Trip to Canada and the United States!
OK, so here are my feelings on jet lag. Sometimes it’s not bad. You’re just a bit tired so you go to bed early. Other times however, you feel as if you are in the early stages of Ebola virus - with sudden tiredness, lack of coordination, poor judgement, a sore stomach and the feeling that you’re cold even when you’re quite warm. Which sucks. I mean, I could be wrong about this of course and I may *actually* have Ebola virus, but I think it’s just the jet lag.
So, London.
London is half-way between Toronto and Detroit. It is a smallish city with bad traffic. I was there for two conferences at the University of Western Ontario; one on political theory and the other on the politics of resistance. The weather had been pleasant right up until the night I arrived, when it turned into the usual October overcastness and drizzle, but I was just happy not to have frostbite and be fending off polar bears with a rolled-up newspaper. The hostel was sweet, with hot showers and plenty of Australians. The managers there say it’s not a hostel unless there’s an Australian.
UWO is a nice place and completely infested with squirrels. All the girls look the same and wear lots of makeup, and hoodies are mandatory. The resistance conference there was full of interesting papers and friendly people. My paper went fairly well but - as usual - I thought I deserved more adulation, worship and sexual favours than actually came my way (which was zero of each). The political theory conference was another story. It was held at a posh business retreat that was really far from a bus stop and I swear I was the only person at the conference who walked there. I was also the only person who showed up in a t-shirt and jeans, to my mild embarrassment. But it was cool because I did a great presentation and didn’t get much of the criticism that was heaped on everyone else. In fact, a suave dude who reminded me of the blond guy from Boston Legal came up later and said my paper was OK. At the end of the conference we went to Swiss Chalet and I discovered the joys of “pot pie dinner.”
I also had some time to wander around and see London.
Here is the Beef Baron’s topless dancing club, with an amateur night coming up.
Here is the London model aircraft club’s swap meet. Some people who were staying at the hostel were selling a car load of aeroplanes and junk they’d inherited from their grandfather.
Here are some people from the pro-life protest on the street where the hostel was. I think there was a hospital nearby. Anyway, there were a lot of people there and it reminded me of how not everybody has the same opinions as me.
Then Becky and Julia came to pick me up and take me to Bowling Green, USA. Becky and Julia are some pretty awesome people who I met on the internet. They are the easiest people in the world to get along with and it’s a shame they don’t live down the street because they should totally come around tonight and watch some TV. I also met Steve, Becky’s housemate / boss and Eddy, Julia’s husband. They are both nerds of different varieties and great folks to boot. Becky, Julia and I carved Halloween pumpkins, which is more sticky and difficult than you’d imagine.
Becky’s pumpkin is the squinty-eyed one and Julia’s is the complicated one.
We also went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. They had one of Kurt Cobain’s guitars (but not his favourite), the lyrics sheet to ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart,’ and Jim Morrison’s cub scouts uniform. And a giant flying hot dog with headlights that Phish once rode in. The sky in Cleveland is suspiciously brown.
Then we went to Cedar Point amusement park, which has either the best or second best roller coasters in the world (depending on what they have in Japan). The coasters were intense indeed, and well worth the hour-long lines. The Raptor kicks arse. We also went to a haunted house and a haunted, er, street, where people would jump out of the shadows at you in scary costumes. Here’s a photo of us having lunch in the car park.
That’s Eddy in the middle.
We did a whole lot more stuff than that, but that’s the main stuff. Bowling Green is a sweet place with heaps of squirrels and trees. I didn’t get to be in a tornado, but I can always go back.
On the way up to Canada again, we went through Detroit and saw the Hotel Yorba - just like in the White Stripes song. It’s not the kind of place you’d go to for a honeymoon though, being a) right beside the expressway b) in Detroit.
In fact, northeast Detroit is one of the ugliest and dirtiest places I’ve been. After growing up watching movies and TV from the US, you get the impression that everyone is rich and happy and living in beautiful cities (either that or fashionably run-down bohemian ghettos) but it’s not true. There are places that look just like the third world. Detroit’s Mexican town is a good example - I wish I had some photos from when we went through.
After saying goodbye to Becky and Julia, I picked up my hire car and travelled around southwestern Ontario. An important thing to note about Canada is that nobody obeys the speed limit. In four days and ~2000km of driving I didn’t meet anyone going as slow as me. I cruised around at 5km over the limit in the hope that people would stop tailgating me, but no luck. Another thing about Canada is that it’s not very tourist-friendly. There aren’t many backpackers’ hostels, the road routes are hard to navigate, and it’s difficult to find anything more interesting to look at than a corn field. But I did find some OK stuff. The best bit was Algonquin National Park, which is full of lakes and rivers and hiking trails. With the trees turning bright red and yellow it was pretty spectacular. I even saw a woodpecker pecking on a dead pine tree at dusk. It’s call was like a squeaky toy. Sweet, huh?
After that I went home via Georgian Bay and Collingwood. This photo is of a lake in Massasauga National Park where I had lunch. There was a big ugly worm searching for food in the shallow water.
You can see the different colours of the trees, and how still the day was.
I flew out via Toronto and Vancouver. I had a big stopover in Vancouver and wanted to go into the city, but I followed the signs into the departures terminal and couldn’t get back out. It was lame, and so were the donuts and Tim Hortons. (I don’t know why there are five Tim Hortons places for every Canadian if they can’t even make a good donut. Maybe it’s just the coffee?) The 15-hour flight home wasn’t too bad. It was dark again when we arrived in Hawaii so I didn’t get to see anything out the window, but I watched some films and slept the rest of the time.
So that was Canada and the USA. The main points.
Oh, and did I tell you Becky and Julia made me a birthday cake?
