Short post:
Ever skip a night's sleep, just to find yourself too wired to get any rest the next evening? Counterintuitive as it seems, the last time I went to sleep was about 48 hours ago, and I don't feel tired.
I wish I did. Tomorrow's going to be a hell of a day.
I'm leaving Ottawa in a few short hours with Bryan and Kyle, en route to Nez's kidnapping in Ohio, and onward to see Sophie in Alabama. Between Ottawa and Toronto, I'll also be picking up a few drifters. Two housemates I found on craigslist's rideshare, one Carleton grad from PickupPal, and my friend Rachel from a small town in the middle of nowhere (because nothing beats five straight hours of unmitigated sexual tension.)
And I've barely begun to pack.
Nonetheless, it's been a hectic 48 hours; spent, for the most part, convincing and re-convincing my friends to commit to the odyssey, and persuading their parents to support their self-actualization with cold, hard gas money.
But through bouts of vacillation, flared tempers, doubt and uncertainty, this show is finally getting on the road. In 36 hours' time. I'll be in Birmingham.
Showing posts with label Bryan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bryan. Show all posts
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Sweet Home Alabama: There's a road trip a'brewing
Two and a half weeks.
If I could pick one thing I want to do most, it would be to see my girlfriend Sophie. She's two thousand kilometers away, and I haven't seen her since March. If I could pick two things I want to do most, it would be to see my girlfriend Sophie and go on an epic road trip.
The solution is long overdue: I'm going to Alabama to see her. I've seen her in Toronto, Boston, and Ottawa, but in the four-plus years I've known her, I've never been to her home in Birmingham, Alabama.
The idea sort of came out of nowhere. I brought it up half-seriously with my friends, with zero expectation of anything actually coming to fruition. But both my housemates, Bryan and Ross, are up for the journey.
We're driving 1250 miles. Each way. Nonstop.
Excuse the cliche, but if you looked up "epic" in the dictionary, you would find this picture:
View Larger Map
Google Maps was, of course my first stop. My sweet set of wheels (a 1998 Ford Windstar) gets anywhere between 10 and 16 L per 100km, so the cost - for the entire trip - should amount to between 400 and 650 liters of gasoline. For you non-metric savages, that's about 100-175 gallons. You do the math.
Now, the farthest road trip I've ever done was the 600-mile trip from Toronto to Boston last February, made for the exact same reason. Not only that, but I've never once been to the South. Despite my Sophie's assurances of running water, full electricity, and the rule of law, the only impression I've ever actually had of the South comes from the movie Deliverance. But I love going anywhere new, so I scrutinize Google's route to see where I'll be going, and what I'm going to see along the way. And I had a second pleasant surprise.
The road trip gods (Google's code-monkeys) saw fit to plan our route within 15 miles of Dayton, Ohio, where one of my best friends from my high school days in Toronto, Sam, is now going to university. I promptly called him up to inform him that he would be kidnapped en route to Birmingham. He chose to do things the easy way, and decided to join us for the ride.
For the record, Sam and I should never be allowed in the same car together for more than 20 minutes at a time. When in the same room, we become two of the most immature people I can imagine. And neither of us can back down from a dare. The conversation went roughly like this:
I'm paraphrasing, but that was the spirit of the conversation.
So two Arabs, a Jew, and a blind guy drive into Alabama....
This can't possibly end well.
If I could pick one thing I want to do most, it would be to see my girlfriend Sophie. She's two thousand kilometers away, and I haven't seen her since March. If I could pick two things I want to do most, it would be to see my girlfriend Sophie and go on an epic road trip.
The solution is long overdue: I'm going to Alabama to see her. I've seen her in Toronto, Boston, and Ottawa, but in the four-plus years I've known her, I've never been to her home in Birmingham, Alabama.
The idea sort of came out of nowhere. I brought it up half-seriously with my friends, with zero expectation of anything actually coming to fruition. But both my housemates, Bryan and Ross, are up for the journey.
We're driving 1250 miles. Each way. Nonstop.
Excuse the cliche, but if you looked up "epic" in the dictionary, you would find this picture:
View Larger Map
Google Maps was, of course my first stop. My sweet set of wheels (a 1998 Ford Windstar) gets anywhere between 10 and 16 L per 100km, so the cost - for the entire trip - should amount to between 400 and 650 liters of gasoline. For you non-metric savages, that's about 100-175 gallons. You do the math.
Now, the farthest road trip I've ever done was the 600-mile trip from Toronto to Boston last February, made for the exact same reason. Not only that, but I've never once been to the South. Despite my Sophie's assurances of running water, full electricity, and the rule of law, the only impression I've ever actually had of the South comes from the movie Deliverance. But I love going anywhere new, so I scrutinize Google's route to see where I'll be going, and what I'm going to see along the way. And I had a second pleasant surprise.
The road trip gods (Google's code-monkeys) saw fit to plan our route within 15 miles of Dayton, Ohio, where one of my best friends from my high school days in Toronto, Sam, is now going to university. I promptly called him up to inform him that he would be kidnapped en route to Birmingham. He chose to do things the easy way, and decided to join us for the ride.
For the record, Sam and I should never be allowed in the same car together for more than 20 minutes at a time. When in the same room, we become two of the most immature people I can imagine. And neither of us can back down from a dare. The conversation went roughly like this:
Sam: Remember that time you went to the 7/11 in your underwear to buy cigarettes? Get ready to be overshadowed.
PR: You don't have the balls.
Sam: Yeah? Well a night's bar tab says that I do, and some lucky gas station is going to see them in all their glory.
PR: Yeah, and which state are you going to be pulling this stunt?
Sam: Hell if I know. Any state between Dayton and Birmingham. You can't rush art.
PR: I can top that. How about every state between Dayton and Birmingham?
Sam: You don't have the balls.
PR: Try me.
Sam: Alright. We streak at least once in every state.
PR: You do realize that we're talking about Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama, right?
Sam: Fully aware.
PR: You're on, bitch.
I'm paraphrasing, but that was the spirit of the conversation.
So two Arabs, a Jew, and a blind guy drive into Alabama....
This can't possibly end well.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Sins of the flesh (or, "How I invoked the wrath of God")
Tiring weekend, but I've earned this chance to brag.
A few weeks ago, I had a night of phenomenal, no-strings-attached sex with my friend Rachel in Toronto. It was in the basement guest room of family that I was visiting for the weekend, so we had to be careful and keep quiet.
Last Thursday, she came up to Ottawa to visit a girlfriend of hers for the weekend. And every night of her stay in the city, she ended ditching her friend to get laid. I was happy to oblige.
Before I get into the rest of the story, there are two things I need to explain to lay out the groundwork:
1) The house I'm renting with my friends at university is a dilapidated piece of shit. It's a rotting cliche of the life of a starving student.
2) I'm in an open relationship. Spare me the sanctimonious crap over the fact that I'm sleeping with other girls while the one I'm in love with is stuck two thousand miles away.
Back to it: We were waking up my housemates two, three times a night. Then again in the morning. And if you're doing your job right, this girl can get loud. By 3am of the second night of her visit, we'd already gotten two angry visits from my angry housemates, politely asking us to quiet the fuck down.
So we begin round 4. There was a thunderstorm outside, and it wasn't like we had anywhere better to be. By this point, I'm starting to get a feel for her particular sexual idiosyncrasies, and the sex is beyond good. My housemate had barely gotten back to bed by the time the entire house could hear her. So it goes.
This is round 4 for the evening, so it goes on for even longer than before. When we finally hit the ending bit, two things happen at once:
1. My housemate bangs on my bedroom door again, threatening me with an impromptu cold shower with the garden hose;
2. The eavestrough breaks free from the roof of my house, tearing the soffits off on the way down. (You know the part of the roof that overhangs past the side of your house? The soffits are the underside of that.)
So.
In conclusion:
I literally fucked a girl until the roof came down.
That is all.
A few weeks ago, I had a night of phenomenal, no-strings-attached sex with my friend Rachel in Toronto. It was in the basement guest room of family that I was visiting for the weekend, so we had to be careful and keep quiet.
Last Thursday, she came up to Ottawa to visit a girlfriend of hers for the weekend. And every night of her stay in the city, she ended ditching her friend to get laid. I was happy to oblige.
Before I get into the rest of the story, there are two things I need to explain to lay out the groundwork:
1) The house I'm renting with my friends at university is a dilapidated piece of shit. It's a rotting cliche of the life of a starving student.
2) I'm in an open relationship. Spare me the sanctimonious crap over the fact that I'm sleeping with other girls while the one I'm in love with is stuck two thousand miles away.
Back to it: We were waking up my housemates two, three times a night. Then again in the morning. And if you're doing your job right, this girl can get loud. By 3am of the second night of her visit, we'd already gotten two angry visits from my angry housemates, politely asking us to quiet the fuck down.
So we begin round 4. There was a thunderstorm outside, and it wasn't like we had anywhere better to be. By this point, I'm starting to get a feel for her particular sexual idiosyncrasies, and the sex is beyond good. My housemate had barely gotten back to bed by the time the entire house could hear her. So it goes.
This is round 4 for the evening, so it goes on for even longer than before. When we finally hit the ending bit, two things happen at once:
1. My housemate bangs on my bedroom door again, threatening me with an impromptu cold shower with the garden hose;
2. The eavestrough breaks free from the roof of my house, tearing the soffits off on the way down. (You know the part of the roof that overhangs past the side of your house? The soffits are the underside of that.)
So.
In conclusion:
I literally fucked a girl until the roof came down.
That is all.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Who knew having housemates could be this irritating?
Apologizing in advance if this post sounds incoherent. I haven't had a chance to sleep in about 48 hours, and at this point, every second between now and the evening feels like an eternity.
...On May 1st, three undergraduate students in Ottawa moved gleefully out of uni residence and into their first leased house.
Having spent 19 years counting the minutes till I could move out of my parents' homes, and the following two semesters resenting the confining rules of dorms, the move felt like pure freedom.
No ban on beer bottles. No roommate to kick out of the double when a girl comes back you your place. And university security didn't seem to like it much when I tried to get a barbeque going in the quad.
No matter.
The place is ours. Ours. After spending the better part of a week moving in and getting our respective shit in order, I drive off to Toronto for the weekend. Against my better judgement, a weekend gets railroaded into a week and a half.
Fast forward to last night. I get back to Ottawa just shy of 3am, and it's lord of the fucking flies. No clean dished left; nargila sitting in the back room for anyone to see; and the garbage clearly hasn't been emptied since we moved in.
I think I'm going to have to engrave a few commandments half an inch into the drywall.
1. If you cook yourself a meal, do the fucking dishes.
2. If someone takes over the cooking duties for the night, do the fucking dishes.
3. If you drink an entire case of my beer, don't replace it with an American import. That's just uncalled for.
4. If you have sex on furniture or surfaces in common areas of the house, have the courtesy not to tell me about it. I never told Ross about the time I hooked up on his bed while he was at a midterm. Keep it to yourself, it's a matter of respect.
5. When a girl refuses to come over because of how horrible the house is, it's time to kick into crisis mode.
6. When all else fails, the most important rule of all: don't fuck with me. The fuse box is in my room. I'm not afraid to use it.
...Long story short, I can see this going one of two possible ways...
Either we pull together, and strike a balance between personal space and shared responsibility, or we dig in our heels, and the house devolves into a petulant orgy of bitter pranks, retributions, and recriminations.
...On May 1st, three undergraduate students in Ottawa moved gleefully out of uni residence and into their first leased house.
Having spent 19 years counting the minutes till I could move out of my parents' homes, and the following two semesters resenting the confining rules of dorms, the move felt like pure freedom.
No ban on beer bottles. No roommate to kick out of the double when a girl comes back you your place. And university security didn't seem to like it much when I tried to get a barbeque going in the quad.
No matter.
The place is ours. Ours. After spending the better part of a week moving in and getting our respective shit in order, I drive off to Toronto for the weekend. Against my better judgement, a weekend gets railroaded into a week and a half.
Fast forward to last night. I get back to Ottawa just shy of 3am, and it's lord of the fucking flies. No clean dished left; nargila sitting in the back room for anyone to see; and the garbage clearly hasn't been emptied since we moved in.
I think I'm going to have to engrave a few commandments half an inch into the drywall.
1. If you cook yourself a meal, do the fucking dishes.
2. If someone takes over the cooking duties for the night, do the fucking dishes.
3. If you drink an entire case of my beer, don't replace it with an American import. That's just uncalled for.
4. If you have sex on furniture or surfaces in common areas of the house, have the courtesy not to tell me about it. I never told Ross about the time I hooked up on his bed while he was at a midterm. Keep it to yourself, it's a matter of respect.
5. When a girl refuses to come over because of how horrible the house is, it's time to kick into crisis mode.
6. When all else fails, the most important rule of all: don't fuck with me. The fuse box is in my room. I'm not afraid to use it.
...Long story short, I can see this going one of two possible ways...
Either we pull together, and strike a balance between personal space and shared responsibility, or we dig in our heels, and the house devolves into a petulant orgy of bitter pranks, retributions, and recriminations.
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