage. The street we are staying on, Rue Saint-Denis, pronounced Saun Dannee, is alive with throngs of people. Shops are open, and the smell of inebriants wafts through the air: it feels like we are in Amsterdam.

Caroline Wise at La Banquise enjoying a Mystique hard cider before digging into poutine. Montreal, Canada

The trilingual Indian desk attendant at the hotel pointed out on the map where we would find Rue Rachel, about 2.5km from the hotel. Prior to leaving for Canada, I had it in mind that we were going to try poutine, the fast-food staple originating from Quebec but now nearly a national dish. With our umbrella, we got underway for the 1.5-mile walk up St. Denis. Our destination is a small place called La Banquise. After arriving, Caroline orders a Mystique, a hard cider, and I opt for city water.

Poutine from La Banquise in Montreal, Canada

What is poutine? It is a dish that sounds extraordinarily simple, bland even. French fries, cheese curds, and gravy. But it is far from bland; it is the composite whole that works together to make a great dish. We will share two small orders; the first is regular poutine because we need to know the baseline. The second order has bacon, onions, and Marquez sausage – the grilled onions make poutine perfect. La Banquise is full, every table is occupied, the place is open 24 hours a day, and poutine in many variations is the main dish. Caroline and I are in agreement that this is one of the perfect comfort foods – of course, this could never work back home; we would ruin it with nacho cheese sauce.

Walking back to Hotel Quartier Latin on Rue Saint Denis in Montreal, Canada

Walking to Rue Rachel was a race; we didn’t know what time La Banquise closed. Walking back down the street, we took our time and investigated many a shop window; by now the shops were mostly closed. The streets were still wet from the occasional light rain that drifts over the city. Montreal is beautiful, or so it looks at night. The glistening streets reflecting neon lights and headlights and the various signs with short 3-story apartment homes above shops lend a cozy intimacy to the feeling of the neighborhood. Brisk walks to grab a coffee on a chilly evening or a jaunt to a small theater for a movie create dreams of living here; Montreal is growing on us fast.

Bikes for rent on the streets of Montreal from Bixi - available 24 hours a day.

Bikes are everywhere. There are bike parking meters, yes, in some places one has to pay for locking up a bike. On some corners, bike lockup facilities take up a couple of car parking spots, giving preference to bikers. And then there is this: Bixi. The bikes above are available all over the city; they are for rent. With a credit card, anyone can take a Bixi out on the town for only $5 for one day of use. A 1-month subscription costs $28, while a 1-year contract is only $78. With more than 100 Bixi docks around the city, you can pick up a bike in one location, drop it at another, jump on the subway, and nab another bike as you enter another corner of Montreal. I wonder how this could work in America, where bikes are so frequently stolen or vandalized.

A quiet park on Rue de Square Saint Louis in Montreal, Canada

We are falling in love with Montreal. Parks and green spaces are everywhere. This quiet, well-lit park is off Rue du Square Saint Louis and offers a perfect picture of fall. Along the main street, there are no boarded-up spaces; there are, however, tons of small independent proprietors offering unique shops, not a dollar store to be found. We pass more than one Couche-Tard shop and for the remainder of the trip, we’ll be wondering what a Couche-Tard is. At home, we found out it is French for Night Owl. We could happily be night owls in this great city.

Oh Canada – and Cathy Too!

Caroline Wise, Cathy McGill, and John Wise at Jack Astor's in Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada

This is our first trip to Canada, which is also our first trek outside the United States since we moved here back in April 1995. That doesn’t roll off the tongue very easily. It feels awkward to admit that we have not ventured beyond these borders in over 16 years. Not that we have been lax about travels, but this was our 173rd excursion away from home since August 1999, when I started tracking our journeys into the North American countryside.

After landing in Buffalo, the town of my birth, we go to collect our rental car, certainly one of the crappiest ever: no power windows, no power locks, and no cruise control; we are full-on analog. No time to waste, we exit the Detroit of New York and drive immediately to the Lake Trail Motel in Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada – in the pouring rain. The reason we were in such a hurry? We were meeting Cathy McGill at midnight.

Cathy is a dear friend whom I met back in the late 1980s at a small nightclub in the Frankfurt Airport called Dorian Gray. Cathy was traveling with her then-husband, Patrick Codenys, of the band Front 242. I met Patrick in 1985 or 1986 while they were performing in Wiesbaden, West Germany – Deutschland wasn’t unified back then. It was at a subsequent meeting at yet another Front 242 concert, this time in Offenbach, that Cathy and I would become friends. Shortly thereafter, I met Caroline after coming up for air, and following Cathy and Patrick having a son, Stephan, we all got together at their home near Brussels, Belgium, and have somehow been able to stay in touch, except for some 14 years without any contact.

Seeing Cathy again was nothing less than terrific. Her smile hadn’t changed a bit since last we saw her over a decade ago. The strangest part of this meeting was that just two days earlier, after a long silence between us, Cathy signed up for Facebook and then emailed me with the message that she was living in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. This city sounded awfully familiar to me. I googled it, and sure enough, it was one of the towns I had looked at for a motel back when I was planning our Canada trip. My first message to Cathy was, “I have news for you that you won’t believe!” The next morning I get an email and a phone number to call so I can share the news. No, Caroline is not pregnant. “We will be in Stoney Creek tomorrow night, just 11 miles from you!” We agreed to meet at midnight.

It’s raining when we pull into the motel. Cathy must know it’s us; she jumps out of her car before we open the door of our car to stand with us in the rain for a group hug. Our faces could have been damaged by all the smiling at one another. Disbelief that we were once again face-to-face had the three of us doing a reality check, asking out loud, can you believe this? It was as though time stopped in the mid-’90s when our paths went in different directions, and then years later, we materialized in the same dimension and wham, friends stepped back into each other’s world.

After checking into our room, we three are in the car and driving to someplace dry for Caroline and me to have dinner. Cathy brings us to Jack Astor, it could have been Taco Bell for all we cared, not that we would at any other time eat at Taco Bell, but tonight, that didn’t matter. We asked for a table away from the noisy bar, and the entire empty side of the restaurant was ours. I don’t know how we heard one another or if I even remember much of what was spoken in the 94,000 miles per hour exchange, but I do know we smiled so much that my cheeks would feel the strain for the next days.

In the hours prior to our departure from Phoenix, I received another email from Cathy. She told me of a famous German deli that she was going to on our behalf and that I should simply roll over and accept her generosity as “resistance is futile.” Not one to be shy, I put in my list of potential items that we would be interested in. Cathy delivers, changing one of the dynamics of our stay in Canada. Effectively, Cathy would now be with us for the remainder of our journey. A bag stuffed with onion potato bread, a loaf of rye, Gouda cheese both young and aged, German sausage, pretzels, spicy German mustard – great for dipping pretzels in, two knives, a small cutting board, paper towels, and special for Caroline; Pfeffermüsse – the sweet taste of home.

We talk until shortly after 2:00 a.m., Caroline and I have to wake around 6:30 to meet another old friend we haven’t seen since leaving Germany. I wish we could have brought Cathy along. In some way, we did, as the next day for lunch, when we opened our care package, Cathy’s wonderful gift had us pinching ourselves at our great fortune. And every day following, we thanked Cathy for her big heart in helping load up our vacation with these tastes of Germany and an extra few hundred smiles.

Caroline in NYC – Day 3

The New York City off in the distance

Travel, travel, travel. The meeting Caroline and the rest of the crew attended was outside of New York City proper, and with that comes a lot of travel. Sooner or later, though, it is time to head back to the airport; today is one of those days that Caroline will mostly be on the go.

Entering a tunnel in New York City

Not all the views are vistas, but still, they intrigue Caroline. Entering a tunnel on the way to the airport.

Broken toilet seat at the Newark airport

What does someone do to break off so cleanly the front left part of the toilet seat? Did they detonate butt-charges that created a pressure underneath their sealed movement that released its volume of gas through a weakness in the structure of the plastic? Maybe the person was feeling like practicing some karate moves in the bathroom and, upon putting the seat up, gave it a swift kick Bruce Lee style? This is the women’s bathroom, after all, just what are these mad bitches doing in here?

Fading Noise

The 24/7 box fan that blows the entirety of our 4 month summer

Four months of life with the box fan. One-hundred twenty days of whirring white noise. Summer ended 72 hours ago, just like that. One day it is 103 degrees, the next it is only 90 and you know the long bake has come to an end. Three days later, it’s in the 70s and confidence begins to grow that summer will not surprise us with a curtain call. In a moment the whir of the fan reaches a crescendo of unbearable screeching. Out of the laziness of LCD bathed hypnosis, I leave my chair to quiet the fan. But I am reluctant to stow it in its winter quarters. I live in the desert, the sun is deceitful.

And it is quiet now. The windows are open, a 75-degree breeze feels chilly. I listen intently for the noise of the quiet to make itself heard. Static has not yet been replaced with the sound of the wind, or the clouds streaming by my city. My ears buzz with echoes of fans and air-conditioners long after the summer is gone. Can wool be far away?

Caroline in NYC – Day 2

View from the Doubletree Hilton in New York City

This is another view from the Doubletree Hilton in New York City and one that Caroline took in this morning on her way to her first meeting of the day.

A sign from inside the Doubletree Hilton on Times Square in New York City

My wife has something for signs, especially ones with stick figures. Skipping two steps with each stride with fire hot on the heels of the escapee must have been the humor in this one that had her snapping it. We won’t talk much this day as she must have been quite busy, though there is always time to say goodnight before the day ends.

Caroline in NYC – Day 1

The view from Caroline Wise's hotel in New York City

Caroline had to fly out today for a business meeting in the New York area. She was traveling with coworkers Mike (owner of the company) and Ashley. After arriving, they checked into their hotel, the Doubletree Hilton on Times Square. This is her view.

Caroline Wise fascinated by the sink at the Doubletree Hilton on Times Square in New York City

Fascinated by the sink.

Caroline Wise's work setup while on a business trip in New York City at the Doubletree Hilton on Times Square

The reminder of where my wife sat while she was chatting with me back in Arizona. Caroline will be gone two more days, and as business trips are, there is little to no room for sightseeing. That’s not to say there won’t be fun; she is traveling with Mike, who has a penchant for enjoying the nicer places such as the hippest trendy bars and hottest restaurants.